This is a true story about ships meeting in a narrow sea road near Mormugao (Goa), India. It was the night of April 30, 2004. The dredger Kamal XXVI was not moving. She was working where the channel meets the open water, near Buoy 10, and she had her helper barge, Kamal XXIV, tied on her port (left) side. The dredger showed the special lights that mean “I am restricted in how I can move,” as the rules require, and her deck lights were on. The barge itself didn’t have its own bright lights, but the pilot on the incoming ship later said he could see the barge through binoculars from far away, so it was not hidden in the dark. The big visitor that night was the bulk carrier Ariela. She was coming in with a harbor pilot on board, moving slowly along the middle of the channel and then preparing to curve to starboard (right) to follow the next leg inward. The weather was fine, the wind was moderate, and the tide was weak. Nothing about nature forced anyone into danger.
Before Ariela entered, the signal station told the dredger that Ariela was on the way and asked the dredger to “keep clear.” The dredger did the sensible thing: she stopped dredging and slackened her port anchor wires, edging a little to the north so that her centerline sat about on the channel edge. With the barge still alongside her port side, only about 20 meters of the barge stuck into the channel. That left roughly 280 meters of clear channel to pass—more than enough room for a careful ship to go by.
A dispute later arose about the dredger’s anchor buoys. Ariela’s side said some port-side anchor buoys were too far into the channel. But the court looked at logs, sketches, VHF notes, and the dredger’s DGPS position data and was not persuaded that any buoy actually blocked safe transit. Even more important, pilots earlier that day complained mostly about a separate buoy off the berths, not about anchors pinching the fairway where Ariela would pass. In short, the “buoys in the way” story did not hold up.
The key moment was Ariela’s turn. According to the careful reconstruction, Ariela stayed in mid-channel too long and began her starboard alteration too late. When she finally put the helm hard-a-starboard, she was already much too close—about 200 meters—from the dredger and barge. With that late and shallow turn, Ariela’s port side brushed the port side of Kamal XXIV, which then banged into Kamal XXVI. Ariela suffered only small damage, but the dredger was badly hurt. The court also weighed a computer simulation offered by Ariela’s side but found its assumptions didn’t match what really happened on the bridge, so it carried little weight.
Some argued the barge should have been lit like a normal ship. The court rejected that. A barge secured alongside a well-lit dredger doesn’t need its own navigation lights, and in any case the pilot saw the barge from a long distance. The absence of separate barge lights did not cause the crash. The dredger’s position, with only a sliver of the barge in the channel, was safe and did not “embarrass” inbound traffic. The danger came from Ariela’s timing and helm, not from where Kamal XXVI and Kamal XXIV were lying.
Now the ending, plainly stated. On October 23, 2007, Mr Justice David Steel, sitting with two Elder Brethren of Trinity House as nautical assessors, gave judgment for the owners/charterers of Kamal XXVI and Kamal XXIV. He held that Ariela was at fault for commencing her turn too late and/or not applying enough helm (and, if steerage was a worry, for not increasing engine revolutions). He held that Kamal XXVI and the barge were not at fault: their position near the channel edge was proper, the barge’s lack of separate lighting made no difference, and the anchor buoys were not a cause of the collision. The result was clear: liability rested with Ariela, and the claimants won.
