Near Miss Hampered Vessel No Lookout

 A Sitting Duck
- Bay of Biscay. Night time. Good visibility.
- Report No. 93017.

Own vessel drifting with engine problems. Correct "not under command" signals displayed. I came on to the bridge to relieve the Master. He was trying to contact another vessel, which he had been plotting on ARPA from 12 miles distant, and which had a constant CPA of 2 - 3 cables. When the vessel was raised visually it showed an aspect consistent with the ARPA plot, end on with occasional swings to port.

By this time the Master had made two safety broadcasts and many attempts at soliciting a response with the Aldis lamp. All had been to no avail and the vessel was now 2.5 miles off with a CPA of two cables. I made a further safety call on VHF channel 16 and the Master continued signalling with the Aldis lamp.

When the other vessel got to 1 mile off still with a CPA of 2 cables, we managed with the aid of the bow thrust to turn our bows on towards approaching vessel, in the meantime I continued to try to attract the attention of the other vessel. He finally passed "green-to-green" at a distance of 1.3 cables and was observed to alter to port as his stern came in line with our fo'c'sle. With the aid of the Aldis lamp we were able to read the ships name clearly.

This is a case of, at the very least, a poor or non-existent lookout being kept, as the total time for this incident to develop from first sighting by radar was nearly an hour.

93017 is particularly worrying because the ship was unable to get out of the way. The use of whistle signals to attract the attention of the other vessel was not mentioned in the report, but I assume this was one of the methods used by the reporter in his continued efforts to wake somebody up.