Merchant Ships Research Articles

The use of force against neutral ships outside territorial waters

AbstractThis article examines when states are allowed to use force against neutral merchant ships outside territorial waters. This is regulated by both international humanitarian law and the prohibition of the use of force, which apply concurrently to naval warfare. The prohibition of the use of force imposes narrower limits than international humanitarian law, in the sense that certain actions that have traditionally been permitted under international humanitarian law are contrary to the prohibition of the use of force. The prohibition of the use of force exempts uses of force based on UN Security Council resolutions, consent and self-defence. Where there is no UN Security Council resolution or consent, self-defence remains the only option, and self-defence does not give a right to direct the use of force towards third states or their ships. Therefore, the right to self-defence does not permit blockades outside territorial waters or visit and search operations that are not founded on specific suspicions against individual ships, even though such operations may be permitted under international humanitarian law. These conclusions are supported by an examination of state practice and opinio juris, where the few relevant instances that do exist have met with widespread protests from other states.

Measurement of the friction force of sliding friction pairs in low-speed marine diesel engines and comparison with numerical simulation

Low-speed marine diesel engines are widely used as propulsion power equipment on ocean-going merchant ships. There are three important sliding friction pairs in the engine: piston assembly-cylinder liner, piston rod-stuffing box, and crosshead slipper-guide. They greatly influence the mechanical efficiency and stability of the engine. However, there is no effective method to measure the friction of the three friction pairs so far, which limits the improvement of tribological performance and the reduction of fuel consumption in low-speed marine diesel engines. In the current study, an indirect measurement method is presented and the measurement of the friction force under fired conditions is realized for the first time. By comparing the experimental results of friction force with the model-based numerical results, it is found that they are in good agreement. The difference between the numerical and experimental maximum friction force is less than 5%. Both theory and experiments show that the friction force reaches the maximum after the top dead center, which is about one-tenth of the gas force. The work of this paper is expected to provide an effective tool for evaluating the tribological performance of marine diesel engines.

Prognostic health management of repairable ship systems through different autonomy degree; From current condition to fully autonomous ship

Maritime characteristics make the progress of automatic operations in ships slow, especially compared to other means of transportation. This caused a great progressive deal of attention for Autonomy Degree (AD) of ships by research centers where the aims are to create a well-structured roadmap through the phased functional maturation approach to autonomous operation. Application of Maritime Autonomous Surface Ship (MASS) requires industries and authorities to think about the trustworthiness of autonomous operation regardless of crew availability on board the ship. Accordingly, this paper aims to prognose the health state of the conventional ships, assuming that it gets through higher ADs. To this end, a comprehensive and structured Hierarchal Bayesian Inference (HBI)-based reliability framework using a machine learning application is proposed. A machinery plant operated in a merchant ship is selected as a case study to indicate the advantages of the developed methodology. Correspondingly, the given main engine in this study can operate for 3, 17, and 47 weeks without human intervention if the ship approaches the autonomy degree of four, three, and two, respectively. Given the deterioration ratio defined in this study, the acceptable transitions from different ADs are specified. The aggregated framework of this study can aid the researchers in gaining online knowledge on safe operational time and Remaining Useful Lifetime (RUL) of the conventional ship while the system is being left unattended with different degrees of autonomy.

A statistical analysis-based Bayesian Network model for assessment of mobbing acts on ships

ABSTRACT Mobbing is a fundamental problem that disrupts the organization’s structure and negatively affects its employees’ safe work environment. The most critical issue in combating mobbing is increasing the awareness of victims, businesses and society about this problem. The importance of identifying this problem, which will adversely affect the professional life in the maritime profession, as in every professional group, is obvious. This study offers a statistical analysis-based dynamic Bayesian network to model seafarers’ mobbing acts in merchant ships. In this research, measures against mobbing in the maritime industry are also recommended after determining the most frequent mobbing elements in ships. It is observed that the seafarers who have just stepped into onboard are more exposed to mobbing; in contrast, mobbing attacks experienced by seafarers decrease with an increase in age. The most frequent mobbing behaviours are listed as: “I am continually given new tasks“, “My superiors restrict the opportunity for me to express myself” and ”Unfounded rumours about me is circulated in the ship”. The study reveals that while the maritime authorities such as PSC and the ITF have limited capabilities for solving mobbing related problems, the companies may have a crucial role to play in the process.

