Why so many ships are grounding

[boatman61]

Originally Posted by El Pinguino

50% of that random sample can go into the 'you can't fix stupid ' box
2 of the random sample appear to involve significant hull loss and pollution.
Still not a large number compared with global ship movements.

El Ping.. not trying to prove anything, just seemed to remember hearing about more than the two super size ships that attracted the journo's..
They were what popped up on page one..
Have collisions increased since ships went flag of convenience and crews became private agency operated with wages between £5.15 and £6.00/hr recruiting from SE Asia..
I do, like others note language has become a VHF problem during comms..

[KompetentKrew]

Originally Posted by tkeithlu

The rest is self promotion by the author.

When they started gCaptain the founder made sockpuppet pages on Wikipedia to manipulate his Google rankings.

[svfinlandia]

Originally Posted by AnglaisInHull

Or maybe we're just seeing them in the news more because it's a hot topic and the media are publishing more stories on it.

I don’t really think so. I subscribe to gCaptain and it is their mission to report things such as this and there have been many more of them recently than in the past.

Al, S/V Finlandia

[svfinlandia]

Originally Posted by ChrisOwens

Are more ships running aground lately compared to the historical average? Any data? Is this a phenomenon that needs to be investigated?

I don’t know. I did no research. I have no data.
I just thought it was interesting that I seem to be seeing more recently than I have in the past.

Al, S/V Finlandia

[El Pinguino]

Originally Posted by ChrisOwens

Are more ships running aground lately compared to the historical average? Any data? Is this a phenomenon that needs to be investigated?

I'll let Boatie find the data, he seems rather good at that.

However I am quite sure you will find that it is far fewer if taken over the last 60 years or more. Lots less running into islands and things. Possibly a bit of a blip with big container ships in harbour limits - that often happens when ships get radically bigger. Maybe channels need widening and deepening and infrastructure upgrades are lagging behind. Maybe rules need tightening such as when is it compulsory to take a tug in the Suez rather than the shipowner wondering about his profits.

Example - just over 50 years ago 200,000 tonne dwt tankers started appearing in large numbers. They also started exploding in alarming numbers when tank cleaning. This was down in a large part to the size of the tanks - large enough to develop their own weather systems and thunderstorms while high pressure washing was taking place.
Result was the introduction of compulsory inerting of cargo tanks some years later. Number of tankers going bang is now about zero.

[HopCar]

Don’t worry, sea level rise will solve the problem.

[El Pinguino]

Originally Posted by boatman61

El Ping.. not trying to prove anything, just seemed to remember hearing about more than the two super size ships that attracted the journo's..
They were what popped up on page one..
Have collisions increased since ships went flag of convenience and crews became private agency operated with wages between £5.15 and £6.00/hr recruiting from SE Asia..
I do, like others note language has become a VHF problem during comms..

Just before I retired I took a ship through the Singapore Straits.
The english spoken between people for whom it was a second language and between them and Singapore VTS was not a form of english I had ever heard before. However they all understood each other.

I was very fortunate to have a - very competent - 2/0 from the sub continent to do the radio work.

Regardless of flag I think you will find that collisions decreased dramatically when traffic separation schemes were introduced - at least when everyone started using them.
The two most dangerous rivers in the world in the 50s and 60s were the Thames and the Scheldte as they were the only two of note that had absolutely no form of VTS.

[tkeithlu]

Actually, we don't even know that there HAVE been more groundings of late. Our being aware of more may simply be the result of better news reporting. We'd have to have a world registry of grounding reports, with reports mandatory, and then see a statistically significant (0.95 probability that it's not just random variation) increase to make the claim valid.

[svfinlandia]

Originally Posted by tkeithlu

Actually, we don't even know that there HAVE been more groundings of late. Our being aware of more may simply be the result of better news reporting. We'd have to have a world registry of grounding reports, with reports mandatory, and then see a statistically significant (0.95 probability that it's not just random variation) increase to make the claim valid.

I really have no idea if there are more greatly than usual.
Actually, I don’t believe I said that I thought that there were more groundings than usual lately. I just said that there seemed to be from all the news stories lately.

Al, S/V Finlandia

[billgewater]

A touch of philosophy here. All ships come from material in the ground. All ships finally end up back on the ground-including the abyss-or under it. That's a 100% success rate.

[svfinlandia]

Originally Posted by billgewater

A touch of philosophy here. All ships come from material in the ground. All ships finally end up back on the ground-including the abyss-or under it. That's a 100% success rate.

Yes. I love it!

Al, S/V Finlandia

[MicHughV]

If you think about it...the Brits drive on the left...the folks from Europe on the right...other countries have similar instances. I've driven on both sides of the road, if I'm not careful, I'm a heartbeat away from an accident. This is compounded by driving a car with the steering wheel on the right, in a country that has right handed roads.

Just as red, right, returning, is a thing in the USA....it's quite the opposite elsewhere. A moment's confusion can quickly escalate.

Not saying that this leads to a grounding, but could certainly come into play...???

[boatman61]

Originally Posted by MicHughV

If you think about it...the Brits drive on the left...the folks from Europe on the right...other countries have similar instances. I've driven on both sides of the road, if I'm not careful, I'm a heartbeat away from an accident. This is compounded by driving a car with the steering wheel on the right, in a country that has right handed roads.

Just as red, right, returning, is a thing in the USA....it's quite the opposite elsewhere. A moment's confusion can quickly escalate.

Not saying that this leads to a grounding, but could certainly come into play...???

That's how one recognises Brits in Portugal..
They walk on the wrong side of the pavement..

[Chotu]

Seems to me there were plenty of ships going down all the time. How about those Spanish Galleons? How many of those went down? LOL

[Bent Bugle]

When you dig right down it I end up with the old saying "follow the money trail", where it begins & more importantly, where it ends...number crunchers & cost cutting can lead to ordinary outcomes...