HMNZS Manawanui has Sunk!

[daftandbarmy]

So I had a SGBD happen once coming in to port.

We were doing drills before coming in to the harbour. They closed up in Emergency Steering and the Bosn who was on the helm in the ESC turned the dial the wrong direction to take control and broke it LOL. Steering then didn't work anywhere and I had to use engines to bring us in to Esquimalt Harbour.

 

[daftandbarmy]

For reference: Another boat hits a reef at night.

Comments suggest that the fancy digital map wasn’t ’zoomed in’ enough to show the reef …

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[Colin Parkinson]

Know your ship and your drills...

 

[SeaKingTacco]

That is a damning report.

I suspect at least two people are now in line for a Court Martial.

 

[daftandbarmy]

That is a damning report.

I suspect at least two people are now in line for a Court Martial.

Thursday's Toast...

Looks like any consequences shouldn't be confined to just the Captain and crew, either...

Crew On Manawanui During Sinking Were Under-trained, Ship Not Up To Task - Report​

The crew - and the Commanding Officer - of the Navy ship Manawanui were under trained and the boat was not up to the task it was doing when it grounded on a Samoan reef.

Multiple failures of the crew, the ship and the Navy itself have been identified in a damning report by a Court of Inquiry into the sinking of the coast of Upolu in October which occurred after it was left in autopilot and could not turn.

The report also contains a full transcript of the dramatic night. Including the captain telling the crew they would survive if they abandoned ship.

The Manawanui has been conducting hydrographic surveys of the reef ahead of the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting, something neither the ship nor the crew were properly equipped to do, when it ran aground.

There was no one on board who was qualified enough to carry out the hydrographic surveying that the ship was tasked with doing and the ship itself was not cleared for that work, the court found.

There were not enough people on board to be able to have an effective watch rotation to prevent fatigue during the prolonged survey task, the Court found.

Crew On Manawanui During Sinking Were Under-trained, Ship Not Up To Task - Report

A damning report explains how the disaster on a Samoan reef happened, including a full transcript of the dramatic night.

www.scoop.co.nz

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Go to the Loo before abandoning ship, seems like a odd choice, if you have time to get everyone to have a dump, you might have time to save the ship?

 

[Navy_Pete]

Thursday's Toast...

Looks like any consequences shouldn't be confined to just the Captain and crew, either...

Crew On Manawanui During Sinking Were Under-trained, Ship Not Up To Task - Report​

The crew - and the Commanding Officer - of the Navy ship Manawanui were under trained and the boat was not up to the task it was doing when it grounded on a Samoan reef.

Multiple failures of the crew, the ship and the Navy itself have been identified in a damning report by a Court of Inquiry into the sinking of the coast of Upolu in October which occurred after it was left in autopilot and could not turn.

The report also contains a full transcript of the dramatic night. Including the captain telling the crew they would survive if they abandoned ship.

The Manawanui has been conducting hydrographic surveys of the reef ahead of the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting, something neither the ship nor the crew were properly equipped to do, when it ran aground.

There was no one on board who was qualified enough to carry out the hydrographic surveying that the ship was tasked with doing and the ship itself was not cleared for that work, the court found.

There were not enough people on board to be able to have an effective watch rotation to prevent fatigue during the prolonged survey task, the Court found.

Crew On Manawanui During Sinking Were Under-trained, Ship Not Up To Task - Report

A damning report explains how the disaster on a Samoan reef happened, including a full transcript of the dramatic night.

www.scoop.co.nz

Do you suppose anyone in the RCN is reading this and thinking 'what's the big deal, we do stuff like this all the time?'

 

[SeaKingTacco]

Self - reflection is not an RCN strength, in my experience.

 

[Navy_Pete]

Self - reflection is not an RCN strength, in my experience.

Honest self-reflection maybe?

Lot of self-reflection that I think is along the lines of 'Am I wrong? No, can't be, I'm awesome, everyone else is wrong!'. I can't find the Simpsons GIF for that one.

I'm probably guilty of that myself on occasion. Sometimes I was actually right, but 'I told you so' after taking a personal/professional kicking is really not worth the squeeze.

 

[dapaterson]

Self - reflection is not an RCN strength, in my experience.

I thought NWOs loved looking at themselves in reflective surfaces?

 

[Navy_Pete]

On a serious note, just read through the whole report; really nice to see the RNZN putting this out publically, and pretty quickly, with only relatively small redactions that didn't make it impossible to read and follow.

