Safety and Rescue Procedures at Sea- Made Interesting
Since the beginning of time, humanity has owed a lot of the aspects of its development to the oceans and seas on our planet. From fishing and gathering food to naval warfare and conquering to travelling to transporting goods through the grand oceans. None of this would have been possible if it weren’t for the brave people who had decided to venture out into the unknown depths and look for new and better possibilities and opportunities for living, and yet, we still complain about losing an earring in it. (cough coughA certain Kardashiancough cough.) I guess it’s a fair reaction as it was diamond but as Kourtney said and I quote, “Kim, there’s people that are dying.” More specifically in the ocean, and one such example is the tragedy of the Titan submersible implosion.
And as you’ve guessed, despite all the good deeds Mother Nature has done for us, it still remains to screw us over as cruelly as ever. The tides might turn against us faster than my dad can whip out his belt, the engines that we built ourselves with hopes and dreams may suddenly give up on us just like my parents did, and some people may even spend the rest of their lives at sea without ever finding their way back. (Better than trying to explain to your mom why you can’t just walk up to a group of teenagers and ask them to be friends with you.)
To prevent such tragedies, mankind has developed and evolved its own methods for safety and rescue procedures at sea. (unfortunately, I’m just going to have to deal with it.)
To begin with, the origin of ships in maritime transport dates way back to the Mesopotamian civilization, these were called model ships. These ships were made of papyrus reed and were discovered to be quite sturdy. Unsurprisingly, the process of making a ship using papyrus reed was cumbersome. You see, these little pests could not be folded over or bent so they had to tie them up together and stack them until they reached the desired size for a boat. This absolutely and definitely did not take a long time, just a measly 5 whole months of working 2 weeks a day, no that was not a typo. (TLDR: it would probably take less time to get married, have kids and die than build this boat on your own.)
So, they were replaced by wood. This is because this material allowed the ships to be larger and more suitable for sea travel, and also, took less time to build. It also seemingly solved the issue of tonnage measurement, something that was quite a pain for the shipping industry for a long time. This was an era where trade and commerce had flourished. Along with brutal wars and Viking invasions but let’s focus on the positive side.
However, it still remained as unsafe as ever. As no matter how sturdy the material was or how big the ship was, getting lost at sea was an incident neither of those could prevent. So for around 2000 years, communication at sea was null.
In 1753, a Scottish writer said, “Guys, we need to invent a way to communicate at sea. I’m absolutely sure no one has ever thought of this.” And so they did, Britain’s William Sturgeon’s invention of the electromagnet in 1825 allowed for switchable high-power pulses to be sent great distances on a single pair of wires. The patent award went to America’s Samuel Morse and Alfred Vail, whose design became the basis for all wired networks worldwide.
They developed a system in 1836 of distinctive code using dots and dashes to represent numbers and letters, and by 1844 most ships used morse code with blinker lamps. A signaler operated a shutter at shorter or longer intervals to produce dots and dashes. … — — — . — . / . — . .-. — — -.-. .-. .- … — .. -. .- — .. -. — . / .- -. -.. / — . . — / — — ..-. ..-. / -. — — — ..- .-. / . — . …. — — -. . This was mainly used for distress and safety telecommunication.
Now for the invention of the steam engine, which made travelling much easier as ships were longer slaves to the wind and tide. However, communication remained short-range and accidents involving the loss of hundreds of lives were still prominent.
The tragic sinking of the RMS Titanic, or as I like to call it, “Paint me like one of your French girls.” changed the direction of radio use and the establishment of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) by the United Nations decreased safety risks at sea.
In 1948, a conference held in Geneva by the United Nations proposed the establishment of an organization to deal with international shipping. They said, “You know maybe, we should like, hire people to handle international shipping just in case because I mean, could you ever imagine illegally transporting materials or weapons that could cause mass destruction? Like that’s ever happened before!” Famous last words.
The conference ended in 1959 with the successful adoption of the IMO after that statement. Some of its main purposes were safety, legal matters, environmental concerns, technical cooperation and security, maritime safety and efficiency in shipping. The IMO adopted well over 700 codes and recommendations concerning maritime safety, pollution prevention, and such matters. Many of these were safety requirements for ships.
So to conclude, the earth gave us water to travel through and experience the zest of life without warning us about the deadly storms, horrible navigation, terrifying creatures that could devour us whole and the worst of all, sea sickness and subruns- oh the terror. So we gave it pollution and plastic and defiled all of its life. Seems like a fair trade to me. The ocean has been both a blessing and a curse, just like humanity. We were bound to clash.
Author- Visishta Sri Kameshwari
Editor- Neha Govindarajan
