On each watch on a mega-ship like the Costa Concordia, there are at least two bridge officers on duty at all times. The Captain does not stand a watch; his presence is expected, but not required when entering or leaving port or when navigating difficult waters. In addition to the Captain, there is the Staff Captain. His job is primarily administrative which allows the Captain to maintain tighter control of the ship.

What probably needs to be done is to adopt more controlled waterways where ships over a certain size must follow a prescribed course. Competent ship's officers will hate this while those that have a tendency to become cowboys will be saved from themselves by this.

Speed

Apparently the company also had encouraged their captains to steer the ships closer toward the shoreline to give their passengers more of a show. And on another note people who bought their tickets were also signing contracts too. This is standard procedure for any major ticket you buy to anywhere however in this case with the cruise ships there is very little reimbursement for anything that would go wrong. There'll be very little compensation for any of the passengers.

I think that you all are running this "Cruse Ship" thing into the ground...

devi (imported) wrote: Wed Jan 25, 2012 3:01 pm Apparently the company also had encouraged their captains to steer the ships closer toward the shoreline to give their passengers more of a show. And on another note people who bought their tickets were also signing contracts too. This is standard procedure for any major ticket you buy to anywhere however in this case with the cruise ships there is very little reimbursement for anything that would go wrong. There'll be very little compensation for any of the passengers.

The idea that this "side trip" was company sanctioned comes solely from the mouth of the former Captain. Such accusations have been vehemently denied by both the Costa CEO and by Carnival & PLC.

The compensaton package for those who were onboard has already been posted on both the Costa and the Cruise Critic websites. It actually is more liberal than the law requires.

If one is going to be tossing around accusations, one should be able to quote a reliable source.

ABC news has been most critical of this incident. Of course, ABC is owned by Disney Corp. as is Disney Cruise Line. This conflict of interest has been noted by several of the posters on Cruise Critic.

Speed

erikboy (imported) wrote: Tue Jan 24, 2012 1:35 pm I have been thinking about that captain, huge ships and career. I wouldn't blame the captain all the way.....

(snipped text)

erikboy (imported) wrote: Tue Jan 24, 2012 1:35 pm In some sense I feel that Schetino is a victim of career, and sheer size of responsibility. People with such kind of psychological response should never have reached such jobs.

He was certainly on denial first minutes. Embarrassed to the roots about what he had done. Still we must be thankful to one thing he did -> Understanding that his ship is going to sink very soon, he run his ship aground PARALLEL with the coast, leaving as much ship above water as possible. If it sunk entirely to the depths then there would have been not only 30 victims out of 4200 but 1000-1500 victims (one third) for sure.

I too have been thinking a bit on this captain, careers and such.

One observation that I would like to offer up is that completely incompetent "leaders" are NOT the exception, but rather the rule in many organizations. I have personally worked for officers in the U.S. Navy who had 20 to 30 years of service, and NOT ONE DAY AT SEA, yet they were put in charge of many sailors who did regularly deploy to sea duty. My own experiences are not unique, many of us have had to work for incompetent bosses or "leaders" who did not have even the simplest understanding of the operations they "supervised." I predict that things are only going to get worse, as organizations get better and better at communicating, yes, this problem with poorly developed "leaders" is actually made worse by impovements in communication, as fewer and fewer people are ever going to experience any real solitude and isolation from their corporate "leash" and their masters rod and staff. All organizations, military, civilian, huge world wide corporations or "mom and pop" operations are made more and more to cow tow to the public perceptions and political correctness, and because of this, the very sort of people who would otherwise develop into superior leaders are instead cast off from organizations and the other sort of people, the ones who never make mistakes (because they never take responsibility for anything) are favored and promoted and put in charge.

This "Captain Coward" sort of fellow, probably has a long long history of "glowing employee performance evaluations" and probably looked better in his snappy uniform than many of his contemporaries as he rose up in the hierarchy of his organization. The ones who got left behind, passed over for promotions, and outright fired, they were the ones who had grease stains on their uniforms because they actually DID SOMETHING related to the organizations mission. More and more, I see we are picking "leaders" who are little more that good looking manequins, punctilious and politically correct, who have never made a mistake in their entire lives because they never did a damn thing (or at least never took responsibility for anything).

Oddly, and as you quite rightly point out, Captain Schettino did do something right, at some point he came to understand that his ship was sinking and he took the ship into shallow water. Seriously, if the captain was a U.S. Navy officer, I believe the captian would have aimed for the deepest water possible in hopes that salvage and investigation would be made more difficult.

I think once this captain grounded his ship, he aimed for shore so he could get off, and to hell with everybody else.

