gCaptain - Latest Comments in Alaska Cruise Ship Incident Has Ties to Exxon Valdez Grounding

Re: Alaska Cruise Ship Incident Has Ties to Exxon Valdez Grounding

John — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 15:16:36 -0000

Tariel, my company is not currently hiring but post the question to our forum and you're likely to get a response:
http://gcaptain.com/maritim...

Re: Alaska Cruise Ship Incident Has Ties to Exxon Valdez Grounding

Tariel — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 07:41:06 -0000

how do you do. i want work in your shipping company. if you need captain mate iam ready.

Re: Alaska Cruise Ship Incident Has Ties to Exxon Valdez Grounding

Terence (Terry) Canning — Sat, 19 May 2007 12:15:41 -0000

I viewed the the Exxon Valdez grounding as very much a failure of the mariners culture. The third mate should obviously picked up the telephone and called the captain, or the mate and said “I need some help with this autopilot, or help navigating of this channel”. But then I remember that during the few years that I sails as a young 3rd AE, back around '78, '79, '80 my telephone calls to the chief or first asking questions were never greeted in a supportive manner. Hostile might be a been a better description. I don't know what that 3rd Mate was thinking but my experience tells me that the merchant mariners culture contributed to the 3rd Mate's flawed decision making.

Re: Alaska Cruise Ship Incident Has Ties to Exxon Valdez Grounding

bettympage — Sat, 19 May 2007 00:41:34 -0000

You raise a very good point. There have been numerous studies recently that document fatigue as a major problem in the maritime industry. One of the major solutions to this problem is to increase the size of ship's crews, but this is a solution crewing agencies and managment companies don't want to hear. There was a time not too long ago where each ship carried 2-4 Third Mates and sometimes more than one second mate. Now it is very common to only have one officer of each rank.

But as a Second mate, who has sailed Third Mate for 6 years now, I have a major problem blaming this all on fatigue or inexpirence. The bottom line is that no mattter how tired or "green" you may be, if you're having a problem or even think you're having a problem your job is to call the Captain and start to take action. In the industry, the sentiment is "if you're thinking about calling the Captain, you problally should have called him/her already". And on the same note, most captains will tell you they'd rather you'd call every hour to ask what time it is, than not call when it really matters. If that Third Mate realized he couldn't make his 90 degree turn, the Captain should have been called.

The rest of your story on gcaptain.com nails it! great follow up!!!