Job the biblical holder of the eternal patience award would have pulled his beard out and gone doo-lally if he ever had to do the job of VTS operator at Rotterdam. The VTS(Vessel traffic service) people organise the shipping traffic in and out of Rotterdam,one of the worlds busiest ports. There is a ship arriving every couple of minutes and most require a pilot, and all have to be directed to ensure the best possible flow of traffic. The Dutch are also very good at speaking English, it is their second language, even if they have a slight accent, it is perfectly understandable. Most of the operators have a clear calm voice, a bit arrogant at times, blasting away in Dutch to the people who know how to blast away at Dutch. Anyway why shouldn’t they it’s their port.
Now speaking English is of course a pre-requisite for maritime communications, if you can’t speak English it doesn’t reflect on your intelligence oh no, but you sound stupid on the VHF if you can’t speak it in a half decent manner, there is even a book with the correct phrases to use for non-English speakers, a lot of them don’t have it or don’t read it or don’t know how to read it as was apparent the other day when we were just about to anchor off port limits to wait for our berth to become free. The VTS was being hailed by a ship’s officer on the VHF, but it sounded like he was reading from a badly rehearsed script.
Characters; 1. VTS Maas Approach, 2. A ship we shall call Doolally of nation unknown and we will give him the call sign X-ray 2 Yankee India 4.
Doolally: “Maas Approach this is Xway tu rankee dindee faw”
VTS: What is your name?
Doolally: My ETA at 14hundra
VTS: OK X-ray 2 Yankee India 4 ETA 14hundred, what is your name?
Doolally: My dwaft 10 boint 8 meetaahs….
VTS: OK draft 10.8 metres what is your ships name?
Doolally: Pleeeze rephet massage?
VTS:What is your vessels name, please spell your name.
Doolally: sshhhhhhh, aaaaarggh doooooodaaaaah
VTS:OK you are breaking up please spell the ships name
Doolally: My call sign is…….
VTS: What is your name?
Doolally: (silence)……10 minutes goes by
VTS: X-ray 2 Yankee India 4 this is Maas approach do you read?
Doolally: (silence) no reply
VTS: X-ray 2 Yankee India 4 this is Maas approach do you read?
The conversation ended there, the ship stopped communicating, or decided to go somewhere else or God knows what. The VTS operator had other ships to deal with and that was the end of it.
Now I was talking about ships being piloted in by radio in a post not so long ago http://timstimes.net/2008/01/09/pilotage-from-shore/ all very well and good, you can have technology, you can have great radio equipment, but at the end of the day, if the guys on the ship no speaka da language, you won’t be able to do anything let alone pilot them from ashore.
Hi Tim,
Unfortunately things are getting so bad on board certain ships that I have witnessed several times captains not even being able to communicate with their own crew…
Also, if you ask something by VHF that goes beyond the usual “what is your ETA” or “what is your maximum draft” the watchkeeper will go blank (I wonder if they are getting out the bridge and ask their captains).
Don’t even try to ask the anchor position! Instead of a distance and a bearing to the nearby breakwater they will torture you for five endless minutes on th VHF with lat/lon with all the centesimals of the seconds they can see on the GPS…
Hi Luis, the bearing and distance has become a thing of the past! I could write a daily post about VHF and what you hear these days.
You guys who are pilots see all this first hand, we only hear it and alter course more to keep a good distance off!
Safe sailing mate!