The chief mate had slept two and a half hours in a day and a half. He missed the turn and hit the Great Barrier Reef.
On 3 April 2010 the bulk carrier Shen Neng 1, loaded with coal, grounded at full speed on Douglas Shoal in the Great Barrier Reef, Australia. The officer of the watch, exhausted after the loading port, did not alter course at the planned waypoint. The ship was badly damaged and leaked oil onto the reef.
Words in this case
- fatigue
- Tiredness that slows the mind and the reactions.
- rest hours
- The minimum sleep and rest required by STCW.
- waypoint
- A planned position where the course changes.
- passage plan monitoring
- Checking the ship's position against the plan throughout the voyage.
- to run aground
- To strike the bottom and stop.
More words like these in the glossary and in listening practice.
What happened
Shen Neng 1 loaded coal at Gladstone. The chief mate had supervised the loading with very little rest and then took the bridge watch the same evening. The passage plan required a course change at a waypoint to pass clear of the shoal.
The chief mate did not make the alteration. He had been awake for most of the previous day and a half with about two and a half hours of sleep, and the Australian Transport Safety Bureau found that fatigue had reduced his ability to monitor the ship's position. The ship ran onto the shoal at about 12 knots, tearing open fuel tanks and damaging the hull along much of her length.
Some fuel oil leaked, and the grounding scraped a long scar into the reef. The crew was safe; the ship was refloated after nine days. The investigation also found that the company's passage planning and the monitoring of the watchkeeper's rest were inadequate.
Why it happened
- The officer of the watch was fatigued after loading and did not make the planned course alteration.
- Nobody checked that the watchkeeper had rested enough before taking the watch.
- The passage plan and its monitoring on the bridge did not catch the missed waypoint in time.
What to remember on board
- The rest hours rules (STCW A-VIII/1) are minimums, not targets; loading and discharging in port are the danger periods.
- If you have not rested, tell the master before the watch. If you are the master, ask.
- Passage plan monitoring: every waypoint has a person responsible for checking that the turn was made.
- An alarm on the ECDIS or a second person on the bridge in confined waters is cheap compared with a reef.
What changed afterwards
The case became a standard example of fatigue in watchkeeping and contributed to tighter Australian rules for shipping in the Great Barrier Reef, including compulsory pilotage areas and vessel traffic monitoring.
Three questions
The kind of questions a knowledge test asks about this case. Keys 1 to 4 answer, Enter goes on.
Read more
Source: Grounding of the bulk carrier Shen Neng 1 on Douglas Shoal, Queensland, Australian Transport Safety Bureau, Marine Occurrence Investigation No. 274-MO-2010-003. Find the report.
On this site: Knowledge test for deck officers ยท Watchkeeping vocabulary.
Plain-English summary of an official investigation report. Facts and findings are the investigators'; the wording is ours. Nothing here is legal advice or a substitute for the report itself.