I was a Junior officer on Deck (JOOD) about a destroyer in the middle of the night. This position is an interesting training role. It has no real position.
There is an Officer of the Deck (OOD) who is in charge. A Conning Officer (Conn) who is responsible for giving the helm orders. A Quartermaster (QM) who tracks the location of the ship and plot courses, and Operation Specialist (OS) who was tracking all radar contacts.
So under experienced OODs, the JOOD acted as the OOD for training.
This particular night we had an inexperienced OOD so I was more of an extra look out as she went through all of the actions. She was a very experienced officer, just not a lot of bridge time.
Sometime in the middle of the night we had a radar contact 30 miles out on our port (right) bow and closing. Standing orders were to call the Captain when any contact with a Closest Point of Approach (CPA) within 5 miles before they are at 20 miles. Now this Captain was a bit of a hard case and demean the Junior Officers frequently. He almost cultivate an air of superiority and intimidation. So it is no surprise that no one wants to call him.
We had plenty of time.
We are trying to get across the Atlantic quick and so rather than slowing down, altering course to the right and doing what the radar track says we should do. We turn alter course to the left a bit and try to open up the CPA a bit.
We still have plenty of time.
It is hard to say all of the detail of what happened over the next hour. I remember with detail that the radar contact had what turned out to be bright deck lights shining so it was hard to see its running lights. I know there were several calls to the Combat Information Center (CIC) where a more scenario officer was on watch to discuss the radar situation. IT was becoming apparent that the two ships were on Constant bearing decressing range (CBDR). We were going to collide.
But the visual didn’t line up with the radar picture. And they were not answering the radio. No one called the Captain.
We had 5 people on the bridge looking at the situation. A forward lookout. And at least 5 people in CIC watching in radar and tracking. But no one called the Captain.
At some point, far too late, I ended up taking the Conn and altering course HARD to Starboard and cutting our engines.
We avoided collision and passed down their port side will less than 300 yards between us.
The captain came running to the bridge after we had passed because he was woken up by the other ships collision alarm.
From a seamanship perspective it is easy to see where we went wrong. We should have called the altered course to starboard well before had. If we had done it early enough we probably could have avoided calling the captain and it would have been just another uneventful night in a string of uneventful nights.
I took the lesson of a "prudent seaman" for the rest of me Naval career, being adamant about following the safe rules of the road to never get into this situation again. Leaning on those
But the leadership lessons are profound:
- As a leader we need to set a culture of openness and willingness to listen, or our organization is not going to want to tell us anything. And that is disastrous.
- You cannot be everywhere at every time. You have to sleep, and if a problem occurs you will likely not be able to respond in time. Set your team up for success in your absence. Give them clear expectations on what to do AND what not to do.
- Celebrate the problems. They are opportunities to improve and how you react to being told about a problem with set the stage for how many more you are actually told about.
