This photograph of the bridge of the MS Azura, a P&O Cruises ship, left my jaw hanging open a bit.
The ship's controlled using flat-panel displays, computers and joysticks, just like a modern fighter aircraft. The Daily Mail reports:
Launched last April and currently cruising the Caribbean before returning to Southampton this spring, the Azura has 19 decks and can carry up to 3,574 passengers - hopefully without emergency U-turns.
The bridge is perched on the 14th deck and extends out over both sides to allow full views of the ship, and the German-made navigation systems are so sophisticated that the entire 115,000-ton vessel can be controlled by a two-inch joystick.
Only four men work there - with another four-man watch below decks overseeing the ship's six Wartsila diesel engines (four 184-ton V12s and two 126-ton straight-eights).
'The senior officer and the junior officer of the watch sit by the two multipilot screens using those joysticks to control the tillers,' says Captain Brown.
'One additional seaman is dedicated as a lookout and the last is a helmsman. On arrival or departure from port, or at times of difficulty, the captain will come to the bridge to take "con" - control - of the vessel, using the con screen you see in the centre.'MS Azura in Stockholm, Sweden (image courtesy of Wikipedia)
At the bottom of the con screen are bar gauges showing engine revolutions; at the bottom left are the course recorded and depth; in the top left is a wind indicator; and in the centre are readings for forward and sideways speed. While docking, the captain may choose to use the ship's wheel (seen foreground) for simple headings - hard to starboard, and so on. This can also be used in the extremely unlikely event of the ship's navigation software going down.
'Once we set a main sea passage we engage the track pilot,' says Captain Brown.
'It's like autopilot and will maintain a course to within ten metres at all times, no matter what the wind, the seas, the current or the tide are doing. There are multiple back-up systems: we have uninterrupted, independent power supplies and the computer system is duplicated, so it is extremely unlikely that it could all fail.'
There's more at the link, including more photographs.
As a former military man, including service in Naval uniform, this fascinates me. It's a heck of a change from the old days of a wooden-spoked wheel, positioned in a wheelhouse below the bridge where the helmsman didn't even have a porthole, being wholly enclosed in a gray-painted steel box! He had helm orders shouted down to him through a voicepipe, frequently accompanied by profane exhortations to do better if he wasn't precise enough to please the
I think I prefer the modern version . . .
Peter
Actually, it's kinda scary. A few years ago I took a live-aboard fishing cruise in the great barrier reef.
ReplyDeleteThe vessel was controlled by a similar setup. All electronic, with constant gps computer navigation, controlled by PC joystick.
The skipper wouldn't have a clue how to take a position off the sun or off a star. If all that electronic wizardry had suffered a hiccup we'd have been toast...
Or rather: bait.
Or if someone spilled coffee into the computer. Where is the backup system? Do they ever practice with it? I remember "taking bells" in an automated engine room once per voyage just to make sure we still knew how and the equipment still worked. I wonder if this offers a similar arrangement...
ReplyDeleteAbout five years ago when I took the maiden Caribbean cruise of the Norwegian Jewel, I found the same sort of bridge. They had an observation room to watch the bridge; it was a pretty dull place compared to the aircraft carrier I had served on in the '80s.
ReplyDeleteIn addition, the ship didn't have standard screws and a rudder - there were two pods underneath, mounted fore and aft along the keel, with the screws on the pods. To change direction, they'd rotate the pods, almost like the prop pod on a small watercraft's inboard/outboard rig. You could rotate those pods 90 degrees and damn near drive that big cruise ship sideways. It was a cool thing to contemplate.
That, and hanging out at the rail with all the old Navy guys during harbor ops, letting them point out which little harbor craft were actually WW2-surplus landing craft with two-cycle engines. I also got up at 0300 to flip Castro off as we went through the Windward Passage . . .