CHAPTER 8

INSPECTIONS & DETECTION OF

DEFECTS AND DAMAGES
Introduction
Ships in their operations often suffer damage; the damage could be
due to weather, wear and tear or due to accidents. In every such
condition it is imperative that the ship's worthiness to face all the
situations is maintained. Such maintenance requires assessment of
damage, recording of the same and repairing of the same. You have
by now seen defect lists being prepared and repairs been monitored.
As a task you shall observe how such defect lists are prepared and
the repair specifications drawn up. Pay a little more attention to this
now and record the information so obtained in your diary, i.e. how it is
done on your ship.
Process of assessment & recording damage
What is damage?
Let us consider a very common case from our daily lives. A normal
healthy man goes about his daily routine shouldering his
responsibilities and obligations well. This man catches some infection
and is unable to work as he does not feel well and has high
temperature. The infection is diagnosed to be from mosquito bites,
takes medication and rest for a few days and is healthy and well
again. He feels strong as before and is working as efficient as before
the infection. Had he not taken proper medication following analysis
of his symptoms, some body organs could have got damaged
permanently or he could have died in the worst case. How this
example fit into our objectives of this lesson, we will see by and by.
The status of any machine or a system (system can be defined as a
stand alone machine or a combination of machines which perform
linked to each other to deliver a common or single product service)
can be put into any of the following categories
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Inactive System is shut down but can be energised.

Normal Operating as designed.
Alarm

Needs attention to maintain its normal status.

Damaged

Unable to operate as designed due to breakdown.

An alarm can be defined as the means of bringing to attention,

visually, audibly or both, any condition that needs or may need
attention to restore the normal operational conditions of a system.
The scope and purpose of an alarm is to attract attention to
conditions different from the normal status. If the status is not
restored back to normal, further series of actions might result in shut
down or permanent damage or destruction of a particular system.
Now with this in mind relate back to our opening example and you
will see a direct relationship.
Ship damage
Every damage incidence results in some loss, i.e.

Loss of productivity,

Loss of time, loss of property,

Loss of life etc.

Of all these losses the loss of human life is the biggest loss (even on
this over populated planet!). This must always be the first priority and
it must be prevented at all costs.
A vessel can get damaged from several causes but all damages on
ships are always interrelated. The damage may be due to an
interaction between two ships, between a ship and a terminal or even
between a ship and the environment. Within the scope of the present
module, let us look at the following four:

1.

Damage from Contact.

2.

Damage from Fire.

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3.

Weather damages.

4.

Damage to the Environment. (Pollution)

We shall now look more closely at the above and see how to assess,
record and make good the damages and mitigate the loss so that the
ship can complete the voyage.

Damage from contact

A vessel, usually weighing thousands of tons, is a moving mass with
a large kinetic energy. Even when moving at very slow speeds the
kinetic energy that a vessel possesses is very high.
Just to remind you the kinetic energy of a moving object is the
product of its mass and the square of its velocity. Perhaps it would
not be out of place to state that action is equal to reaction.
When this moving mass hits anything, it not only damages the object
that it hits, but the object also damages the ship and these can be
severe. If the contact is between two ships moving at their full speeds
the kinetic energy is so high that the result is a disaster. So let us say
one cause of damage is the ship coming into contact / collision with
another.
Incidentally contact between two or more floating objects (two ships,
ship & buoy etc.) is called `collision` while a vessel touching a fixed
object is usually referred to as `contact`.
In any collision or contact, the immediate danger is flooding, i.e.
ingress of water into the ship. Water ingress, if sufficiently large, can
cause a ship to capsize or sink in a very short time. Water ingress
into any ship is a multi-pronged attack on the safety of the ship. For
now we will consider only two aspects.
Water enters the ship from a ruptured area, which was intact before
the rupture and therefore provided buoyancy for the vessel. After the
rupture the vessel looses the buoyancy to the same extent as the
volume of the compartment ruptured.
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Seawater weighs approximate 1025kg / m3. More the water ingress

into the ship, more the weight added on board. This extra weight
therefore causes the ship to sink further into the sea, again a
reduction in the safety factor.
The water ingress would depend upon rate of ingress. This in turn
depends on the location of rupture, physical size (area) of the rupture
and the depth of the rupture below the sea surface.
Larger the area larger the ingress, deeper the rupture higher the rate
of ingress. Hence large quantities would enter the ship in relatively
shorter time if the damage were well below the water line. The
amount of water ingress can be calculated but it is of little importance
at the time of the accident. However we need to know the location of
the damage and its extent to take corrective measures.
'Minor` contact damage is where a rupture has not taken place and
no water ingress has occurred. The vessel therefore is not in danger
of sinking. In any case the impact has caused the vessels structure
to absorb the energy and would cause some deformation or dents.
This will have to be brought back to its original strength.
The help at hand
Informatively today's ships are pretty complicated to deal with when
major damages takes place. The Classification Societies have now
introduced a Help" programme. This programme envisages that
when a ship registered with them is in difficulty, they investigate the
ship stability and ability to sustain the damage. Such classification
societies are on the alert at all times and render advice all rounds the
clock.
Damage from fire
Statistics show that maximum loss to property and loss of lives is
attributable to explosions and fires on board ships than any other
cause. Explosion is just an extension of an uncontrolled fire and
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hence for our purpose explosion also means fire, with much more
destructive potential at that!
Fire is a chemical reaction that takes place when certain conditions
are created, what we call the completion of the `FIRE TRIANGLE`.
This has already been discussed at length.
Fire can burn and destroy just about anything and everything that is
found on board.
In shipboard fire fighting:
1.

