This raises a few questions that need to be answered:
1. Why was a warship, a frontline vessel, being used as a pleasure cruiser?
1. The INS
Vindhyagiri was neither a frontline vessel, nor was it being used as a pleasure cruiser. It was primarily a training and testing vessel, and was about 30 years old. That said, it still had its use in the Navy. And its loss will mean another vessel will have to be freed for training purposes. The ship was being used to host the 'Navy Day at Sea' event, where family members of officers get to board the ship for dinner and a nite out. Frigates cost upwards of 100's of millions of dollars. And I expect the DGI-Shipping not to settle this, until the full cost minus depreciation is recovered. With some additional, for wreckage clean up and salvage, including oil control.
2. Were there adequate fire fighting systems on onboard?
2. There were. But the rescue operation of the 400-odd people on board, meant that the additional fire-fighting vessels had to be put on hold. Until everyone was extricated from the vessel. The delay, in fact, cost them the ship, even while the lives of people were saved. There was no choice in the matter.
3. What type of fire fighting systems were there, apart from the water jetting? Water is a bit outdated, if it is the only fire extinguisher.
3. CO2, Dry powder and mechanical fire extinguishers. <Some old ships even used Halon extinguishers but because of the high ozone depletion potential of Halon, its usage has been discontinued>. All three, excluding halon, were present on the ship in addition to the regular foam/spray water-extinguishers.
4. What were the crew and look outs doing?
4. Good question. That's what we have to find out.
5. Why did the ship not take an evasive action [it was sailing slowly, not anchored]? How would the ship have fared in battle conditions if it could not maintain distance during peacetime?
5. Because both sets of ships were ingressing and egressing from the harbour at the same time. So, the margin of error was small. Now, what I understand is that there is an efficient Vessel Tracking Monitoring System <VMS> in place at the Mumbai harbour, but that it depends on lat-long and velocity inputs from the ship in question. If Mr. Sanjeev Bhasin is correct, the ship veered at multiple occasions prior to collision, and as such the VMS would not be able to correct for it. If indeed, the Nordlake veered to the right at the last minute, having decided, for the third time, that it would pass to the left, plowing right into the ship's boiler and engine room, there is little the VMS could have done for it.
What i dont understand is how come a battle ship sunk while an Cargo vessel limped its way back? The USS Cole had an huge hole on its side after the attack by an terrorist and it still did not sink and it sailed back to the US from Yemen on its own power! May be our Vindhyagiri was designed at the same time of Titanic?
The Nordlake is a container ship. It weighs in at about ~16,200 tons vs. the Vindhyagiri's ~2,800 tons. It was also moving at a pretty fast speed, if I understand correctly at about 12 k.nots. The INS
Vindhyagiri was at loiter speed. At that speed and at that tonnage, in such a small channel, the crash was bound to cause a sink.
6. Is it possible that the cargo ship developed some snag so that it veered suddenly? If not, was the pilot not lincenced? If he was, then could he have done it deliberately? More than than the captain, the pilot is culpable, after all it was under control of pilot.
6. Possible. Though highly improbable. The ship crashed because of an apparent failure to communicate, complicated slightly by the high tides in the Front bay between those hours. But very clearly, the pilot panicked at the last minute. And the fact that this went on, for a couple of hours before, indicates that it was the captain's fault, too.
7. Why was the cargo ship moving under its own power, instead of being towed by tugs?
7. Because the ship is neither a barge, nor was it disabled nor maneuvering in a tightly confined space, even though the channel is pretty narrow and now growing ever-crowded. Besides, the imminent tides would only have complicated the matter. I suspect, tho, after this and the
MSC Chitra / MV-Khalijia-II thing in Aug. they might consider the greater use of them.