Turning followers into leaders: commercial shipping versus navy—a literature review

During a time of accelerated change and automation, leadership in the shipping industry emerges as a much-needed competence pertaining to the survival and safety of crew on board, as well as to the growth of shipping companies. Despite many years of leadership research, our knowledge on how to develop and apply leadership skills in shipping remains limited, focusing on rather autocratic-oriented leadership styles, similar to those found traditionally in the armed forces. The present paper aims to analyze the key aspects of traditional leadership theories and of military leadership practices, and to further examine their applicability to the modern shipping industry. Towards this end, a systematic literature review in the area of leadership in the armed forces, with emphasis on the navy, and merchant shipping is conducted, whereby challenges and best practices are identified. The literature survey reveals that there are similarities in the role of hierarchy between the navy and merchant shipping. The navy promotes leadership behaviors that diverge from the traditional leader–follower model. Such practices can be useful in the context of commercial shipping in order to inspire leadership behaviors that promote and support the creation of self-efficient and emotionally engaged followers. Maritime Education and Training institutions could benefit from the findings of this research and enrich their curricula with educational material that will equip future leaders with the necessary skillset.

MODERN APROACH TO MICROCLIMATE CONTROL ON BOARD SHIPS

Ambient and indoor air pollution have high impact on public health. Safety of indoor air is crucial for well-being and stress tolerance of seafarers due to their prolonged stay in the environment characterized by adjacency of work and leisure premises. Flaws in ventilation and air distribution systems may lead to infiltration and accumulation of pollutants in air of living and recreation premises. However, available onboard HVAC systems designs are not fit to ensure cleanliness and quality of the indoor air of ships accommodation. In this study a new approach for indoor air quality management on board merchant ships is proposed. Air quality standards and requirements analyzed and formal representation formulated. Approximation techniques for thermal comfort index PMV reviewed and computationally efficient polynomial representation proposed. Unified dynamic model of microclimate, thermal comfort and gas composition of air is developed. Model performance was studied in simulation environment with superstructure microclimate model of a real ship. As a proof of the hypothesis a preliminary prototype developed and tested on board of gas carrier vessel. A proposed control optimization problem statement allows implementation of a wide range of indoor air quality and comfort management systems at scale. Prototype multiparameter controller based on microprocessor technology showed potential of performance improvement and scalability for development of distributed control systems.

The definition of «ship» by international and national regulations

The article analyzes the definition of «ship» by international and national regulations. It is noted that there are many examples of the legal definition of «ship». There are attempts in international law to define the term «ship».
 The definition of «ship» under the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships contains a tautology, as the term «ship» is defined as «ship». Thus, for this Convention, a ship is understood to mean not only ships in the usual sense of the term but also «stationary or floating platforms». In other international legal acts, there is also no unambiguous (universal) interpretation of the concept of «ship». And in one of the most important sources of international maritime law - the comprehensive universal The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea 1982, although the term «ship» is often used, there is no norm-definition that should explain it. Based on the study, several features that are inherent in the vessel, namely: the concept of the vessel, is applied only to the Merchant shipping code of Ukraine, and the vessel is understood as a «self-propelled or non-self-propelled floating structure». However, the restriction of the vessel as a «floating structure» from other «floating objects» can be carried out for their intended purpose. Thus, «floating objects», in contrast to ships, are not intended for permanent stay in a floating state but are brought into such a state for their one-time movement or specific work. Therefore, they should not be considered as vessels - rafts, sealed tanks, which are towed to the place of their installation (pipes, tanks, pontoons), delivered on a tug in a floating state of metal structures (oil rigs, bridge spans, etc.).
 Based on the study, it was concluded that the Merchant shipping code of Ukraine uses concepts of the same meaning: ship (so-called section II Merchant shipping code of Ukraine and this concept is used in the title of many articles), merchant ship (Part 1 of Article 15 of the Merchant shipping code of Ukraine), sea vessel (Part 1 of Article 13 of the Merchant shipping code of Ukraine). Therefore, to improve the Merchant shipping code of Ukraine, it should be borne in mind that the concepts of «ship», «merchant ship», «sea vessel» are differentiated and have different meanings and relate to each other as general and special.

