US Gulf Branch NewsletterNautical Institute achieves NGO statusThe following is a copy of a letter from Phillip Wake, the NI Chief Executive, announcing our acceptance by the IMO as an NGO with consultative status. This is a great coup for the Institute, raising it to the level of a truly international organization, instead of a British based Institute with foreign branches. Dear Colleagues, I am delighted to be able to inform you that on 3rd July the Council of the IMO elected The Nautical Institute as an NGO with consultative status. You will be aware from Seaways and our Council’s Annual Report that we have been preparing for this for some time and that it is the culmination of many years of debate within the Institute because the resources required to be effective at the IMO are considerable. Whilst we were confident that our application would be approved at the end of the usual fairly lengthy process through one of the IMO’s Committees, the significant aspect of this election is that the decision was taken by the Council directly without reference to a Committee. As a result it has happened 6 months earlier than we expected and is a real indication of both the esteem in which the Institute is held and the desire of the IMO to hear the views of practicing mariners far more actively. We have stated clearly that we will provide this practical input consistently and constructively, and that we will put in place the resources to do so (a criticism of NGOs is that too many of them do not attend regularly or contribute effectively). As a result, we will now recruit an experienced Head of Delegation onto our staff, elect members to a new committee of our Council to oversee our IMO work, and internationally recruit volunteer members with particular specialist knowledge to be part of our IMO delegations. Adverts for these will appear in August and September Seaways. Obviously, this level of resourcing comes with a cost (estimated at £100,000 p.a. when the recommendation was put to our Council to proceed with the application) which will have to be funded out of membership subscriptions and our other sources of revenue, essentially the surplus from publications sales and accreditation/certification services. We will do all we have to minimise membership subscription increases but they are inevitable unless a substantial increase in total membership can be achieved. This is a task for all of us and is a particularly important role of the branches. I will therefore be contacting each branch in the next few weeks to establish what your plans are in this regard and how NIHQ may help you achieve an increase in membership. The importance of recruitment cannot be understated, not only in terms of financial resources but also in enhancing the knowledge base and activity level of the branches and Institute generally. To ensure that we are getting the right information to input into IMO debates, we will set up a consultative procedure with the membership through the website Members’ Only area forums and through the branch network. You will be hearing a good deal more about this in the near future but, for now, there is a golden opportunity to convince potential members that it really is worth joining and getting involvement so that their professional views influence the regulatory framework that they have to work in. In every country there are at least hundreds and, in most cases, thousands of potential members. Best regards Philip Wake Chief ExecutiveNon-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) Non-governmental international organizations that have the capability to make a substantial contribution to the work of IMO may be granted consultative status by the Council with the approval of the Assembly.Any organization seeking consultative status with IMO has to demonstrate considerable expertise as well as the capacity to contribute, within its field of competence, to the work of IMO. It must also show that it has no means of access to the work of IMO through other organizations already in consultative status and that it is "truly international" in its membership, namely that it has a range of members covering a broad geographical scope and, usually, more than one region.The IMO Council considers applications for consultative status by non-governmental international organizations once a year, at its first session, which is usually held in June. To date there are 75 international non-governmental organizations in consultative status with IMO.Events Please mark your calendars for the NI US Gulf Branch AGM, September 23rd, 2009 at the HESS Club in Houston. You will receive email notification of further details. In the meantime, the committee will accept all nominations for members who are prepared to serve on the branch committee. If you know such a person, please contact the Hon. Sec. via
