Sailing & Maritime Thread

[Casey Jones]

Why was that tanker headed straight into the quay wall? If the riverboat hadn't been there, the bow would have rammed the wall.

And maybe buckled the hull, somewhere. Or otherwise breached either the hull or cargo holds/tanks.

 

[Goldhedge]

Lost its steering

 

[Goldhedge]

Ship captain here.

First, most people are poor judges of distance and speed on the water.

Second, it's just a surreal moment.

But cruise ship captains are also required to take a Crowd Management course, which teaches you how humans behave in a crisis.

During an emergency at sea, the majority of people freeze, deer-in-the-headlights style.

A small fraction panic.

And another small fraction become laser focused and act.

(Official the groups are called “Freeze, panic, act”)

That last group are the heroes of any incident.

The panic group are the people who make a dangerous situation MUCH worse.

We learn how to manage all three, but the deer-in-the-headlights majority is why we give clear, authoritative commands in our "captain voice."

When you hear "This is the Captain speaking. This is NOT a drill," it does nothing for the panic group.

The hero group just wants us to cut to the chase and give them the relevant information.

We don't speed up. We take our time saying, "This is the Captain speaking. This is NOT a drill."

Why?
1The deer-in-the-headlights group needs to hear authority.
2They can't process information right away.

Saying it slowly prepares them to follow orders.

So it seems ridiculous that these people are just standing there watching the ship crash into them but it’s most likely what you would do too… and it’s 10x better than panic.