Eyerdam opinion
Costa Captain discovers unknown rock in Mediterranean Sea
He took the ship off of cruise control! You mean they don’t pilot them?
I had to laugh at the lame Miami Herald defense of the safety of the cruise industry in the wake of the ridiculous sinking of the Costa Concordia and the deaths onboard.
The reason the boat hit the rock and sunk is that the Captain did not have a local pilot on board who knew the waters yet decided he could read unfamiliar charts and navigate close enough to Giglio so his favorite waiter could wave at his family, on shore.
You gotta get pretty close to shore to see a tiny Italian head water wave for the flybridge of a giant cruise ship. And you better know the waters or have someone on board that does.
But Carnival, which has created political action committees across the world to fight the rules requiring harbor pilots in unfamiliar waters, Carnival’s excuse is that the captain turned off the computer that had been programmed to drive the ship. He took control of his vessel, steered it into the rocks then cut and ran.
This incident reveals that at least some of the Carnival fleet travel not under the watchful eye of a helmsman and a pilot and a watchstander. They travel in treacherous waters following a computer program, installed by some geek in port
The Herald in its cloying editorial points out that big cruise ships do not sink and kill people anywhere near as frequently as crewmembers rob and rape passengers. And it concluded, without any inclination about the truth of its metaphor: “When it comes to safety, the industry always practices cruise control.”
And the reason why we stand firmly behind the laws requiring trained and experienced bar pilots and harbor pilots is that they bring big ships safely to their berths. Near shore is no place or time for safety by cruise control or captains who are out of their element.
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Posted by: freelance writer | January 18, 2012 at 12:19 PM