Emergency & Contingency Management

The instinct after a grounding, collision or reported flooding is to do something — engines astern, pumps started, ballast shifted. That instinct has to be suppressed for the few minutes it takes to find out what you are actually dealing with. A ship that has just taken damage is, for the moment, a system in an unknown state: you do not know the full extent of the flooding, whether the hull is still supporting the load it was designed for, or how much reserve stability is left. Acting before you know these things risks converting a survivable casualty into an unsurvivable one.

• Sound the whole ship, not just the suspected area. Shock and whipping from a grounding or collision can crack tanks and voids well away from the point of contact; a damage picture built from partial soundings is a guess dressed up as data.
• Establish the extent before the rate. Which compartments are open to the sea, and are they filling, static, or partially pressed up? A slow, contained ingress and a rapidly spreading one call for very different urgency.
• Calculate, don't estimate, the residual stability and strength. Residual GM, range of positive stability, freeboard to the margin line, and shear force and bending moment against the damage-condition limits — all from the loading computer or approved damage-stability booklet, not from a feel for how the ship is riding.

Only once the picture is established does the conversation move to what to do about it — and even then, the first decision is usually whether to do anything at all in the next few minutes, or to hold position, inform the company, and keep gathering information while the situation is stable.

A grounded ship is, in effect, partly supported by two things at once: buoyancy, as always, and a reaction force from the seabed at the point of contact. That second force — commonly called the ground reaction — is the reason a grounding is not simply "run aground, refloat when possible." As long as the ground is carrying part of the ship's weight, the ship's behaviour changes in ways that mirror dry-docking, and the size of that effect has to be quantified before anyone touches the engines or the ballast.

The rise in the observed mean draft after grounding, multiplied by the tonnes-per- centimetre immersion, gives a working estimate of the ground reaction, P. As P grows, the ship's effective KG rises and GM is virtually reduced, exactly as it is during the critical stages of dry-docking — except here the process is running in reverse, uncontrolled, and often on a falling tide that is making P larger by the minute.

The state of the tide governs the timing. On a falling tide, P will keep increasing until low water; lightening ship in a hurry can deepen the contact or destabilise a ship whose GM is already reduced, and is rarely the right first move. The usual sequence is to complete soundings and the stability and strength calculation, notify the company, and let the flood tide start reducing P on its own — moving only once the numbers, not the calendar, say it is safe to.

Once a casualty is beyond what the ship's own crew can safely resolve, salvage becomes a commercial and legal question as much as a technical one. Lloyd's Open Form (LOF) is the standard vehicle: it is agreed on the principle of "no cure, no pay" — the salvor is paid only if the attempt succeeds, with the amount, if not agreed, fixed by arbitration against the value of the property saved. That structure gives the salvor every incentive to succeed, but none at all to spend money protecting the environment if doing so does not also help save the ship or cargo.

SCOPIC exists to close that gap. It is invoked alongside an LOF and pays the salvor for agreed environmental protection work at a fixed tariff, independent of the salved value — so a marginal casualty with a serious pollution risk still gets a properly resourced response, rather than one scaled to what the hull and cargo happen to be worth.

• The master signs, and the company is told at once. As agent of necessity, the master has the authority to bind the owner to an LOF without waiting for instructions — but given the commercial and insurance consequences, the company has to be informed immediately afterwards, not once things have settled down.
• Salvage may involve a tow, and towing capability is not assumed. Larger tankers carry a fitted emergency towing arrangement at bow and stern, kept ready for rapid deployment without needing the ship's own power — know where it is stowed and how it pays out before you need it, not while a tug is standing by waiting.
• Accepting a tug line is itself a task with a procedure. Agree communications with the tug master, use the ship's designated fairleads and bollards rather than the nearest convenient cleat, and get a messenger across before the main towline.

Most ships that take part in a rescue at sea do so as an assisting vessel responding to someone else's distress, not as the casualty. The role has a defined shape, and knowing it cold matters, because there is rarely time to work it out from first principles once the call comes in.

• Acknowledge and proceed. A distress call — direct, relayed, or a DSC alert — creates an obligation to assist unless the master judges that proceeding would gravely endanger this ship, or is told another vessel is already better placed.
• Report your ETA. The rescue coordination centre, and any other responders, need to know when you will be on scene to plan search patterns and resource allocation around it.
• Set a lookout and prepare recovery arrangements. An additional lookout, a rigged pilot ladder or scrambling net, a briefed rescue boat crew, and a medical team and space ready to receive casualties — all before arrival, not after.
• Follow the on-scene coordinator. If one has been designated, you operate under their instructions; if none has, and you are the first capable vessel present, expect to be tasked with the role yourself.

Being on scene coordinator is not a title, it is a job: keeping track of which units are searching where, relaying reports to the RCC, and directing effort as conditions or new information change — a responsibility that continues until the RCC or a relieving unit takes it over, not until the immediate excitement of arrival has passed.

A pollution incident is managed in a fixed order, and the order matters as much as the actions themselves. Stop the source first — close the valve, isolate the line, halt the cargo or bunker transfer — because containment and clean-up on deck are wasted effort while oil is still being added to the problem. Only once the source is stopped does attention shift to containing what has already escaped.

The Shipboard Oil Pollution Emergency Plan (SOPEP), or its equivalent for other harmful substances, exists to make that response a checklist rather than an improvisation: it sets out the equipment on board, who does what, and — critically — exactly who has to be told and in what order.

• Notify the master and the company without delay. The response has to be resourced and the insurers engaged from the first hour, not once the extent is fully known.
• Notify the coastal state. This is not discretionary. A spill affecting or threatening a coastal state's waters has to be reported to that state's authorities, and failure to do so is itself a separate breach on top of the spill.
• Notify the terminal, if alongside. Their own emergency plan and equipment may need to be activated in parallel with the ship's.

The same notification logic extends to any serious casualty, not only pollution: a grounding, collision or major machinery failure is reported up several channels at once — the flag state and, where relevant, the coastal state for their statutory interest, the company and the classification society for the technical and certification consequences, and the P&I club for the commercial and liability side. Each has a different reason to be told, which is why none of them can be treated as covered by having told one of the others.

Two scenario walkthroughs: a grounding where the ground reaction has to be quantified before any refloating decision, and a search-and-rescue response where reporting and preparation matter as much as the passage itself.