The paper seeks to demonstrate that the antique nature of most nautical charts available to commercial shipping is not by any means the principal cause of maritime accidents and pollution. The enormous task facing hydrographers surveying the world's continental shelves, many areas of which have never been surveyed, is described. Examples are given of the disappearance of a number of tankers and other ships, which is explained by episodic waves. The lethal nature of these waves is described, and the geographical areas in which they occur and recur, discounting the appellation “freak”; waves, which do not recur. The necessity of precise topographical surveys of areas prone to these waves, enabling hydrographers and thus commercial users of the ocean to avoid such dangerous areas, is discussed. The urgent need for much quicker legal processes following “accidents”; at sea is touched on, and the German Sea Courts system is advocated, effective there since 1871, for use in U.S. coastal areas and, in fact, in all the littoral areas of the world. The paper concludes that unless manning standards are improved by the guilty being shown up shortly after accidents have occurred when public interest is still aroused, no improvement to the steadily increasing rise in ship losses will occur. The increase in ship losses over the year preceding 1978 was 40%, and in oil pollution of varying viscosities, 300%.
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