Legal regulation of liability for environmental pollution in the carriage of dangerous goods by sea

The article considers the international legal norms and legislation of Ukraine in the field of responsibility for pollution of the marine environment during the transportation of dangerous goods, the main trends in the development of maritime navigation and environmental protection.
 The concept and essence of ecological safety of the World Ocean is defined.
 The author considers the main provisions of the Merchant Shipping Code of Ukraine, the Law of Ukraine "On Transportation of Dangerous Goods", as well as international norms contained in the International Convention on Civil Liability for Oil Pollution (1969), the International Convention on the Establishment of an International Fund for Compensation for Oil Pollution Damage (1971), the Convention on Limitation of Liability for Maritime Claims (1976), the International Convention on Liability and Compensation for Damage in Connection with the Carriage of Dangerous and Harmful Substances by Sea (1996), the International Convention on the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (1973).
 The above regulations contain recommendations and regulate the liability of the shipowner for damage from oil pollution from ships, release of the shipowner from liability for damage from pollution by oil and other harmful substances from ships, intent or gross negligence of the victim in cases of oil pollution. or more vessels for damage from pollution, the issue of limiting the liability of the shipowner for damage from pollution, loss of the right to limit liability for damage from pollution by hazardous substances from ships, as well as insurance and other financial support for liability for damage from pollution from ships.
 The analysis of normative acts of international and domestic legislation allowed to study the conceptual provisions of the problem, as well as to conclude that it is necessary to implement international law in the national legislation of Ukraine on ways to solve the problem of marine pollution from ships.

Legal regulation of maritime agency in Ukraine

The article analyzes the regulations governing maritime agency in Ukraine namely: Merchant Shipping Code of Ukraine, Сommercial Code of Ukraine, The Civil Code of Ukraine, Laws of Ukraine «On seaports of Ukraine», «On transit of goods», «On foreign economic activity», as well as the Order of the Ministry Infrastructure of Ukraine «On approval of the Rules for the provision of services in seaports of Ukraine». It is investigated that in almost every one of these regulations, regulation of maritime agents is enshrined only a few provisions mentioning a non-marine agent sufficient to settle such a complex maritime institution farms. Attention is drawn to the fact that in addition to laws and bylaws, agency relations between the parties are governed by their own regulations maritime agency agreements.
 It is investigated, that in most countries the legislation contains norms that relating to maritime agency, but they are all fragmentary, disparate in nature and regulate only some aspects of agency activities. In practice, there is usually a relationship between the shipowner and the shipping agent subject to the general provisions of civil or commercial law, devoted to the institution of representation, and fall under the concept of contract authorization.
 According to the content of the above highlighted, the main features of the maritime agency: it is a business activity; the subject of this activity is provision of services; services are provided exclusively to business entities; services are provided through mediation; services are provided exclusively in economic activity; mediation is carried out on behalf of, in the interests of under the control and at the expense of the entity represented.
 The study allows us to conclude, that the maritime agency as a separate type of activity, requires legal consolidation on levels of a special legislative act. Such a special legislative act may be the Law of Ukraine «On Agency Activities», in which, it is necessary to consolidate the regulatory framework for regulation maritime agency, organizational and legal status of the maritime agent and legal status of maritime agency companies; solution problems related to determining the limits of liability of maritime agents; recognition of the maritime agency agreement as a separate type of civil business agreements; establishing a standard form of maritime contract agency in accordance with national specifics.

