By Michael Grey*
According to my calendar, this was written on World Peace Day, which could occasion a hollow laugh, but might be joyfully celebrated by a few folk who live “off-grid” and don’t get out much. It took place in the same week as the IMO’s annual World Maritime Day, which this year had, as its theme: “Policy to Practice – Powering Maritime Excellence.” It might lack the power of a gritty slogan, or even a loyal toast, but is surely well meaning, in its hope for a more effective implementation of all the regulations and recommendations that are similarly so. One hopes that your WMD was a happy one.
A realistic assessment of where marine safety is in the world might be gleaned from the US National Transportation Safety Board’s Safer Seas Digest 2025. This is an excellent compendium of the investigations undertaken by their diligent operatives and gives a first-class overview of the sort of incidents that have occurred within their ambit, in a defined timescale.
But as with all these summaries which gather together a selection of such accidents, (one can think of the UK’s Marine Accident Investigation Branch annual reports, and those of the European Maritime Safety Administration), there is a depressing recitation of recurring problems which lead to all these losses and damage. It is really quite rare that there is something that has never been met with before, in the field of maritime human endeavour.
We just keep making the same mistakes. We may, within the last few years have suddenly been faced with battery fires which are almost impossible to extinguish, or navigational accidents which were largely contributed to by some new piece of kit which encouraged bad habits – think of editing functions in electronic chart devices, or even radar itself. But, by and large, the same sort of little and large accidents recur, year after year.
You can imagine the editor of Safer Seas, considering with a weary note of resignation this litany of repetitive accidents, wondering which to choose to include in the 1995 edition. The purpose, after all, is to inform and to generally sharpen the awareness of professionals afloat and ashore of accident trends, and to “power maritime excellence” to steal the IMO’s phrase. And maybe the point is not that there is repetition in the content, edition after edition. Does not the overall message emphasise that we need to try harder because of their repetitive nature, even though few will be seen as what we hacks like to define as a “marmalade-dropper?”
Maintenance issues, human fatigue, distraction
The current edition offers us incidents caused by maintenance issues, with apparently small omissions causing catastrophic consequences and accidents caused by inadequate voyage planning. There are problems with fire detection and containment that have lessons for both ship and shore, problems of watertight integrity in which the closure of a door has been the route to disaster. Accidents caused by distraction, whether from a mobile phone or just trying to do too much at once with too few hands or brains feature. Fatigue has appeared as a cause, increasingly over the years and maybe it is at last being properly recognised as not something that is inevitable in a 24/7 operation.
There have been awful consequences from losses of electrical power at a crucial moment and evident lack of emergency preparedness. There are yet no satisfactory answers to the problems caused by lithium-ion batteries, although the consequences of fires involving them are becoming more apparent. The fact that little failures, of procedures, people, or equipment, can lead to awful consequences, is a home truth that these hard lessons endlessly emphasise.
There is no doubt that the identification of casualty trends and the repetition of lessons from individual accident investigations is a valuable service. There will be those who are oblivious to the need for improvement or change and blunder on as usual, so the words will fall on stony ground. But more thoughtful professionals will look at these pages and apply them to their own operations. They may even think – “there, but for the grace of God….”
(Dreamstime photo of seaman)
*Michael Grey is former editor of Lloyd’s List. This column is published with the kind permission of The Maritime Advocate.