Casualty Files
The industry cannot talk about failure. The official reports already do.
Owners, managers and class societies are all structurally discouraged from discussing what goes wrong — it dents commercial standing. Meanwhile the investigators publish everything. Each week we take one published casualty report and read it the way a Chief Engineer reads an alarm log: not what the summary says, but which record on board already held the warning.
How these are written
- — Only published official investigations. Report number and link on every case.
- — The investigator's findings are quoted as theirs; our reading is labelled as ours.
- — No vessel the author has attended, ever — no exceptions, no de-identified exceptions.
- — Every case ends the same way: which record already held the signal, and what would have shown.
Field note · de-identified
One fault, three weeks: why the same repair is a day ashore and a casualty at sea
The companion piece — written from the inside, with no vessel, company, port or date identified.
Blackout · drifting · anchors
A generator let go on sea trials — and the anchors needed the power that was gone
Generator failure, engine room fire, full blackout, a ship drifting with winches that could not be run — and a published cause three years upstream.
UK Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB) · Report 10/2026 — Kommandor Susan
Read the teardownFire · emergency power · fixed CO₂
A fuel hose that should not have been there, and three safety systems that did not answer
A departure fire from a hose fitted in an unapproved modification, an emergency generator breaker that faulted, and a CO₂ system that did not fully operate.
UK Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB) · Report 13/2025 — Finnmaster
Read the teardown