Distress, urgency and safety
Sécurité: the safety call
also: securite, safety signal
Sécurité is the spoken safety signal: it introduces a message about the safety of navigation or important weather information.
Key facts
- Spoken SAY-CURE-E-TAY, three times, from the French sécurité, safety.
- Most Sécurité broadcasts come from coast stations and VTS: navigational warnings, gale warnings, buoys off station, dredgers at work, firing exercises.
- A ship sends one too when it has something others need to know: a container adrift, a long or awkward tow, gear lost overboard in a fairway.
- The announcement is made on Channel 16. A longer message is often passed on a working channel named in the announcement, so Channel 16 stays clear.
- Safety traffic ranks below distress and urgency, and above everything else.
- A Sécurité broadcast to all stations usually ends with OUT, because no reply is expected.
A safety broadcast: container adrift
BALTIC TRADER: SECURITE, SECURITE, SECURITE.
ALL STATIONS, ALL STATIONS, ALL STATIONS.
THIS IS BALTIC TRADER, BALTIC TRADER, BALTIC TRADER.
Navigational warning. Container adrift in position five-five degrees three-eight minutes north, zero-one-eight degrees five-five minutes east.
Vessels are advised to keep a sharp lookout and pass with caution.
OUT.
Hear it as it sounds on the radio (synthetic voice, fictional ship):
Synthetic voice; the ships, positions and people are fictional.
Watch out
Do not confuse the Sécurité signal with the WARNING message marker of the SMCP. Sécurité opens a whole broadcast on Channel 16; WARNING flags one sentence inside a message.
Listen: the standard phrases
Recordings from our SMCP trainer, in the accents you actually hear on the air.
Where this comes from
ITU Radio Regulations, Article 33 (safety communications); IMO SMCP.
This is not a legal text: when in doubt, the current wording of the Radio Regulations and the SMCP decides.
See also: Prowords and message markers