Ice field

[Rob Lawes]

When I was in the Royal Navy my ship served a tour as the Falklands Guard Ship and part of that duty involves taking people and supplies to South Georgia on behalf of the British Antarctic Survey organisation.

It's the only time I've seen icebergs at sea. Some of them were absolutely massive. We used our active sonar as well as our radars to identify and track the Bergs.

Also, in the mid 1930s the French installed a prototype radar which they called an obstacle detector, on the liner SS Normandie. I don't think it was too successful though and the ship was destroyed by a fire in WW2 before the technology could be improved.

 

[Michael H. Standart]

Radar is only effective if it's used properly. With the Andrea Doria and the Stockholm as an example: you had two modern liners using radar in well understood and established shipping lanes who were on each others scopes the entire time!!!!!!!!!!!!

They still managed to have a collision.

 

[Steven Christian]

Very good point. Or if the information is used at all. The captain of the Costa Concordia had all the information available he needed to avoid capsizing his ship but chose to ignore it.

 

[Michael H. Standart]

The Captain of the Costa Concordia was known to be something of a show off.
He paid a steep price for that. Unfortunately, so did some of his passengers!

 

[TimTurner]

Of course, just because sometimes a safety device isn't used doesn't mean that they shouldn't be installed.

Imagine the Titanic:
Why are there no lifeboats?
We'll, we figured 70% of the passengers wouldn't use them, so why bother with them at all?

 

[Robert T. Paige]

I think part of the problem - at least from what I have read - was that since the ship.was "unsinkable" the ship.was the best lifeboat until help came.

 

[Jim Currie]

In 1956, by law, all Candidates for 2M(FG) were required to train as Radar Observers. To do this, they were rquired to attend an intensive Radar course a pre-designated Radar Colleges.
As one of those creatures and one who spent lots of time In the Belle Isle channel, and sailig across The Grand Bank at times of the year, I can tell you for sure that RADAR then was useless when trying to define a berg target from all the other "clutter" on the screen which was the norm in that part of the world. I don't have time at the moment, but if anyone is interested, I will explain why it was that so often, we saw the berg with the naked eye before the RADAR "saw" it.