A lot of it sounds pretty similar to the RCN; people doing their best to do things they aren't formally trained on, but expected to get done, engineering department 'fatigued' due to huge push to fix major defects and sail on time, and a lot of general emergency things being in place but not really practiced in any effective way. Also training documentation and policy was out of date, contradictory and having requirements/expectations but not the skills/experience to carry them out. The bit about people with no risk assessment training doing/accepting the risk made me laugh a bit, as I lost count of how many times I've heard people say they'll accept the risk before we even knew what the issue was or the 'so what.'

But the right call was made to abandon ship, everyone got off safely, and sounds like the RNZN will actually look at things and make substantive changes. It's embarrassing AF, but I'll take damage to the institutional reputation over funerals any day of the week.

Mistakes were made, and expect a few people will be held accountable, but I think the report did a good job highlighting a lot of the systematic things going against them as mitigating circumstances, so hopefully they don't get completely hung out to dry.

 

[Oldgateboatdriver]

After reading the report, I thought the bridge set up - with the No 4 and No 5 thrusters levers set in two different consoles on either side of an "open space" where the officer maneuvering the ship stands - to be a very non naval set up. It likely harks back to the original incarnation of the ship as an Oil and Gas survey vessel, a function where most, if not all, of the ship handling would be done by the master, operating all the various thrusters him/herself by standing on the center line, likely at slow speed or by minute increases through the computer as required if operating in Dynamic Positioning Mode.

The Naval preference is for all of these thrusters to be co-located on a single console (as on the MCDV's for instance), to be operated not by officers hands on but by the crew acting as helmsperson. In a naval set-up the officer handling the ship would pass orders to the helmsperson. If the ship was in auto-pilot and the helm receive an order to execute, the helm would either remind the officer that the ship is in auto pilot, or take the ship off auto pilot and then execute the order, depending on the SOP for that vessel.

I suspect that the RNZN has an operating model that is close to the ones of the other Royal navies (RN, RAN, RCN, etc.), it would be unusual for the officer to do hand on maneuvering and keep watch at the same time. Therefore, without lots of time in type to get very familiar with the set up and the hands on handling of a DPS equipped vessel, I can see that inexperienced officers could easily get overwhelmed by doing hands on handling and carrying out their OOW duties at the same time and miss things.

 

[Lumber]

On a serious note, just read through the whole report; really nice to see the RNZN putting this out publically, and pretty quickly, with only relatively small redactions that didn't make it impossible to read and follow.

A lot of it sounds pretty similar to the RCN; people doing their best to do things they aren't formally trained on, but expected to get done, engineering department 'fatigued' due to huge push to fix major defects and sail on time, and a lot of general emergency things being in place but not really practiced in any effective way.

A frigate had to cancel its fall FG sailing program due to lack of sufficient personnel. The newest AOPVs are begging, borrowing, and stealing personnel from other AOPVs (who just got back from deployment) just so that they have the bare minimum number of people to sail. I have NO idea how they are going crew AOPV 6 when it comes on line, let alone 2x JSS just around the corner. It's like they are going to have 3x AOPV crews swapping between all 6 ships getting burned TF out just so the navy can say "we have 6 active AOPVs."

 

[NavyShooter]

I was simply shocked when I read that they'd had the ship running in Auto Pilot.

I was more shocked when they didn't have someone who knew to take it OUT of Auto Pilot.

The CPF's are equipped with an Auto Pilot, however, the system was never damped properly, so it drove the rudders way too hard and caused shuddering and strain on the steering system. I used it ONCE during a mid-ocean transit. The OOW was authorized by the CO to use the Auto Pilot on the helm console for about 2 days in mid-Atlantic. The helmsman had to remain on the bridge, and was required to be 'close' to the helm console if they needed to close up quickly, and we all knew how to take it out of Auto mode.

Sounds to me like they didn't even know they were in Auto.

Also sounds like they didn't use their checklists, or even acknowledge them.

As a SSD helmsman, every time we closed up Specials, we'd test comms with Emergency Steering, test the system (Hand FU, Non FU, Local Control at the Emergency Steering postion) and then revert to normal steering. We'd do regular loss of steering system drills, and it was always something that we were ready for.

This is...damning.

They failed to know their system.

They failed to train their people.

They failed to use their own checklists.

I'm happy that the entire crew got off safely - and despite getting told to hit the heads before going over the side, I suspect that the loss of reserve buoyancy that was going to sink the ship was already recognized as inevitable at that point.