Legal regulation governing arrest of a seagoing vessel

The article analyzes international and national regulations governing the arrest of seagoing vessels. Thus, attention is drawn to the fact that some legislative acts of Ukraine have been amended in terms of determining the jurisdiction of cases of arrest of ships, important changes have been made to both the Civil Procedure Code of Ukraine and the Commercial Procedural Code of Ukraine, which, in turn, impetus for the formation of a new array of case law in cases of arrest of ships.
 It analyzes International Convention for the unification of certain rules relating to Arrest of Sea-going Ships (1952), United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (1982), United Nations Convention on the Carriage of Goods by Sea (1978) and International Convention on Arrest of Ships (1999), which unified almost all current trends related to the arrest of ships. The 1999 Convention was open for signature from 1 September 1999 to 31 August 2000, after which it remained open for accession. The national normative-legal acts regulating the issue of arrest of sea vessels have been examined. Thus, the national regulations governing the arrest of seagoing vessels include: Merchant Shipping Code of Ukraine, Commercial Procedural Code of Ukraine, Civil Procedure Code of Ukraine, Law of Ukraine "On Enforcement Proceedings", Code of Ukraine on Administrative Offenses, Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine and the Criminal Code of Ukraine.
 The study concluded that, firstly, at the legal level today there are quite effective uniform rules for the arrest of a seagoing vessel to ensure maritime claims, which not only link different legal systems, but also make clear the various legal institutions. Secondly, the process of unification of this sphere is not static. Taking into account the long-term experience of application of the current legal norms, with change of circumstances of political, economic, legal character new rules which have to correspond to today's challenges are created. Third, Ukraine's accession to the international convention has certain advantages: it becomes a full participant in international shipping and acquires the same rights and obligations in the field of ship arrest as other member states.
 In our opinion, taking into account the experience of implementing the provisions of the 1999 Convention and the long-term practice of foreign states in the arrest of ships, in Ukraine it would be appropriate to develop and legislate a special procedure for arresting a sea vessel to ensure maritime claims.

Shared transformational leadership and safety behaviours of employees, leaders, and teams: A multilevel investigation

We investigate the extent to which transformational leadership behaviours enacted by team members – shared transformational leadership – relate to safety behaviours of team members, teams, and team leaders. We also consider the role of perceived organizational support in moderating the relationships between shared transformational leadership and safety behaviours. We collected data from 2,139 crew members (‘team members’) and 98 chief engineers (‘team leaders’) working on merchant shipping vessels (‘teams’). Team members’ perceptions of shared transformational leadership positively related to team members’ safety compliance and safety participation. Shared transformational leadership became less effective in relation to team members’ safety compliance under conditions of high levels of perceived organizational support. Shared transformational leadership at the team level related to higher levels of safety participation of teams. Teams’ shared transformational leadership was positively related to team leaders’ safety participation, but only under low levels of perceived organizational support. Taken together, our findings demonstrate the important role of shared transformational leadership in relation to safety behaviours and suggest that the effectiveness of shared transformational leadership might vary depending on perceived organizational support.Practitioner points Transformational leadership behaviours exercised by team members – shared transformational leadership – are associated with higher levels of mandated and discretionary safety behaviours of team members. Teams that have higher levels of shared transformational leadership demonstrate higher levels of team‐level discretionary safety behaviours. Shared transformational leadership is more strongly associated with employees’ mandated safety behaviours under low levels of perceived organizational support. When leaders perceive low levels of organizational support, their teams’ shared transformational leadership becomes a more important correlate of leaders’ discretionary safety behaviours. In addition to traditional leadership training that involves formal leaders only, organizations should consider implementing activities that foster shared leadership behaviours.

