Next message: Lee Martin: "Re: Russian Sextant"
George-
<Nobody on the bridge will even consider changing course by 5 or
10 degrees for a few minutes, to avoid a small craft.>
I think it is a sadly undebated fact that commercial shippig today is highly cost driven. Which means flags of convenience, rustbuckets, and the fewest cheapest crew that can be legally carried in many cases. By this I mean no insult to professional mariners, just to say that one must assume a ship is not fully or capably manned simply because it is big.
I have had the pleasure of a bridge tour on a medium-sized cruise ship, and seen the bridge literally left empty for at least ten minutes. Ship on autopilot, radar on, but no human present, no watch being kept from the bridge.
Give way? Simply not possible, when there is no one on the helm. Perhaps I saw the one incident in a thousand, but it seemed routine for them.