www.niusgulf.com. Current committee should indicate to the Hon. Secretary, by July 23, that they are, or are not prepared to stand again for the new annual period. This then, will determine what positions need to be filled. (According to the Bye-Laws there is a requirement for 6 to 16 committee members, a Chairman (Vice Chairman, if needed), an Honorary Secretary and an Honorary Treasurer. We currently have 10 committee members and 3 officers). Election of officers and committee members for 2009/2010 must be completed at the AGM. This process will be as follows: In order to allow change of the committee, NI members who are local to the area should be considered for nomination. Their membership should be current and obviously, there must be a willingness to participate. This can best be done through solicitation of members by the current committee, who should contact individuals who might be interested, and if they agree, complete the nomination form. Nominations will close by 8/31/09. Three weeks prior to the AGM. On September 1st the ballot form of nominees will be e-mailed to all US Gulf members for their review and vote, with response request by September 14th, one week prior to the AGM.Suggestions for speaker for the AGM will be most welcome. Our next technical meeting will be November 11th.Picnic: The annual picnic, slated for May 16th, turned out to be our ‘non-event’ of the year. A combination of Swine flu fears and lack of numbers wishing to attend left the committee with no option but to postpone it. The general consensus was to hold it next Fall, probably in October. It will be cooler, hopefully we won’t be threatened with any fatal diseases, and perhaps we might be able to find a venue where we could have a bottle of beer with the barbeque?Piracy still alive and well It would appear that the Somali pirates are better organized than we thought. They even have a hierarchy. In a recent Lloyds List report, a ‘senior pirate’ was quoted, (see below). Meanwhile, efforts at introducing legislation to allow U.S. seafarers to defend themselves are crawling through the government. Quoting from Michael McCright’s CAMMI newsletter…“In Washington, the piracy problem has so far produced enough hot air to melt the polar caps, but little else. The back room discussions reportedly underway are, of course, moving at a snail’s pace consistent with everything else that transpires there. In addition to Labiondo’s United States Mariner and Vessel Protection Act (H.R. 2984), there are several other efforts in play to legalize the deployment of arms aboard U.S. merchant assets in harm’s way. H.R. 2984, if enacted, will direct the Coast Guard to establish standards for when a merchant mariner on a U.S.-flag vessel can use force against an aggressor. In theory, mariners using force within these parameters, and the owner, operator or master of these vessels would be exempt from liability in U.S. courts as a result of those actions. It is a start.”While Somalia is the most critical region, ships have recently been attacked in other piracy hot spots; Lloyd’s List: David Osler - Tuesday 7 July 2009Contact has been made with six seafarers seized from a product tanker off Nigeria at the weekend, according to a statement from the operator. The Sichem Peace was attacked off Nigeria and six of the crew taken. The captured master, chief engineer and four others are all said to be in good health and to have been treated well, Eitzen Maritime Services Ship Management said. Somali pirate warns over late ransom paymentsLloyd’s List: Richard Meade - Tuesday 7 July 2009SOMALI pirates will not stop attacking vessels and are prepared to inflict violence or even murder crew held hostage if ransoms are not paid promptly, a senior pirate has told Lloyd’s List. In an exclusive interview, a Somali pirate, understood to be directly involved in dozens of high profile hijackings and the recent fatal shooting of a Ukranian seafarer, issued a defiant warning to the international community that violence would be used if payment was not received promptly. Security officials described the threat as “credible” but have warned that it should be seen as an attempt to increase leverage in ransom negotiations. The pirate’s eagerness to talk to the press comes amid what security sources have described as a difficult and complicated set of negotiations over the release of the Hansa Stavanger, the German boxship hijacked in April. It is also understood that pirates are finding it increasingly difficult to extract larger sums from owners. “The navies, they can’t stop us. How could they stop us? We have more than 200 crews and we are increasing all the time,” said the pirate, who gave the assumed name Garaad Mohammed. Speaking via mobile phone from a village near Harardera in Somalia, Mr. Mohammed claimed direct involvement with the high profile hijackings of both the Ukrainian ro-ro Faina, captured last year with a consignment of Soviet era T-72 tanks on board, and the very large crude carrier Sirius Star, which was hijacked 450 km off Somalia’s coast last October. He also said that he had been involved in the attack that led to the hijacking of the 2,579 dwt Marathon, captured in May where one crew member was killed and another seriously injured. Security officials had previously assumed that the Ukranian crew member, welder Sergei Vartenkov, had been killed during the initial attack on the vessel. Mr. Mohammed however claimed that he was attacked after ransom negotiations for the release of the vessel had stalled. Mr. Mohammed refused to explain what had happened on board Marathon or when the death occurred, but simply said: “It was because of