Crewless Ships

[Vasco]

Something to look forward to? Interesting that they remark that nobody wants to go to sea anymore whereas in the 50s and 60's people used to go to sea to see the world.

No hands on deck: Dawn of the crewless ship - FT.com

[JPA Cate]

My reaction is that I don't want to even read about this. Over the years, we have enjoyed meaningful conversations with men aboard commercial vessels of various kinds, and I sure as He** don't want to have to talk to a computer!!!! or robot~~~~~!

Like, what if it can't make sense of my accent?! What if it can't talk sense back to me????

[captain58sailin]

They have been talking about this for years. The new Dynamic Positioning vessels can be controlled from the beach via sat. link, the crew has to allow the override. A few years ago they tried an engineerless transatlantic crossing with a large ship, it did not go well. It is possible, but should it be done? In places like the middle East, and Africa you have the seasonal Harmattan, which greatly interferes with the sat. link, as does heavy rain, not a good scenero for maintaining control, of course you can have a route programmed so that the vessel is semi autonomous, sure hope nothing gets in the way and there are no glitches in the navigation system, which also runs by satellite and what if the satellite fails?

[nigel1]

Hope that Rolls Royce can come up with some better gear than they supply at present.
We spend way too much time fault finding with the RR stuff we have onboard. Worse case was the failure of an EPROM in the RR power management system, which shut down two main engines and half our power generation. Took a few hours to get the engines back to manual control.

I can understand why it's difficult to get people to go to sea.
There seems to be a general reluctance to get hands dirty, and on top of this, on the majority of ships, you dont get to see the world.
My first few trips I was lucky working on old tramp cargo boats, 5 weeks in New Orleans, 6 in Bangkok, a couple of months in Jakarta, etc, at 17 yrs old, it was like all your birthdays in one go

[captain58sailin]

The last all ports call I did in the middle East, I got a grand total of 3 hours ashore in Baharain, on a 3 month trip. I stopped sailing unlimited cargo ships because of that, they have taken all the fun out of shipping. I wouldn't mind working a tramper, just for the ambiance, I suppose they are in a big rush these days as well. Well maybe I'll get my own tramper and slow things down.

[Vasco]

[QUOTE=nigel1;1424278]
I can understand why it's difficult to get people to go to sea.
There seems to be a general reluctance to get hands dirty, and on top of this, on the majority of ships, you dont get to see the world.
My first few trips I was lucky working on old tramp cargo boats, 5 weeks in New Orleans, 6 in Bangkok, a couple of months in Jakarta, etc, at 17 yrs old, it was like all your birthdays in one go[/QUOTE


Yes times have changed. Container ships have ruined going to sea. I was lucky enough to spend most of my time on tramps. Every voyage to a different part of the world. Lots of time in port. Keep ship one day, the next day off. Container ships are nearly as bad as tankers - going from the Gulf to god knows where to discharge, over and over again. We used to feel sorry for the tanker guys but they did get more vacation time. We used to say they all went crazy eventually, even had a name for it - "tankeritis".

[boatman61]

Originally Posted by nigel1

Hope that Rolls Royce can come up with some better gear than they supply at present.
We spend way too much time fault finding with the RR stuff we have onboard. Worse case was the failure of an EPROM in the RR power management system, which shut down two main engines and half our power generation. Took a few hours to get the engines back to manual control.

I can understand why it's difficult to get people to go to sea.
There seems to be a general reluctance to get hands dirty, and on top of this, on the majority of ships, you dont get to see the world.
My first few trips I was lucky working on old tramp cargo boats, 5 weeks in New Orleans, 6 in Bangkok, a couple of months in Jakarta, etc, at 17 yrs old, it was like all your birthdays in one go

Well... as an ex RN seaman I tried getting into the 'Merch'... not interested they said.. then tried the rigs.. No experience was their reply so I said ** and became a Cocktail barman.. Circus roustabout... Chemical technician and a few other things.. then I went sailing..

[tbodine88]

Originally Posted by Vasco

Something to look forward to? Interesting that they remark that nobody wants to go to sea anymore whereas in the 50s and 60's people used to go to sea to see the world.

No hands on deck: Dawn of the crewless ship - FT.com

This one requires no subscription:

Dawn of the remote-controlled SHIP: Massive crewless vessels could soon set sail to save money and improve safety at sea | Mail Online

Seems like a bad idea. I've heard of engineer less trains. But then they are fixed on a track, easy to know where they are going and thus easy to avoid.

[boatman61]

Originally Posted by tbodine88

This one requires no subscription:

Dawn of the remote-controlled SHIP: Massive crewless vessels could soon set sail to save money and improve safety at sea | Mail Online

Yup... definitely safer standing in the dole queue... feel sorry for the ship owners tho'... risking their health with all that extra spending money...

[nigel1]

Originally Posted by boatman61

Well... as an ex RN seaman I tried getting into the 'Merch'... not interested they said.. then tried the rigs.. No experience was their reply so I said ** and became a Cocktail barman.. Circus roustabout... Chemical technician and a few other things.. then I went sailing..

Phil, if you tried today, they would be falling over themselves offering you a job, especially rigs North Sea.
Another year or two and I hope there will be one more vacancy.

[boatman61]

Originally Posted by nigel1

Phil, if you tried today, they would be falling over themselves offering you a job, especially rigs North Sea.
Another year or two and I hope there will be one more vacancy.

Do they have a cut off age...
Or is it another case of... "Man.. you'd be too late for your funeral..."

[Stumble]

I can't wait to claim salvage rights on a shipping container because a bird landed on their sattelite uplink array and knocked it out of alignment.

[Celestialsailor]

Apparently this ship was crewless
Ship Runs Aground At Spanish Port - YouTube

[captain58sailin]

Was that crewless or clueless?

[Oceanride007]

I used to be a big ship Engineer, these people, I believe must be absorbed into the industry at a youngish age and they will have a rewarding career. Its too tough to do it later. It was already tough with hot and dirty work, job and finish attitude on simpler ships was easy. Now I've worked in state of the art scada (modern control). In my own experience these systems are great till you run out of redundancy. Hot and dirty, long hours and you want me to be sharp to handle control issues as well, don't think so. And I need people company, ships require crew to tie up and let go, navigation needs to obey colregs, Technically manufactureres do not support hardware after a couple of years, there is good reason to suggest that ships should be less technical to be more reliable. A supership as suggested would last only a few years, insurance and recovering ships from remote location will kill any short term initial profit, you have nothing to worry about in the long term. But short term managers without a heart need to make a few mistakes, my hope is that statutory and insurance groups will stop em.