Shipping safety - Ingenia

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MARINE MATTERS Air travel may be the fastest growing transport mode (Ingenia, August 2001, Issue 9) but in terms of cost per tonne mile shipping at about £0.25 per tonne mile is an order of magnitude more efficient than road transport and two orders more efficient than air freight. Ships therefore continue to carry around 95% of international freight, compared with about 0.5% for air freight. It follows that shipping remains the most important transport mode for the world’s economic and social wellbeing. Future demands from the developing countries will place an increasing load on shipping, which is a slow and reactive industry. Even today, real technical and human issues of ship safety exist, which are not being adequately addressed. This article briefly reviews the present position and possible future scenarios for improvement. Indicative shipping data and projected growth Available statistics on ships (and ship safety) can vary significantly, hence the first adjective above. Table 1 is derived mainly from the British Chamber of Shipping data for the world fleet and from the widely used Fearnleys’ Annual Review 2001 for sea borne trade. Values for the year 2000 have been collectively adjusted into three cargo and ship types, hopefully to make the data more understandable. From Table 1 we see that the dry and liquid bulk carrying ships, the ‘work horses’ of the sea, make up 40% of the trading fleet but carry 66% of world trade, which reflects their greater ship size dictated by the economies of scale. Manufactured goods are said to represent nearly 20% of world trade. Not seen in Table 1 is the average ship journey of about 4,500 miles; and the UK owned fleet is about 1.5% of the total but it carries about 4.5% of world freight – a pale shadow of its former glory, mainly due to successive UK governments’ lack of commitment to UK shipping. Between 1982 and 2000 world trade increased by 2.8% per annum. A 2000 projection suggested that world trade would double in the next 12 years, which is equivalent to about 6% p.a. growth. Some may regard this as unlikely, but there is little doubt that the increasing demands and trade from China and the more rapidly developing countries will provide an engine for increased shipping growth, and this at a time when the world fleet is getting steadily older and standards of maintenance and training are declining. Such growth implies a need for more ships, berths, trained seamen, etc. This will have adverse effects on shipping safety unless standards improve. Table 1: Cargo ships and types, ship numbers and tonnes carried in 2000 Ship Cargo Ship Ship Million Trade category type type numbers tonnes % Dry bulk iron ore, coal, grain bauxite and bulk carriers 5,775 1,288 24 aluminium, phosphates, etc. (see Fig. 1) Liquid bulk oil and oil products oil tankers 8,415 2,027 (energy liquid gas LG carriers 1,147 } carriers) chemicals chemical tankers 1,285 280 other products product tankers 348 11,195 2,307 42 General other dry cargoes, container 2,734 cargo manufactured goods, general cargo 16,520 special products, refrigerated 1,409 food, etc. ro–ro cargo † 898 ro–pax passenger § 2,569 specialised trade 1,536 25,666 1,839 34 Grand totals of trading ships and cargo 42,636* 5,434 100 ingenia * This figure excludes 2,460 passenger ships, 324 cruise ships and 43,220 other non-trading specialist ships. † roll-on/roll-off cargo § roll-on/roll-off ship for passengers and cars only 14
MARINE MATTERS Figure 1: Grain being transhipped from a Panamax-sized bulker to a handy-sized bulker berthed alongside Photograph courtesy of The Nautical Institute Shipping casualties and causes Statistics on ship losses at sea or inshore are detailed and impressive, but the vital feedback data to establish their causes is unimpressive and needs to be improved. In the last two decades average loss rates for individual trading ship types have varied between about 0.55% p.a. to 0.15% p.a. with an overall average of about 0.30% p.a. Crew loss data is harder to find but it appears to exceed a thousand seafarers each year. Such loss rates would be unacceptable in other transport systems where lives are at risk. The usual shipping defence is that loss rates are reducing and that lives of the travelling public are not at risk, implying no concern for seafarers. However, it is not just loss of life which causes concern. Because the vast majority of the world’s trade is carried by sea it is the total loss of ships, their high value cargo and lives that is unacceptable and should concern us all. (Also, see later references to ‘public confidence’.) In particular, the industry has recently become concerned about the increasing loss of large bulk carriers, which reached a peak in 1991 for ships weighing over 10,000 dwt (dead weight tonnes) of 22 ships lost and a cost of nearly 200 lives. A broad breakdown (within 5% bands) from two comparable sources of the main causes of bulker losses over the last two decades is: Operational causes: % - Fire and explosions 20 - Collisions and groundings 35 - Machinery damage 5 60% Design and maintenance causes: - Water ingress 40 - Hull breaking in two (at sea) 0 - Capsize of intact ship 0 40% ‘Water ingress’ and its progression through the ship to cause it to sink is entirely due to inadequate structural design and/or poor maintenance. The first can so easily be put right if a survival design approach is adopted (see later). Speaking generally for all shipping, attributable ship loss causes from various sources, including insurers’ data, break down to over 30% due to bad weather and about 25% due to ‘other’ unexplained causes. The Secretary General of the International Maritime Organisation has stated that this is unacceptable. It follows that ships are simply not being designed to survive sufficiently extreme weather. Figure 2 shows a capesize bulk carrier Selkirk Settler whose upper deck is being swamped by a huge wave crest in the mid north Atlantic in February 1987. Had she had normal strength hatch covers she would not have survived. That same storm sank two ships and severely damaged three others. What is generally agreed is that about 80% of marine accidents arise from human errors of one sort or another, mainly in operating ships. Their consequential costs are said to run into billions of US dollars each year. An extreme example of quite inadequate design of container securing and protection arrangements is provided in Figure 3. Seven hundred containers from four large container ships were swept overboard and many more were smashed by huge waves on the beam in October 1998 in the north Pacific. The cargo loss and damage alone was said to cost more than $3 billion. ingenia 15
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