reposted due to wrong link—
I have read that the Traffic Separation Scheme at Singapore is one nautical mile wide. It is the purplish colored stripe in this ship tracking video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlrA36GzHNs
As the Alnic MC enters the Traffic Separation Scheme (TSS), the tanker appears to be about one half mile starboard of the TSS on a steady course towards Singapore traveling at 9.2 knots.
So how does the USS McCain manage to get itself in front of the Alnic MC and get hit?
>>So how does the USS McCain manage to get itself in front of the Alnic MC and get hit?<<
First, what you read about something being a mile wide is true, but it’s not the purple stripe. Instead, it’s 1.1 nm from the purple stripe over to the right side of the traffic lane (indicated by the fine gray line to the right of the ships.)
Given that distance is just over a nm, let’s call it 2000 yards. The ships are therefore much closer to each other than the half mile you assume. The Team Oslo passed the Alnic to starboard within what looks like just a few hundred yards. And in that area was the McCain. In other words, it was very congested.
If you replay the video, you can see a trailing ship, the Ghang Zhou Wan, actually turn to starboard from its original course coming up on the port side of the Alnic and then return to course after that move. (See .50 to .55 on the video, a span of about six minutes in all.) That move could very well be the result of the captain of that ship seeing a mess developing ahead and steering away from it.
In other words, the captain of the McCain somehow managed to get surrounded by large ships and the result was a collision.