Friday, July 18, 2008 Speak out: Sea accidents: an analysis, part 2 By Pepito C. Suello
THE existing storm warnings have four categories.
Signal No. 1 is hoisted if the wind velocity is 30 kph to 60 kph.
Signal No. 2 if wind velocity is 60 kph to 100 kph.
Signal No. 3 if wind velocity is 100 kph to 185 kph.
Signal No. 4 if wind velocity is 185 kph or more.
The Princess of the Stars was a 23,824 tonnage giant.
Ships like Stars and the other Sulpicio ship that sank years ago, Princess of the Orient, are ideally not affected much Signal No. 2 storms.
But Orient sank under No. 1.
Factors
There are many factors that contribute to sea accidents; one is human error and government neglect.
As I said earlier, close supervision and monitoring is required.
The lack of it gives rise to unseaworthy ships and incompetent seafarers posted on ships of bigger tonnage.
But it is unavoidable.
The tonnage of the ship is duly considered in deploying personnel.
Ship’s of bigger tonnage requires a skipper of higher caliber, preferably a Master Mariner.
There are, however, many instances that this does not happen.
This is made possible through misdeclaration of the actual re-admeasured tonnage.
For example, a 1,000 gross tonnage ship is declared 349 net tons.
It enables the ship owner to cheat the government of lawful revenues from wharf fees and post a skipper not qualified to command a ship under the rules.
Under existing rules, ship manning is assessed on a case to case basis, upon request of the ship owner and subject to approval by Marina.
