Ship Sinking Incident Report

VIEWPOINT.

We all know that ship sinking incident is one of the most frightening and devastating event that may happen unexpectedly. There are some reasons why ship might be put in danger such as the free surface effect which can cause a watercraft unstable and capsize, the shifting of cargo that can affect the ship due to heavy listing, that can lead to capsizing of the vessel, grounding, flooding, collision, weather conditions, and most of all human error that can be also a reason that might put vessel in danger. In this sequence, crew member was given an order to abandon ship and did it well and they are all unharmed, but the weather is fine and only having little winds and marginal swell, the ship did not touch

The master was a 63 year Polish National who had joined the Angeln on 8 February 2010 in Port of Spain. The Chief Mate was a 31year old polish national as well. He had joined the vessel on the 15 January 2010. He had not been on the vessel before and there had only been a small time available prior to his signing on. Consequently, his knowledge of the vessel was minimal or lack of details on vessel.

Prior to arriving at the port of Vieux Fort at 5.30 hour on 21 February 2010, the Angeln had loaded 218 contains in Port of Spain, Trinidad. The cell position as well as the actual weight of this cargo was only partly know to the accident investigators because they lacked detailed cargo information and records. The vessel arrived with a 7 metre even keel draught. Cargo operations started at 7.00 hours and 25 containers previously loaded in Port of Spain were discharged, six from the cargo holds and 19 from the upper deck. A total of 79 containers were to be loaded at Vieux

To help speed up the loading operation, the ships cranes was used until one such container movement the vessel listed extremely to starboard and operations were temporarily stopped and the vessel eventually settles upright. The vessel was not in the right position. There was a heat up argument between Master and Chief Mate regarding the loading pattern and there was a refusal to load some too heavy containers. Continues loading using the vessels crane was stopped at about 16.00 hours. It is because of minimal knowledge on the vessel that's why this kind of incident happened that can lead to major mistakes. The pilot was original told that the ship would be ready to sail at 17.15 hours but on arriving at the dock was told sailing would be delayed until the time of 18.15 hours. While loading operations continued, the pilot who was still on the dock observed the vessel listing up to 15 degrees to port and starboard when the containers were loaded and moved on either side, so much so that some of the crewmembers ran off the ship. Operations continued until about 21.30pm when the pilot was informed that the vessel was ready to sail. The exact number of movements of container could not be recalled on the time of the on-scene investigation because neither a booking list nor a port load list was available for access. However, the vessel was fitted with ballast tanks,