Steering Gear Failure

Monthly Safety Scenario by the Swedish Club

The Swedish P&I Club issues every month a Monthly Safety Scenario (MSS), a Loss Prevention initiative to assist owners. For February 2014 has issued a MSS regarding failure on steering gear

Under the ISM requirement owners are obliged to carry out monthly safety meetings or safety committee meetings onboard their vessels. This obligation stems from Chapter 5 of the ISM Code: “Master’s responsibility and authority” and furthermore from “5.1.2, motivating the crew in the observation of that policy”. The obligation can also be derived from the Code of “Safe Working Practices for Merchant Seamen”, where it is stated that the safety committee should meet regularly: “3.13.2, The frequency of meetings will be determined by circumstances but as a general guideline, the committee should meet about every 4-6 weeks”.

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It was in the afternoon and the vessel had been sailing for three hours in a river and would arriveat the discharge port in about two hours. Present on the bridge was the master, pilot and an ABhand steering. The vessel was maintaining a speed of about 10 knots. The master was discussingwith the pilot, the weather and berthing arrangements. The second officer had the con.

The previous night the vessel had suffereda short-circuit on one of the steering gearmotors. After an investigation of the motor,it was concluded that the electrical motor hadto be sent ashore for re-winding. The vessel wastherefore running with only one steering motorin operation.

The vessel had since a few days had an alarmfor earth fault on the 440V system and the electricianwanted to find the cause and rectify thisfailure before he was signing off in the next port.During the fault finding, the electrician disconnectedvarious circuit-breakers on the mainswitchboard in order to locate the failure.

The alarm for earth fault disappeared whenthe electrician turned of the circuit breaker forthe only remaining running steering motor.

At the time, the vessel was approaching abend when suddenly an alarm sounded. Thehelms man realized that the rudder did not followhis command. He tried to give more rudder butnothing happened. He voiced his concern thathe had no steering and that the rudder did notrespond. The Master acknowledged the alarmfor” steering gear failure”. He took control of thesteering in the cockpit but realized that he hadneither steering on the autopilot or mini wheel.

The master then switched over to NFU whichdid not respond either. At this time the bow ofthe vessel had hit the river bank and the vesselwas hard aground.

The Swedish P&I Club issued MSS to assist owners in their efforts of complying with the regulations. You may download the MSS (please see below) and enter the written conclusions from the meeting and then send feedback to the shore based organization.

If our vessel only had one steering gear motor in good working order would we usetug assistance?
When a job on critical equipment is carried out, who should be informed?
Do we have meeting that would ensure the everyone are aware when equipment likesteering motor is not working?
Should signs be put up on critical equipment?
When critical equipment fail how is a backup system implemented?
What are the immediate causes to this accident?
Is there a chain of error?
Is there a risk that this accident would happen on our vessel?
How could this accident have been prevented?
Which sections in our SMS would have been breached if any?
Is our SMS enough to prevent this accident?
If procedures were breached why do you think this was the case?
Do we have a Risk assessment onboard that addresses these risks?
Would a work permit have identified these risks?
What do you think is the Root Cause to this accident?