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Originally Posted by Mike Mercury
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Very interesting and telling video..
I did hear this morning that they have the Voyage Data Recorder (VDR) from the ship. The VDR is the equivalent of the black box on an aircraft. It will have all of the GPS data, engine, rudder info as well as voice recordings from the pilothouse (and a bunch of other data). This will be very telling as to what happened and what the crew did.
A few data points, this was a single screw ship (one shaft and propeller). On Navy ships, the rudder would be offset to one side to compensate for the torque from the propeller while going in the ahead direction, however, when going astern (backwards) the propeller would cause the stern to pull to one side (in the case of the frigate I was on) to port (left).
My thoughts (based on what's in the video), the ship lost power for some reason (bad fuel, operator error, malfunction who knows), and the ship started to drift south of the channel (as shown in the video and track). They should have had an emergency generator come online within a few seconds of the loss of power and other critical gear should have been on UPS backup. The EDG (Emergency Diesel Generator) should provide power to critical equipment including steering. That may or may not have happened (again VDR data will tell). Once power was restored (when the lights came back on) they may have tried to slow the ship by backing down (basically going astern on the prop), this could have caused the stern to pull to port, turning the bow to starboard. If that is the case, they would have been better off keeping the power ahead, and using the rudder to steer clear.
Again, all supposition until they review the VDR data. What am I basing this on, 11 years in the Navy, 3 years driving a single screw ship, and 20 years design control systems for Navy ships......