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Old 09-16-08, 01:41 PM   #1
Rosencrantz
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Merchants on route in RL

Hello!


I would like to know, how precise RL merchants usually follow their planned route nowadays, in open sea? Or opposite, what is the distance you could think the ship is "off route"?
Anyone?


-RC-
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Old 09-17-08, 12:29 PM   #2
feld
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CAVEAT: I'm not a merchant mariner but rather a naval officer. My sense is that there are huge operational differences between the two communities. So my impressions may not be very useful. But I'll take a crack at it.

Depends on what you mean by "planned route". My at-sea experience has been that the courses of merchant shipping are usually pretty easy to understand. They tend to stick to known shipping/transit lanes in the open ocean (international waters). They do this, not because they are required to, but simply because these are proven, fast, and easy routes between destinations where their cargoes need to go.

Shipping lanes in open ocean seem ~10-20 nm "wide". It's important to understand that there are not really formal "shipping lanes" on the nautical charts I'm familiar with. (Except near ports and in territorial waters...there many countries establish traffic separation schemes to avoid conjestion. These show up on charts).

I'd guess that merchant ships have a planned route on file with the shipping company that owns them though. That is coupled with satellite phones and Automated Identification System (AIS) that report ship's position with an accuracy on the order of tens of meters every so often. I'd imagine that Big Ship's, Ltd. Operations Center would notice pretty quickly if a vessel they thought was going to Hong Kong instead headed for Tokyo. They'd probably call the ship in question on satellite phone. If they didn't get a response they'd probably assume some kind of casualty/hijacking/problem.

Now, you're asking in the mission design forum for a game about running warships, can I assume you were thinking of having someone hijack a ship and the player intercept it? This has happened frequently off the Somali coast in recent years and might make a very interesting mission. The questions there become:
1. Does the crew get a chance to get a mayday call out?
2. Does anyone hear it?
3. If they hear it, do they pass it on to authorities?
4. How long does it take for the call to reach people with actual naval assets that can do something about the problem?

On those questions, anything I say would be a swag: "it would depend...". If this is your motive for asking, I'd look into the individual incidents at the website above and see what how long the incidents took to play out in RL.

R/
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Old 09-20-08, 05:09 PM   #3
Rosencrantz
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Hello feld!


Thank you for your reply!
I left my question here because even I have read more than just one naval book in my life, I have never seen told, how "wide" those "routes" are. Maybe it's just so "common thing" to a sailor, that "a U-boat captain writing his memoires" just forget tell his reader a shipping route is a bit wider than a highway.

Quote:
I'd guess that merchant ships have a planned route on file with the shipping company that owns them though.
Yep, I think so too.

Your idea about a hijacked vessel is interesting. However, I have build up just a basic ASW MP-mission where the overall situation reminds alot the situation in Jan. 1942 in the east coast of USA... (alot of coastal traffic running without any escort, just local ASW + small convoys, etc.) Then, when I was building in the merchants, I started thinking once again those routes...
Tomorrow is the big day, I'll test the mission with a friend. Have to hope a Perry-class frigate and one Orion will be enough for the bad quys...


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Old 09-21-08, 04:39 AM   #4
Hitman
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I can't speak for open sea routes, but having sailed on a sail boat in the mediterranean coast of Spain many years, I can tell that the coastal traffic is more or less organized in corridors set by the authorities. The reasons are varied, safe pleasure navigation around certain coastal villages, fishing banks where trawlers are usually arround at slow speed with huge nets drafting, etc. Sometimes there is only a minimum distance to the coast, sometimes you also have a minimum and a maximum when you go through two restricted areas.

Here is an example of the Gibraltar Strait: http://bp3.blogger.com/_DG1oRRK1tVs/...Carta+Estrecho
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Old 09-21-08, 07:44 AM   #5
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Hey, great chart example! Traffic separation schemes like that one exist (that I'm aware of) in the Straits of Hormuz and the U.S.'s Straits of Juan de Fuca on our WA state border with Canada. I'm sure that they exist other places (Straits of Malacca?) but haven't seen charts.

r/
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Old 11-03-08, 10:19 PM   #6
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My sense of things is that if you averaged together all the shipping of the world, they'd probably end up tracing out some approximation of the great-circle routes between major ports around the world.

And then, as was mentioned before, there's specific chanels in places like the Straits of Gibraltar, the Strait of Hormuz, etc.

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Originally Posted by Rosencrantz
Hello!


I would like to know, how precise RL merchants usually follow their planned route nowadays, in open sea? Or opposite, what is the distance you could think the ship is "off route"?
Anyone?


-RC-
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