The escape area is rather limited

2.

The means of fighting the fire are also limited,

On board fires can therefore take devastating proportions, as outside
help is non-existent.

Weather damage
In the technological modern era, weather remains as unpredictable
as it was to the farmers in the old days. Prediction methods for
weather at sea have come a long way. It is however far from being
absolutely accurate as the global weather patterns are still under
study. Storms, unpredictable heavy seas and swell, therefore, can be
rather harsh and unkind to a sailor at sea. It is also not possible to
construct a ship that can stand the severest of the weather conditions
within the economical constraints. Prudent sailors therefore avoid
areas of storm fury.
If a vessel does encounter bad weather, the possible damage that
she may suffer is also impossible to predict. However an alert master
knows that:
1.

Weathertight integrity of the ship may suffer and the water could
enter cargo holds,

2.

Cargo within the holds could get loose and break free,

3.

Cargo on deck could break its lashing and get lost overboard or
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The structure of the vessel may suffer damage

Assessment
The assessment of any damage depends principally on some
questions that we must ask. They are:
1.

What part of the ship is damaged?

2.

What is the extent of the damage? (Length and breadth or depth of

the dent, number of plates affected, the impact of the damage on the
watertightness or weather tightness)

3.

Does it affect the seaworthiness?

4.

Has it caused any injury or loss of life?

5.

Is there any pollution?

Damage to the environment. (Pollution)

The environment issues, so far having occupied the back seat, have
now come to the forefront in the last three decades, after
environment has taken a beating for decades. Everyone today,
whether ashore or at sea, is talking about `pollution prevention`.
Pollution, incidentally, is defined as release of substances,
accidentally or otherwise, that can be harmful to the environment.
Most sailors commonly relate pollution with sea only but the air
pollution by the ships too has been an issue of concern lately.
Damage to environment could be placed broadly under two
categories, pollution of seas & pollution of air. Entry of oil & its
products including plastics, into the sea is a major source of
environmental damage. Oil in the seawater will interfere with the
ecological and marine life and upset the balance, which can take
number of years to correct itself.

Reporting and recording damages:

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Why report and record?

Accidents and resulting damage lead to unsafe conditions. From our
first day at sea we have been talking about safety. This safety has to
be maintained by following correct procedures. Such procedures can
be corrected only if it is recorded and investigated
All incidents resulting into damages are investigated by the ships
officers first and the several different authorities and bodies later. The
level of investigation and scrutiny by such bodies shall depend upon
the severity of the damage. Properly maintained records help the
investigating team to recreate the circumstances and analyse the
root cause of damage. Maintaining proper records is therefore of
paramount importance.
The aims while recording events should be to only record the facts
and events and not the views and causes as perceived by the
recorder. The incidences must be recorded in chronological order as
they had occurred giving as many details as possible. Such records
should include
1.

The time of occurrence,

2.

Location,

3.

Distance,

4.

State of weather,

5.

Which other ship / individuals were involved,

6.

Nature of damage suffered and action taken before, during and after
the incident,

7.

Photographs, as far as possible.

It is only then that the investigating team will be able to recreate the
situation and get to the root cause.
You have seen operations on your ship, such as loading / discharging
of cargo, going alongside or working with bunkering barges
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alongside. All these operations can be a cause for ship damage.

Look around your ship, you will find some bent rails on the ships
side, especially in the proximity of the gangways, derricks & cranes.
You will also find some broken rails in the engine room in the vicinity
of engine room crane. A little closer look and one can observe dents
on the ship's side as it came alongside too fast or where a fender
was not used in good time.
These minor damages do not affect the strength of the ship but they
still have two major problems:
Aesthetics
A 10 cms long bent section on a 20 meters long gangway stands out
immediately and projects a low picture of the ship crew/company and
owners to every visitor that boards the ship. The visitor starts with a
negative note towards the ship.
Operational
A bent rail is itself a hazard. In the first place the rail was straight
when we started off. The damage was caused - let us say, because
of poor handling. The bent rail is not going to cause a disaster but it
more than likely could cause an accident leading to more serious
consequences.
We have seen therefore that minor damages have major effects. At
the same time it can be said that; repair of minor damages on priority
basis can bring in immediate benefits such as fewer chances of
having accidents, safer, healthier & therefore happier crew. Even
better benefits are to create a better impression of the ship.

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