I don’t get this, you don’t navigate the ship from the CIC so why would the VMS be in there and why would the bridge have to rely on CIC for safe navigation?
“you don’t navigate the ship from the CIC so why would the VMS be in there and why would the bridge have to rely on CIC for safe navigation?”
A complete Red Herring.
Surface Search radar and lookouts are on the Bridge, and safe navigation has absolutely NO reliance on CIC.
Yes, we do navigate from CIC. Every CIC in the USN since WW2 has had a Dead Reckoning Tracer, or one of it's many more modern takes on the DRT, including VMS. CIC usually has secondary navigation responsibility, and during transits through waterways where higher than normal navigational hazards exist, they have additional personnel to increase awareness. In many cases I've witnessed, the NAV team in CIC was more experienced and accurate than the Pilot House, and took pride in that.
This goes much further than poor navigation skills. This was a complete failure of command leadership.