200457 COLREGS in TSS

COLREGS in TSS
MARS Report 200457

Whilst proceeding in the English Channel NW lane towards the Wandelaar pilot station, I was quite surprised that a ferry coming from Calais started to flash with his Aldis lamp. He could have gone astern of me or reduced/increased speed as there was ample room. I subsequently changed my course to starboard and no harm done. However, I was surprised that the ferries still operate as in the "bad old days", before TSS-systems, when everybody was supposed to give way for them.

The reporter seems to be assuming that the ferry should have given way to him because he was in a TSS. This is, of course, incorrect and he should have altered course by following the COLREGS before the ferry had cause to flash him. Cross Channel ferries have never assumed that everyone should give way to them. RB

Readers' Feedback

I was intrigued and not a little amused by MARS 200457 in the December 2004 issue. Having spent several years in ferries and some fifteen years in a variety of deep-sea ships that occasionally passed through the Dover Strait, I certainly have never heard of any rule, written or tacit, that through-traffic gave way to ferries in the "bad old days" before TSS. Anything but!! Now it appears, not only from the implicit thinking of this report but, also from my own experience, that ferries are expected to give way to all through-traffic, like vehicles in a side-road at a junction with a major road. Again, we should look at the rules, which, while they don't advise such measures, are nevertheless confusing in their persisting in the use of the principle of right of way. People not fully au fait with them seem prone to its misapplication in all sorts of unsuitable, and indeed, improper situations. The interpretation of the TSS as being a "main-road" has become common. During my time in ferries we found it safer to act according to that misapprehension, avoiding steady-bearing encounters while looking for a gap in the traffic that would allow a crossing without ourselves having to take avoiding action or forcing another ship to do so. I recall only one awkward encounter, in which there was a difference of opinion about what constituted a safe distance to cross ahead, and in retrospect I concede the argument: I wouldn't have run it so close a second time round. But there was no collision, and no-one had to take emergency action.

I simply don't believe mariners who tell me they invariably obey the rules (Rule 2(b) aside, that is). I have been of the opinion, for most of my seagoing career, that the COLREGS are a classic example of rules for the guidance of wise men and the obedience of fools.

Incidentally, as an illustration of the inadvisability of judging a ship by her appearance, a colleague of mine, some years ago, in command of a large ferry, decided to put the Rules regarding a TSS dilemma to the test in circumstances he thought were fairly risk-free. A large, well-found passenger liner some way off was the give-way vessel, approaching in the NW-bound lane, and the ferry-man duly kept going (with caution, as the saying used to go). As the encounter developed, the passenger-liner sailed through the place where the ferry would have been, and went on her way in regal indifference, never altering either course or speed, nor making any signal whilst the ferry ended up going full astern. The other ship was a well known passenger vessel, on one of her last voyages that could have been the last. My friend concluded, quite rightly, that if you can't rely on a ship like that to play by the rules, you might as well give them all a wide berth.