Ships Collide !

I was shocked earlier this week to read a story of the new Seabourn Encore ship colliding with another ship.

It turns out that the collision was minor and thankfully no-one was hurt but what left me wondering was how something like this could happen in the first place.

The new ship was docked in Timaru, New Zealand at the time and was actually delayed in departure due to the strong winds there. The ship ended up breaking it’s moorings due to the strong winds and swung around over the dock and collided with a smaller ship the Milburn Carrier II.

What I couldn’t believe when watching this video was with the time that this took to unfold (about 4 minutes) no one seemed to be able to take action to stop a collision  occurring.

There was reported damage to the hull of the Milburn Carrier II which is used as a cement carrier but it seems that the Encore was good to sail. Whether there is any minor damage or not I do not know but the Encore was cleared by authorities to set sail later that night.

I am sure what happened will be looked into and steps will be taken to try and stop this kind of thing happening again. It might be that the ships crew could clearly see what was happening but were unable to take action. I don’t know how these engines and thrusters operate on these ships, maybe they can’t just fire them up at short notice.

Anyway the video is very interesting to watch and was certainly the most interesting cruise story I have read all week.