A Sea Story: the Wreck of the Replica HMS Bounty 184
An anonymous reader writes "On October 25, 2012, as residents of the U.S. east coast made frantic preparations for the arrival of Hurricane Sandy, the captain of the HMS Bounty (a replica tall ship constructed fifty years earlier for the Marlon Brando film Mutiny on the Bounty) made a foolish decision, with the assent of his crew, to proceed with a scheduled voyage from New London, CT for St. Petersburg FL. CNN's Thom Patterson has written a long story with the benefit of survivor testimony to the NTSB and U.S. Coast Guard. Captain Robin Walbridge thought he could outrun the hurricane, and besides, he'd 'sailed into hurricanes before.' The crew (officially there were no passengers, a fact that allowed the ship to evade certain safety regulations) consisted of tall ship enthusiasts with widely varying amounts of nautical experience, perhaps taken by the vast historical literature on the great age of sailing. A day and a half into the voyage, Captain Walbridge altered his plan of sailing east of the storm, to sailing south and west of it. A day later, the Bounty was less than 200 miles from the eye of the storm; the engine room started to flood, and the pumps were jammed with debris being torn off by the storm's 70 mph winds. The end came early next day, the Bounty was knocked down by a huge wave, tossing the captain and several crew members overboard. The Coast Guard rescued fourteen of the crew members, but Claudene Christian (an adventure-loving novice who had enlisted as crew a few months before) was dead, and Captain Walbridge's body has not been found."
The sea gives and the sea takes. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:a tragedy all around (Score:5, Insightful)
It was sailed for 50 years and only sunk because Capt Dumbass sailed it into a hurricane. Pretty good for a museum piece.
Re:a tragedy all around (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it doesn't. Just because a bunch of people who took a risk died doesn't mean we need to make laws to stop it in the future.
When you go to sea you take some risk, under any circumstances. People doing that should take responsibility for it. It's not the coast guard or the government's job to make sure people who make stupid decisions don't get hurt.
Re:a tragedy all around (Score:5, Insightful)
The captain meant well, but his ship wasn't the measure of the dreams that sailed it.
People do stupid shit, and put themselves in danger -- and they have a right to do so. We don't need to change the law in this case.
His crew understood or should have understood the risks.
The knowledge of the tragedy should serve as a bigger deterrant than any to sailors who would otherwise be so fool-hardy as to sail within reach of a hurricane.
Re:Safest at sea? (Score:5, Insightful)
For large ships, where large is defined as unable to be easily lifted out of the water and stored on land, it is safer for them to be out to sea.
But out to sea does not mean in a hurricane. Out to sea means leaving in advance of the storm such that the ship can get well away from the most severe weather. Large commercial ships go nowhere near these sorts of weather events, it's better to sail a week out of the way to go around than risk losing a large boat.
Dude wanted to get where he was going. Had he left and gone due east, towards Europe, the boat would have been no where near this storm when it hit the eastern seaboard. He could have then turned around and gone to his destination, perhaps a week late, but alive after a nice cruise.
Re:a tragedy all around (Score:5, Insightful)
The loophole that allowed this ship to sail needs closed and the other such ships need safely regulated to museum duty.
The solution to every problem is not more laws, more regulation, and more bureaucrats. If we are going to progress as a species, we need fewer laws that protect people from their own stupidity, so Darwinism can take its course.
Re:a tragedy all around (Score:5, Insightful)
I have to agree. I'm all for regulating passenger travel, because passengers don't have the opportunity to go do a walk-around of their aircraft before boarding, and even if they did they wouldn't know what to look for.
However, if some idiot wants to take their Cessna up in a hurricane then my main concern is for the home that he ends up crashing into. That isn't as much of a concern for a ship out at sea.
As long as everybody on the ship could be expected to understand the risks they were taking, then it was their choice to make.
Re:a tragedy all around (Score:2, Insightful)
It's interesting how as soon as you socialise the costs of things going wrong you have a case for banning behaviour that is likely to go wrong.
E.g. if we both buy health insurance privately I don't really care if you live an unhealthy lifestyle. If we have a national health service I do because people who live an unhealthy lifestyle will end up hogging resources to the point where I won't be able to get treated.
Re:Epitath (Score:5, Insightful)
They also appear to have foundered earlier than necessary because they lost power. As my sailing instructor drilled into us, you're in a sailboat. The engines are auxiliaries. Being beam on to the sea in a storm is not a happy situation, and, in a sailing ship, having your engines die isn't a good reason for it.
The captain sounds like an irresponsible thrill seeker, and the crew, although they were all supposedly experienced sailors, does seem to have neglected a lot. The article implies throughout that it was some kind of hero worship.
Re:a tragedy all around (Score:2, Insightful)
How about NO.
Let us not make a new law to cover idiots that want to die.
How about this. Lets just move on. People are allowed to take risks. Risk equals danger.
You nanny ass motherfuckers piss me off. People like you are the reason that society sucks so badly.
We do not need a law for this. We do not need to regulate people jumping out of airplanes.
We do not need to regulate people jumping off cliffs.
We do not need to regulate people owning guns.
We do not need to regulate what people eat.
We do not need to regulate smoking.
We do not need to regulate drinking.
We do not need to regulate these things as they tend to self regulate once the stupid die off.
Re:Safest at sea? (Score:4, Insightful)
Navy regulations are written in blood (Score:5, Insightful)
Sawdust and wood chips littered the floor ... Thank God that the Navy has those knuckle dragging Deck Apes to ensure that Navy ships don't founder in the same way!
My uncle was a carpenter. I never saw sawdust or wood chips on his workshop floor unless he was in the middle of cutting or drilling.
Of course in his youth he was in the Navy, destroyers, WW2. When I asked what he did he said that they maintained the ship and its equipment, cleaned the ship and its equipment, and drilled for damage control and battle. He added that on occasion they were allowed to eat or sleep and that on very rare occasions they went into battle (Pacific, '42-'45, over a dozen battle stars).
He told me he learned to immediately take care of the smallest things when he was in the Navy. That the saying "Navy regs are written in blood" is true, that many regs are the way they are because someone died doing things differently. Given the unforgiving nature of the sea I'm surprised the professional civilian sailors (officers of the Bounty at least) did not understand that sloppiness can get you killed at sea.
Re:Epitath (Score:5, Insightful)
Just because the crew isn't properly trained is no excuse for the officers not seeing to it that things are properly ship-shape!
If a crew member is not properly trained it is the officer's responsibility to quickly remedy that. It doesn't matter if the crew member is paid or a volunteer. You go to sea, you learn to do your job properly, period.
Re:Epitath (Score:5, Insightful)
I've looked at the decision to leave port. I can't really fault that. Navy captains routinely make that same decision. The Coast Guard, likewise.
The decision to turn south and west to follow the storm seems somewhat less responsible. But, again, Navy and Coast Guard captains do it, with reason.
The captain's failure in this instance centers around housekeeping and seaworthiness. If the ship not truly seaworthy, if housekeeping is a threat to that seaworthiness, then the captain must rectify the situation, or refrain from going to sea and/or chasing that storm. This captain chose to run his ship close to it's extreme performance parameters, despite the fact that the ship wasn't "ship shape".
Re:Epitath (Score:5, Insightful)
Maintaining a ship takes time and dedication. In the time of the tall ships they had the boatswain and the carpenters. Today we have the chief and the engineering staff. An experienced seaman in either position would probably have stopped this trip, and that is one very important reason that the chief should be on equal standing with the captain.