All that sounds good and may be true but...... there is no excuse for not manning the bridge with adequate personnel. Other posts could be shorted but not command and control of the vessel in the most crowded water way.
Command error if there were not adequate capable persons on the bridge
That would go back to what I said. How manned is the ship? They don't just have to be there but PQS qualified to stand watch. You can't just grab the Cook and say here stand watch on the Bridge. He'd be useless. Obtaining full PQS for watch takes time to do it right and should be done before allowing the person to stand a critical watch without a trainer present. Navigation including Helmsman doing actual navigation duties on the Bridge fall under Quartermaster {navigation and charting} and Bosun mates which are your Helmsman and watches. Then there is the OOD who discerns their input.
If steering is lost the Bridge over sound powered phones can tell the Machinist Mate on watch in the steering gear room the rudder position and he can manually steer the ship. Also nighttime ops underway are a lot different as you have no real sense of distances and have to count more on radar. Do you see a tanker 1000 yrds out or a small craft 500 Yards out? If both ships are in a turn it compounds more the ability to get an accurate sense of their headings.
Night time ops in a crowded sea lane where even though you may see miles of sea to your port and starboard only a quarter mile wide of it in certain places may be navigable meaning deep enough for transit and charted as being such. For example in the Med Sea the Straits of Gibraltar and Straits of Messina look real wide. The actual useable portion can be far less. If you really want to see a pucker factor go through the Straits of Tiran which was Moses likely actual crossing place in the Red Sea.