NS

 

[Colin Parkinson]

We ran the 1100 class on autopilot frequently, but there was always a QM and deck officer on the bridge. As QM I knew how to engage/disengage autopilot and throttles. Also checking the gyro against the magnetic every 15 minutes was one of my duties.

 

[Navy_Pete]

I was simply shocked when I read that they'd had the ship running in Auto Pilot.

I was more shocked when they didn't have someone who knew to take it OUT of Auto Pilot.

The CPF's are equipped with an Auto Pilot, however, the system was never damped properly, so it drove the rudders way too hard and caused shuddering and strain on the steering system. I used it ONCE during a mid-ocean transit. The OOW was authorized by the CO to use the Auto Pilot on the helm console for about 2 days in mid-Atlantic. The helmsman had to remain on the bridge, and was required to be 'close' to the helm console if they needed to close up quickly, and we all knew how to take it out of Auto mode.

Sounds to me like they didn't even know they were in Auto.

Also sounds like they didn't use their checklists, or even acknowledge them.

As a SSD helmsman, every time we closed up Specials, we'd test comms with Emergency Steering, test the system (Hand FU, Non FU, Local Control at the Emergency Steering postion) and then revert to normal steering. We'd do regular loss of steering system drills, and it was always something that we were ready for.

This is...damning.

They failed to know their system.

They failed to train their people.

They failed to use their own checklists.

I'm happy that the entire crew got off safely - and despite getting told to hit the heads before going over the side, I suspect that the loss of reserve buoyancy that was going to sink the ship was already recognized as inevitable at that point.

NS

To be fair the people in all the positions weren't actually qualified, they skipped the equivalence of workups (which would have included making sure their watchkeepers all ran through those drills and were capable).

The CO wasn't command qualified, the ship wasn't cleared to do the things it was doing, and all kinds of other basic things that normally includes external verification weren't done, so it's also a failure of all the oversight mechanisms.

We do some pretty wild shit in the RCN, but at least we still hold pretty strong to the oversight checks (for the most part), which is probably our only saving grace, as it's pretty normal for a lot of the built in redundancies to not actually be functional with risk assessments to sail below SOLAS so we absolutely can't rely on the design features to save our ass.

Wrt autopilot, it's pretty class dependent; the old AORs used to RAS in autopilot and that was their normal sailing mode as well, so really depends on the ship system. But yeah, definitely should have been trained and drilled to avoid this exact scenario.

 

[Halifax Tar]

To be fair the people in all the positions weren't actually qualified, they skipped the equivalence of workups (which would have included making sure their watchkeepers all ran through those drills and were capable).

The CO wasn't command qualified, the ship wasn't cleared to do the things it was doing, and all kinds of other basic things that normally includes external verification weren't done, so it's also a failure of all the oversight mechanisms.

We do some pretty wild shit in the RCN, but at least we still hold pretty strong to the oversight checks (for the most part), which is probably our only saving grace, as it's pretty normal for a lot of the built in redundancies to not actually be functional with risk assessments to sail below SOLAS so we absolutely can't rely on the design features to save our ass.

Wrt autopilot, it's pretty class dependent; the old AORs used to RAS in autopilot and that was their normal sailing mode as well, so really depends on the ship system. But yeah, definitely should have been trained and drilled to avoid this exact scenario.

Sure we do, until use deployed units for force generation and then it takes you 16 minutes to close up for action stations because you have 3 people left in your section base who were onboard for WUPs.

The RCN is going to learn some serious lessons the hard way.

 

[OldSolduer]

Sure we do, until use deployed units for force generation and then it takes you 16 minutes to close up for action stations because you have 3 people left in your section base who were onboard for WUPs.

The RCN is going to learn some serious lessons the hard way.

Which will cost people their lives or suffer crippling injuries.

 

[Navy_Pete]

Sure we do, until use deployed units for force generation and then it takes you 16 minutes to close up for action stations because you have 3 people left in your section base who were onboard for WUPs.

The RCN is going to learn some serious lessons the hard way.

Jesus, that's not great. I went through the opposite, and we did 3 or 4 sets of WUPs in a year because of some changes to key people and/or large number of crew members. That was terrible, but almost none of those changes were in the MSED so by last one (Cmd staff WUPs?) ST(A) mostly left us alone.

 

[Good2Golf]

That is a damning report.

I suspect at least two people are now in line for a Court Martial.

Self - reflection is not an RCN strength, in my experience.

Credit to the RNZN that it actually published the report openly. BZ RNZN