Collision 'was USS Fitzgerald's fault': and this is why

Fantastic piece from John Konrad, founder of the gCaptain blog, on the recent collision between container vessel ACX Crystal and US Navy destroyer USS Fitzgerald off the Japanese coast. For years, Mr Konrad was at sea, both with the US Navy and as a merchant seaman, and this experience underpins this superb analysis of the incident – or what we know so far of it, at least.

“Despite recent advancements in electronic collision avoidance tools like automatic identification systems (AIS), the three most important tools for avoiding a collision are a captain’s eyes, tongue and ears… It is likely that USS Fitzgerald’s captain used only one, or possibly none, of these tools when communicating with the ACX Crystal.”