A friend recently told me we must do more to protect non-binary people at sea.
I nodded wisely, then rushed to the nearest computer to find out what he meant by 'non-binary people'. I confess I had never heard this particular description (of which more below), but the point is I looked it up and now I know.
I was reminded of this conversation when I read the recent – and excellent – National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) report into the grounding of the tug CC Portland in the Corpus Christi Ship Channel last year. And please note I am not telling you what the NTSB does or where Corpus Christi is because I assume you either know already or will look it up for yourself.
Briefly, CC Portland is a 4,500hp (3,355kW) ASD tug built in 2018 to a popular and reliable design. She was tasked to assist a large LNG carrier into the port, and was ordered to make fast bow-to-bow via the ship's centre fairlead. The channel is barely 150 metres wide, so I guess they have no choice but to employ this method.
The captain was acting as training master, with the mate at the controls. When they met the tanker, they matched its speed of 8.5 knots and commenced passing the towline. Unfortunately, the tug got out of position and was unable to recover as its speed dropped below eight knots.
The towline went slack and appears to have been sucked into the port Z-peller unit. This caused the heaving line to part so the tug was untethered and sheered off to starboard. It soon left the dredged channel and grounded, ripping off the starboard Z-peller unit and damaging several keel coolers. Overall damage to the tug was said to be in excess of US$1.3 million.
The tug company had what appears to be a very thorough tug training programme, with each trainee given a log book where masters would sign off each manoeuvre or evolution once it was satisfactorily completed. Amongst other things, trainee mates were required to complete at least five bow-to-bow towing jobs to the satisfaction of the supervising master. This came towards the end of their training because it was rightly regarded as one of the more difficult tasks. The trainee in this case was already six months into his ASD training at the time of the accident.
The NTSB report analyses the dangers of bow tug operations. In particular, they quote Henk Hensen's excellent "Bow Tug Operations with ASD Tugs," where he states the ship's speed should not be higher than 60 per cent of the tug's maximum speed ahead (i.e., about 6.5 knots in this case, if my calculation is correct). They also refer to Hensen, Merkelbach, and van Wijners "Report on Safe Tug Procedures Based on Pilot, Tug Master and Ship Captain Questionnaires," where the vast majority of respondents said that six knots was the maximum safe speed for bow tug operations. The tug masters in Corpus Christi all said they only felt comfortable at speeds between five and seven knots, yet there was no company or pilot association policy outlining a prescribed safe speed.
The NTSB also refer to a report it issued in 2022 that featured a similar bow tug accident, and point out that in the earlier case, the speed was 9.7 knots!
In the case of CC Portland, the investigators conclude that the probable cause of the accident was attempting to connect at excessive speed. Contributing to this was the lack of a company policy regarding maximum allowable speed for bow assist manoeuvers. This is probably correct, but it is alarming that a company that appears to be well-run with excellent tugs and a thorough training scheme should miss such a basic safety precaution.
As the NTSB pointed out, there are numerous publications that address the problem – they possibly could have mentioned another work by Henk Hensen, "Tug Use in Port," which contains excellent advice and should be on every tug and in every tug company office. Yet somehow all the parties involved have accepted what appears to have been an unsafe situation.
As professionals, it behooves us to keep learning and improving. Accident investigation reports and recent publications are a good way to ensure we know what is going on and what is going wrong. There are also plenty of newsletters like this one where such things are reported, so how did a good company and good people miss it?
Perhaps they knew all along of course, but did not want to appear weak. I remember when I got my first command, it was on a low-powered supply boat in a region where we had to take shelter when the weather was too rough to work, but as the newest and youngest captain I did not want to be the first to give up. I absolutely refused to stop work until somebody else did it first. This was stupid, and I was lucky to get away with it, but misplaced ego – or professional pride – made me keep going however vigorously my sphincter was twitching.
As I got older, I grew out of such foolishness, but I wonder if something similar was happening in Corpus Christi?
Returning to my friend and his sympathy for the non-binary people among us, I understand there is now a fad for people to choose to refer to themselves as "they" or "it" to avoid gender labelling. I think we need to be careful how far we go in this direction, because there will soon be as many labels as there are people. We need to ensure equal treatment and protection for all young people, females, foreigners, LGBT, MDO, CCTV, and FRSU individuals in shipping – even old codgers like me.
So I suggest we forget the labels and adopt a saying by Hieronymus Bosch (Michael Connelly's fictional detective, not the esteemed Baird Maritime columnist or the tortured artist) – everybody matters or nobody matters.
Drum that into every person entering the industry and we might make it an industry worth joining.
