Once again, poor leadership, lack of supervision, improper watchstanding, lack of familiarity with standing orders. It snowballs, leading to these collisions. Unlike the previous accidents that occurred in major shipping lanes, this was in broad daylight on the open sea. How do you not have watchstanders in the required positions?
Where are the petty officers? LPOs ? Chiefs? CIC doesn’t bother to call the bridge ?
You think someone would asked out loud, “WTF are we doing about this fishing boat?”
I am completely flummoxed by how this happens. I mean, if you have to stand a watch on a bridge wing, and you see a 60 foot fishing boat bearing down on you, don’t you say something like “Bridge: Port wing watch, we have a fishing vessel at 110 degrees, do you verify?” or something like that?
You don’t just see it assume “Well, they have it covered on the bridge, they have the radar and all...”
I simply do not understand this, and the more I hear of these things, the more I feel that if we get into a real fight, regardless of technology, our ships are going to be screwed at a very basic level.