A COMMONWEALTH inquiry into the grounding of the Pasha Bulker puts most of the responsibility on the vessel's master but finds that Newcastle Port Corporation's handling of the unfolding crisis was a contributing factor.
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Port Corporation chief executive Gary Webb deflected any blame from his organisation at a media conference at Nobbys Beach yesterday afternoon but nine of 11 recommendations in the Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB) report call on the port corporation to take action to address various safety issues.
Issuing the report in Canberra, bureau director of surface safety investigations Peter Foley said the corporation was " not sufficiently responsive to the increasing seriousness of the situation".
"As a result, its notification to the federal authority, the Australian Maritime Safety Authority, was late," Mr Foley said.
"Weather advisories to ships and offer of assistance to the Pasha Bulker and its requests, finally, for other vessels to put to sea were made too late."
The report also found that pressure from Port Waratah Coal Services to "effectively penalise" ships that were too slow to load coal was a factor because it "may have influenced the decision of some masters not to appropriately ballast their ships when the adverse weather was forecast".
The report found that the Pasha Bulker grounded on Nobbys on the morning of Friday, June 8, 2007, despite a gale warning that should have prompted its South Korean master to take on extra water as ballast for heavy weather and then head to sea.
The report found that the master had an inadequate understanding of heavy weather ballast, anchor holding power and the limitations of Newcastle's weather-exposed anchorage.
The investigation found that many of the 57 ships at anchor from the night of Thursday, June 7, tried to ride out the gale and that most of them dragged their anchors.
At least three ships broke their anchor chains and lost their anchors, and the report says that at least 40 anchors and chains now dot the seabed off Newcastle, creating a navigation hazard.
The report said that many ship masters did not understand the purely advisory role of the port corporation-run Vessel Traffic Information Centre (VTIC), which they had expected would "instruct or inform them to put to sea at an appropriate time".
The report said that the large number of vessels waiting to load cargo in Newcastle was a safety hazard in itself, contributing to "another near-grounding, a near-collision and a number of close-quarters situations at the time".
On the positive side, the investigators praised the masters of seven ships that put to sea before the gale-force winds arrived, saying they demonstrated "the highest levels of seamanship".
The Pasha Bulker weighed anchor at 7am on the morning of the storm and despite its difficulties was on the way to relative safety by 9am despite skirting close to the shoreline.
But a crucial period of its struggle began at about this time when, as the report says, the information centre told the Pasha Bulker and two other vessels that they were inside a "restricted area" usually kept free for shipping movements in and out of the Port of Newcastle.
The Pasha Bulker turned to starboard and tried to steam to the south but was washed onto Nobbys less than an hour later.
Australian Transport Safety Bureau marine investigations team leader Michael Squires told The Herald that this had been a crucial part of the investigation and that the bureau had "gone over and over" everything it could find about the fateful turn of the Pasha Bulker between 9.06am and 9.12am.
"We can't say that the master definitely turned because of the information from the VTIC but we do say that the instruction was unnecessary, unhelpful, of no benefit and may have adversely influenced the decisions of the master of the Pasha Bulker and other vessels," Mr Squires said.
He said that if people looked at the chart they "could draw their own conclusions" that the ship would have steamed to safety had it not changed course at that time.
But at the end of the day the master of the Pasha Bulker was the one most at fault, although, Mr Squires said, the bureau preferred to look at ways to improve situations rather than point the finger of blame.
The unnamed South Korean master had been in charge of bulk carriers bigger than the Pasha Bulker but this was his first assignment on the ship and only his second visit to Newcastle. His first was in 1997.
Others on the ship had more experience of Newcastle but the report found that the master's management of the "available bridge resources" on board the Pasha Bulker was poor.
"There was no effective planning and little communication between the master and the mates on the bridge," it said.
It said "this was evident in the failure of the course alteration at 9.06am".
"The master's early and unwise decision to remain at anchor unless the anchor dragged was based on his assumption that the ship's anchor would hold in the prevailing conditions and his expectation that Newcastle port would, if required, issue instructions for ships in the anchorage to put to sea," the report said.
". . . The master continued to ignore signs that a dangerous situation was developing and subsequently became affected, to varying degrees, by fatigue, anxiety, overload and panic. This was evidenced by his inappropriate control of the ship at critical times after the anchor was finally weighed, the fact that the anchors were not prepared, or deployed, as the emergency unfolded and by the final high-risk turn towards the dangerous lee shore which had little prospect of success."
PWCS general manager Graham Davidson said the report found compelling safety reasons to keep the coal shipping queue as short as possible, which was what the "capacity balancing", or quota, system had clearly done.
Port corporation chief executive Gary Webb said the corporation's staff had worked extremely hard throughout the Pasha Bulker saga and the corporation had introduced "a range of measures" in the past 11 months.
These included moving the anchorage from two nautical miles from shore to three nautical miles and improved monitoring of ships.
While the bulk of the report's recommendations concerned the corporation, Mr Webb pointed to four safety advisory notices aimed at the owners, operators and masters of ships.
"The master of a ship has command of the vessel at all times and is responsible for the safety and operation of the ship and the safety and well-being of the crew," Mr Webb said.
The owners of the ship say they "do not accept that the comments and recommendations contained in the report are valid" but did not provide the bureau with anything to support their arguments.