One thing is for sure, the only boat he will ever captain again will be his private row boat.

But my guess is that he will get 15 years or so before he can buy that boat.

River

The "Fundamental Attribution Error" (aka, "Fundamental Attribution Bias"), which I understand was first named by Lee Ross in a 1977 publication, assigns to "personal disposition" (and thereby within personal locus of control) aspects of causality which are factually situational (and thereby not within personal locus of control).

For those who, perhaps somewhat like me, are silly, stupid, or absurd enough to seek to understand failure mechanisms from rigorously scientific (in the sense of being, in principle, refutable-if-false) perspectives, prevention of future failures sharing significant features of past failures is practicable only with rigorously scientifically accurate attribution.

I have spent more than 70 years (starting before I was a year and a half of age) invested in making scientifically useful, verifiable, testable, refutable-if-false scientific models of failure mechanisms. Such is, I surmise, quite plausibly my area of greatest scientific expertise-achievement; it is my understanding of failure mechanisms which led to my getting my orchiectomy in 1986.

What I have learned is terribly simple. Guilt, as a brain-biology process, exists only as a delusion; the way neurons, synapses, and neurochemical states function rules out any actual possibility of anyone actually, in a "useful, verifiable, testable, refutable-if-false scientific" way.

Internalizing the neurologically-delusional notion of guilt is possible only if a person's brain is sufficiently traumatically dissociated (by destruction of synaptic function and/or neuron function) as to allow a person successfully indoctrinated in the delusion of guilt to be consciously totally dissociated from the biological reality of built being at best, only a delusion.

As a society, for as long as we can scapegoat a particular person for an outcome outside the scapegoat's locus of control, we need never bother to understand the actual failure mechanism and can remain tragically addicted to the viciously-cyclical delusion of personal fault and personal guilt.

I am designing the stage set for a theatrical documentary on my work and findings, having found that not one person who has ever bothered to make decently thorough sense of the work and findings has ever found any significant flaw in it. Yes, it does depart from what may well be the whole human historical record, such is the inherent nature of any "completely new scientific paradigm" in the areas with which a completely new scientific paradigm involves.

All the work which I plan to publish about my research and findings will, unless doing so becomes impossible, be governed by the least restrictive Creative Commons "copyright license" which I find to be available in a practical way.

Has anyone else wondered about the biology of human decisions? As a philosophical inquiry, I find that Aristotle did. As a biological inquiry, I find that Henri Bergson did. As a quantum-mechanics-competent physicist with a strong biological competence, I find that Walter M. Elsasser did. As a state-licensed professional engineer, working at and above doctoral level, I find but one person in the whole of human history, to wit, me; and I welcome all the company in the effort I am making that can possibly come my way.

A reasonably current social psychology textbook which deals rather well, in my view, is Aronson, et al.

Why do I bother putting this on the Archive? Because the way people make decisions about castration is of really serious life-and-death choice, and choices do not, methinks, ever get more important than when they are of life-and-death choices.

Most of time at least here in the States, managers and supervizors (and captains) come from the upper privileged class that we don't talk about. They're around for a year or so learning how things done and are unnecessary but then they disappear on their own for their own persuit up the career ladder, --a ladder most of us generally have no access to. The job and title was given to them by their status and from their family clout and not by their working knowledge or experience. But I suppose once in a while that that cushy job which the parents had sought out for them doesn't turn out to be so cushy afterall. So here you have a Coast Guard patrol being of military background and training completely incredulous at the lack of protocol in the disboarding this ship. My uncle was in the navy in ww2 so I asked him which ship he was in. Wrong question. He told me how several times they'd have to abandon ship when the ships would be hopelessly bombed and were no longer seaworthy. They had a fairly orderly way of evacuuating ships without much loss of life. So I think that something was really wrong at how the Costa Concordia was evacuuated. And I think that the Coast Guard knew that and was perplexed by it all.

Officers for Merchant Marine ships, as opposed to Naval ships, come from a number of maritime academies. In the U. S. that would be mainly the U. S. Maritime Academy at Kings Point, NY and a number of smaller places such as the Great Lakes Maritime Academy at Traverse City, MI. The vast majority of students come from working class families and enter service on a merchant ship as a third officer.

They must pass rigorous testing to get the higher licenses, until after about 20 years of service, they can get their Captain's papers. These men and women are well paid and receive many perks that the old-timers could only dream about.

This scenario is true for almost all foreign fleets too. Although some flag of convenience operators employ anyone who claims to be able to read a compass as ship's officers. Italian officers has a long standing reputation as being among the elite.

Speed