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Revisiting the Lessons of the Early Steering and Sailing Rules for an e-Navigation Age

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 December 2008

John Wilde Crosbie
John Wilde Crosbie
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(Email: [email protected])
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Abstract

Armed with the axiom that the best way to avoid collision at sea is for one ship to pass under the stern of the other, this paper revisits the early steering and sailing rules. It conjectures that the port tack rule was an antidote to the sailing ship's imperative to gain ground to windward even at the cost of risk of collision. It draws attention to evidence that with early steamships, free of the port tack rule, one altered course to pass astern of the other and that, in fact, the one to alter was invariably the faster of the two. It traces, to the want of prescribed navigation lights, the introduction of the port helm/right rudder rule for all ships by day and by night. It records how with the introduction of prescribed lights the port tack rule, though in a form proposed by France, was re-introduced for sailing ships together with an analogous crossing rule for streamers. The paper concludes that the port tack rule is redundant in this collision conscious age and that its objective of motivating one ship to alter course can be achieved by making both ships to blame in the event of a collision. It is submitted that these lessons offer the e-navigator a method of avoiding collision at sea applicable in all situations; the only technical requirement for its safe conduct is for each ship to be able to tell instantly and accurately at any moment how the other ship is heading.

Keywords

SeamanshipCollision avoidanceHistory
Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Navigation , Volume 62 , Issue 1 , January 2009 , pp. 109 - 117
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Navigation 2008

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References

REFERENCES

1 Kemp, (1976), “Two Hundred Years of the Collision Regulations”, The Journal of Navigation, 29, pages 341–349.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 The 20,000 or so satirical and humorous prints that were published in London between 1770 and 1830, in the golden age of graphic satire, are a goldmine for the historian of cultural change. G. M. Woodward was the master of this form of genial comedy. He is said by Gatrell (2006), author of City of Laughter, London, 2006, to have haunted taverns to study and sketch his characters.

3 Report of the Select Committee on Steam Navigation (1831), British Parliamentary Papers, Transport vol. 2 at page 20, Irish University Press.

4 In the convention of the time, putting the helm a-starboard meant turning the ship's head to port.

5 National Archives, Kew, ADM 1/4059 “Letters from the Packet Service Hobbs Point, 1838–1839”. I am grateful to Dr J. R. Owen, historian of the steam packet ships, for furnishing me with a copy of the petition from which I was able to study the collision situations described by Captain W. D. Evans.

6 Report on Steam Vessel Accidents, Appendix at pages 41–42 and plate I, ordered by the House of Commons to be printed 1839.

7 The rules as drafted by the Board of Trade, and concurred in by the Admiralty and the Admiralty Judge who had been consulted, reintroduced the traditional port tack rule for sailing vessels and had no crossing rule for steamships, Trinity House noting: “But it will be observed that it gives no rule for steamers crossing; this, it is considered, must be left to circumstances, and to the judgment of those in charge.” However, the final form of the rules, at the proposal of the French, extended the port tack rule to vessels with the wind on the port side and introduced the crossing rule which placed the duty of keeping out of the way on one ship only: Copy of Correspondence between the Board of Trade and other Departments respecting the Settlement of the Rule of the Road at Sea and the Lights to be carried by Ships, ordered by the House of Commons to be printed 18 May, 1871.

8 In their book, The Law of Port Helm, Colomb and Brent had argued for the complete abolition of the “end-on” meeting rule since it had caused more collisions than it avoided; they appear to have thought that truly end-on meetings were not dangerous and that ships truly “end-on” could be left free to alter either way without a rule; that, in practice and without a compulsory rule, a ship would take the time to determine whether she was on one or other bow of the oncoming ship and bring herself within the crossing rule. This paper has approached the end-on meeting as the limiting case of a crossing situation – that, in practice, no special rule is needed to cater for it.