Review of the research programme on the Mortella III wreck (2010-2020, Corsica, France): A contribution to the knowledge of the Mediterranean naval architecture and material culture of the Renaissance.

The Mortella wrecks are the remains of twonavi, Genoese seagoing merchant ships, sunk in 1527 in the Bay of Saint-Florent (Upper-Corsica, France) during the Seventh Italian War. A programme of archaeological excavations and historical research has been held on one of them, Mortella III, between 2010 and 2020. It has involved a multidisciplinary team around a European research project calledModernShip(Horizon 2020), whose objective is to shed light on Mediterranean shipbuilding during the Renaissance, a field still little known to this day.At the end of these 10 years, the aim of the present article is to conclude this research programme with the presentation of a scientific review that complements a recently published monograph on theMortella IIIwreck. This study presents the latest results on the ship's architecture obtained during the excavation of the wreck in 2019, including a study of the wood of the framework.Finally, this article broadens our understanding of thenavepresenting the results of a collaborative line of research on material culture with three studies in close connection with the ship architecture: artillery, anchors and ceramics.

The Merchant Ship in the British Atlantic, 1600–1800: Continuity and Innovation in a Key Technology. Phillip Reid. Technology and Change in History 18. Leiden: Brill, 2020. xiv + 308 pp. $153.

The Merchant Ship in the British Atlantic, 1600–1800: Continuity and Innovation in a Key Technology. Phillip Reid. Technology and Change in History 18. Leiden: Brill, 2020. xiv + 308 pp. $153. - Volume 75 Issue 3

Importance and applicability analysis of the health and safety measures taken against the coronavirus disease on merchant vessels

The coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak has affected seafarers worldwide. This paper demonstrates the measures taken to prevent the spread of the corona-virus on merchant ships and evaluates them in terms of importance and applicability. Contamination reducing measures were determined through expert opinion and literature review. While their importance values were calculated using the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process method in which the total integral value with optimism index was applied, the applicability levels were revealed using a fivepoint Likert scale. The imbalance in rest and working hours was clearly seen in the re-sults. Immune system pro-tective measures were the most critical measures; however, two of them have the lowest applicability val-ue among all criteria. They were followed by the measures taken through training, the measures to be applied in case of personnel showing disease symptoms, and the temperature measurement. In terms of the ship locations and ship operations, maintaining physical distance on deck at the port was found more critical. Its applicability level was slightly below average. This paper is the first study in the literature in which the measures taken to prevent the spread of the coronavirus pandemic on merchant ships were demonstrated in detail and evaluated with scientific methods in terms of importance and applicability. The research findings will help companies in the risk assessment process and contribute to the enhancement of the preparedness of the maritime industry for such situations by helping to protect the seafarers’ health and safety.

Hierarchical Multilabel Ship Classification in Remote Sensing Images Using Label Relation Graphs

Hierarchical multilabel classification (HMC) assigns multiple labels to each instance with the labels organized under hierarchical relations. In ship classification in remote sensing images, depending on the expert knowledge and image quality, the same type of ships in different remote sensing images may be annotated with different class labels from coarse to fine levels such as merchant ship (MS) or container ship (CTS). In this article, we propose a novel deep network with two output channels and their associated loss functions to learn an HMC classifier using samples labeled at different levels in the hierarchy. In the proposed network, a hierarchy and exclusion (HEX) graph is introduced to model the label hierarchy, which satisfies hierarchical constraints by encoding semantic relations between any two labels. The output nodes of the first channel are organized according to the HEX graph, and its corresponding probabilistic classification loss is built to reflect the hierarchical structure of the HEX graph. On the other hand, the output nodes of the second channel only represent the finest grained (last level in the hierarchy) classes, and its multiclass cross-entropy loss is designed to enhance the discriminative power of the HMC classifier on the last level labels, which is also compatible with constraints in the HEX graph. The combination of these two losses from two output channels can effectively transfer the hierarchical information of ship taxonomy during network training. Experimental results on two commonly used ship datasets demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms the state-of-the-art HMC approaches, and is especially advantageous when trained with fewer fine-grained samples.

