[rlmorel]

Yes. And that is where the lack of leadership comes in.

He should have probably had the Special Sea and Anchor detail at the stations, though I admit to having never sailed in that area. But to me, it would be like going through the Straits of Messina...I do recall we would set the Sea and Anchor detail there, and that wasn’t anywhere nearly as busy (though I believe the confines were much narrower, IIRC)

[poconopundit]

I distinctly remember at time in the 70s when our ship passed through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow entrance-way to the Persian Gulf from the Gulf of Oman.

This is a very hazardous place to navigate. You've got huge containerships and supertankers passing through. And at night, it's hard to figure out what's happening.

I was on the destroyer, the USS Turner Joy DD-951, and we were with a small task force heading home to San Diego -- yeah, the long way around -- from a brief visit to Bandar Abbas, Iran. This was when the Shah was in power and we were allies with Iran.

I was one of two Junior OODs assigned that night for this passage. And our skipper made sure to be there to oversee what was happening.

At one point the Skipper noticed that a merchant ship was on a collision course with a cruiser in our group.

And for a moment, he and everyone else on deck with a pair of binoculars peered our eyes onto the dark scene.

At the last moment, the cruiser changed course, and our Skipper ran over to the radar and exclaimed, "They were so close, their radar blips merged!"

I put together an infographic about the qualities of a good skipper...