traits and theoretical knowledge. Correct and safe use of all these are, historically speaking, thought of as good “seamanship”.


The word “seamanship” is often used as a throw away comment to cover many situations. But experience, all too often, shows us that the foregoing underlying assumptions are far from the truth.


Good seamanship is something that separates the superior mariner from the average. It is not a measure of skill or technique, nor is it just common sense (our normal understanding and judgement). Instead, and historically, it is a measure of a mariner’s accumulated learning, their knowledge and awareness of the industry, transferable training on a multitude of different vessel types and an intimate knowledge, even relationship, with the maritime operating environment. Moreover, a good seaman will have a realistic understanding of his own capabilities and behavioural characteristics. This, when combined with good judgement, good decision making, attention to detail and self-discipline, begins to give us a reasonable understanding of the technical, professional competence and personal attributes that, more holistically and correctly, define the term ‘seamanship’.


Self-discipline and the exercise of good judgement are vitally important to the practice of good seamanship. Both require well developed character traits and a personal confidence borne out of practical experience that is tempered with wide ranging theoretical knowledge.


Good seamanship comes at a cost, a cost that the industry and its masters have not been willing to pay. How often have we heard this mantra down the years?


The issue of safety, competency and profit derives from a complex


set of questions with an equally complex set of responses. The cause is fundamentally systemic - with degrading crew competence, driven by falling skill levels and deteriorating situational awareness, declining safety standards have, inevitably, resulted in higher accident levels that have a commensurately greater cost to the industry as a whole. Profits must suffer. It is a natural consequence of weak regulation, poor training and declining seamanship levels.


A comparison between the maritime and aviation industries is often drawn, but commentators habitually fail to grasp that differing attitudes towards human- player and related safety-culture consistently impacts a single (accident) determining factor situational awareness!


It is interesting to note that both industries claim to use the same risk avoidance model James Reasons (2000) multi-layered ‘Swiss Cheese’ - accident prevention concept, whereby errors are captured, or mitigated for, at an early stage.


Unfortunately, as we shall see, claiming to apply the same model is where the similarity between the two industries ends.


The maritime and aviation industries have very different attitudes regarding how the Swiss Cheese model works in practice. The differences manifest very differently in training and professional value culture outcomes for the two industries which, in reality, are almost diametrically opposite - despite claims to the contrary. Consequently, it should come as no surprise that the accident safety record outcomes are very different.


It is one thing to make such a statement, it is another to demonstrate the output realities of the different cultures, and that is what this article sets out to show.


What do we mean by Situational Awareness?


Within the maritime sphere, situational awareness is attributed to the ‘man on the bridge’ and can generally be defined as:


an appreciation of the vessel and how it is interacting with the environment it is operating in.


Those with a high level of situational awareness are deemed to be knowledgeable in relation to the mechanical status of the ship, geographical position, vessel course/speed and manoeuvring systems, cargo care, the proximity of other vessels and the potential hazards that they represent.


By this definition,” situational awareness” is attributable to the man on the bridge alone. Thus, someone with low situational awareness would, potentially, be in danger of running aground, damaging the cargo or colliding with other vessels that approach them unnoticed.


So far, so good! The industry’s answer to solving low situational awareness is increasingly found in the drive towards automation. The argument is simple - take the human element (the inherent weakness) out of the system and automate as many systems as possible, then the deteriorating industry safety record should resolve itself.


44 | The Report • March 2020 • Issue 91


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