the ransom. They gave it late. If we get our demands we treat them well. But if the shipowners deny our ransom we punish them. That is just the way it is.” “The assumption was that [the Ukrainian crewmember] was killed during the initial attack on the vessel,” said Chris Davies, the bloc’s maritime spokesman. “We have no evidence to suggest that this was an execution linked to the ransom negotiations.” The First Maritime College. Contributed by Captain Richard DixonMany of us have attended Maritime colleges or Nautical schools, and frequently the question arises -- which was the first Maritime College?In 1383, Ferdinand the Handsome, King of Portugal, died and his son, John of Aviz, succeeded to the throne. John reigned from 1383 until his death in1433. Two years after gaining the throne, John guaranteed his own survival as well as the independence of his newly won state by defeating the forces of Castile (an Iberian kingdom that would later unite with the kingdom of Aragon to form the modern nation of Spain--- the sponsor of Columbus’ voyages). He quickly established a strong centralized monarchy, which brought political stability and a measure of prosperity to Portugal that would make possible the country’s future overseas expansion. In order to strengthen his political and commercial ties with England, John married Phillipa, the daughter of a powerful English noble, the Duke of Lancaster. She bore him several sons to continue the dynasty he had established. The third of these sons, who would be known to the world as Prince Henry the Navigator (1394 – 1460) founded the world’s first “maritime college”. There is some evidence that as early as 1410 or 1412, Prince Henry, who would have been in his teens at that time, may have sent caravels (small half-decked sailing vessels of the time – Columbus’ Nina and Pinto were improved versions of this type) under his command down the coast of Africa. However, little is known of these endeavors and Henry’s career as the originator of Portugal’s voyages of discovery is usually dated from 1415.Upon his return to Portugal, Henry withdrew from the royal court in Lisbon and retired to Sagres – the southern prong of Cape St. Vincent, which the Greek geographer Strabo had described as not only the most southwesterly point of Europe but also the end of the inhabited world. There, he soon gathered round himself a rival Court, of science and seamanship. In 1419, Henry began to rebuild and enlarge an old naval arsenal to accommodate his “school,” which was located on this wind-swept spit of rocky land that jutted into the ocean like the prow of a ship, washed on three sides by the waters of the Atlantic. At his Vila do Infante ( Prince’s Town), on Sagres, Henry built a naval observatory and gathered practical seamen skilled in the arts of seamanship, shipwrights, makers of nautical instruments, cartographers, and learned men who studied the geographical knowledge available at the time. His caravels would anchor at the nearby port of Lagos, where they would be outfitted for their voyages of discovery with the latest innovations, the result of research conducted by the “faculty” of Henry’s maritime school. In addition, his captains would learn of the latest technological developments and geographic discoveries as well as report any new information of their own. A variety of motives have been advanced by Henry’s various biographers as to why he established his college of seamanship and discovery, but all agree on three chief aims - his quest for answers to geographical problems; his hope of increasing the power, prestige, and wealth of Portugal, and his desire to spread Christianity. Whatever his motivation, Henry the Navigator was the driving force behind the Portuguese voyages that led to the discovery of the world as we know it. The school he founded at Sagres played a key role in developing the ships and training the men who sailed them ever further down the west coast of Africa in search of an answer to a geographical riddle. Europe’s knowledge of geography in the early fifteenth century was based largely on the rediscovery of the writings of Ptolemy, a Greek who lived in Alexandria (Egypt ) in the second century A.D. Ptolemy conceived the world as a sphere - thus neither Henry nor his educated contemporaries thought of it as flat - covered by water and a land mass consisting of Europe, Africa and Asia. In Ptolemy’s view of the world, Africa stretched southward down to the Antarctic without a break and the Indian Ocean was thus an inland sea with no connection to the Atlantic. On the other hand, ancient legends known to Henry spoke of Africa as an island. If Ptolemy was wrong and the legends right, then the water route to the riches of India lay awaiting discovery. The answer to this question would not be found during Henry’s lifetime, for the Portuguese captain Bartholomeu Dias would not round the Cape of Good Hope until 1488 and Vasco Da Gama would not reach India until 1498. Nonetheless, it was the work of Henry and his “maritime college” that made these voyages possible. In addition, it seems quite likely that without Henry’s earlier efforts, circumstances might not have combined to launch Columbus on his first voyage to the West in search of the East.
