Navigating by instruments: Towboats testing aviation technology to navigate locks

As the tug D.L. Johnson approached a lock on the Ohio River, Peter Stephaich, head of Campbell Transportation Co., which owns the tug, broke the silence in the pilothouse, "It ain't rocket science, but it sure is tricky." Stephaich, the chairman and chief executive at Campbell, was one of eight people crammed into the small pilothouse one recent winter morning…
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Crew of cruise ship that hit reef faulted for failing to update charts

The December 1998 grounding of the Royal Caribbean cruise ship Monarch of the Seas on a coral reef off St. Maarten was the result of a series of operational errors on the part of the bridge team, a joint investigation between U.S. and Norwegian authorities recently determined. Most significantly, the investigation determined that the grounding was a direct result of…
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Maritime Book Review: Under Pressure

Under Pressure: The Final Voyage of Submarine S-Five By A.J. Hill The Free Press, 2002 239 pages Under Pressure is a true story of men against the sea, painstakingly researched by first-time author A.J. Hill, a scientist and former Navy man. Submarine S-Five's final voyage was also her maiden voyage, when, on the first day of September in 1920, a…
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