Potential Energy Savings of Air Lubrication Technology on Merchant Ships

Potential Energy Savings of Air Lubrication Technology on Merchant Ships

An alien in Marseille: investigations on a single Aedes aegypti mosquito likely introduced by a merchant ship from tropical Africa to Europe.

Control of invasive species relies partly on permanent surveillance at international points of entry. We report the exceptional trapping of one adult mosquito (Diptera: Culicidae) in the port of Marseille, France, in July 2018, during a routine survey conducted according to International Health Regulations. Morphological and molecular identification classified the specimen as a female Aedes (Stegomyia) aegypti (L.), vector of many arboviruses, absent from Europe and the Mediterranean rim since the 1950s. A world reference panel of approximately 23,000 genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphisms determined that the mosquito originated from Cameroon, west Africa. Cross-reference of this geographic location with boats traveling from Central Africa to Marseille during the trapping period suggests that the mosquito travelled within an identified merchant ship, a vehicles carrier connecting Douala, Cameroon to Marseille, France. This ship left Douala on June 25, 2018 and arrived 20 days later in Marseille on July 15. The mosquito was captured 350 m away from the dock. The interception of a propagule of an invasive species is a rare event that must be considered a priority to prevent its successful establishment.

The legal regulation and organization of health protection and medical care of sailors of merchant marine ships

The current state of health care and medical support of seamen during their residence on board has a number of disadvantages. The sea vessel is not only a source of increased danger both for other ships and port infrastructure, but also an extremely traumatic area. The unification and harmonization of legal regulation of this segment of public relations becomes even more actual in current conditions. The organization of medical unit on ships of merchant fleet is regulated by a number of international treaties, whose provisions are considered and analyzed in the article. The study permitted to identify a number of disadvantages occurring when seamen seek medical care while on board. The health and medical care of seamen on board is not limited to treatment of the sick and the injured, but covers preventive measures with particular emphasis on development of health care and health education programs. In any shipping company, the important preventive aspect of ship medicine is struggle against drug and alcohol consumption among crew members. The directions of overcoming the considered problems are proposed. It is emphasized that their solution should be of systemic unified nature, since legal basis of organization of medical unit on ships is grounded on international conventions.

Development of merchant shipping: development factors

Development of merchant shipping: development factors

Interference intention classification of moving obstacles used for USV collision avoidance

Unmanned Surface Vessels (USV) may interfere with ships in the same lane during navigation and may be affected by ships that actively collide or intercept the USV. Evidently, the latter poses a greater threat than the former. This paper proposes the concept of active and inactive interference. It is necessary for the USV to accurately classify the vessels’ intentions to conduct a suitable collision avoidance strategy. However, the existing research on collision avoidance of USV focuses on avoiding moving obstacles and rarely considers the interference intention of dynamic obstacles for USV when choosing collision avoidance strategies. This paper proposes an algorithm to recognize the interference intention of ships by combining visual classification with a Support Vector Machine (SVM). First, a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) is proposed to distinguish the merchant ship from a high-performance ship that actively interferes with the USV with high probability. A high-dimensional feature dataset was designed to illustrate the navigation characteristics of an obstacle, and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was then employed to reduce the dimensionality of the dataset for obstacle classification. A modified SVM is presented to classify obstacles into active and inactive interference intention categories. Moreover, an escape algorithm based on an improved artificial potential field method is proposed for vessels with active interference. The simulation and experimental results clearly show that the USV can successfully identify the interference intention of obstacles and adopt a specific collision avoidance strategy for obstacles with active interference intentions. Using this algorithm, the USV can safely avoid obstacles with different interference intentions.