The bridge is recorded, all of it, all the time, by a recorder that survives sinking, and the audio is played back after any incident. On one stretch the recording carries a helm order, ten degrees of starboard, in a voice that is not the officer's, and the helmsman's voice answers it, and the helmsman did not hear it and did not answer.
I am the master, and the voyage data recorder is the instrument on my ship that I most hope never to need.
How it works.
Microphones in the bridge deckhead record continuously. The recorder also takes the radar picture, the heading, the speed, the rudder angle and the engine orders, and it keeps a rolling twelve hours in a protected capsule on the monkey island. It is tested monthly, and the test includes a playback of a short stretch of audio to confirm the microphones work.
The audio is not listened to otherwise. There is no reason to.
I listened to it because the rudder log showed a helm movement on one stretch that I had not ordered and my officer had not ordered and the helmsman said he had not made.
Ten degrees of starboard, held for forty seconds, taken off. On a stretch of the crossing where the course is steady and no alteration is due.
The audio for those forty seconds has an order in it.
Starboard ten. Clearly, in a man's voice, in the tone an order is given, from the position on the bridge the conning officer stands in.
And the helmsman's voice answers, starboard ten, sir, and then, ten of starboard wheel on, sir, which is the correct reply, in the correct form.
The helmsman on that watch was a woman. She was standing at the wheel. She heard nothing and said nothing, and the officer beside her heard nothing, and the rudder went ten degrees to starboard under her hands, and she brought it back, and reported it as a steering fault.
What has been checked.
The recorder. Serviced, and the capsule audio downloaded by the manufacturer, who confirmed the audio is genuine and continuous and unedited, and asked who the two men on the bridge were.
The steering. Tested through its full range and its self test. It holds a course and follows a wheel, and it followed ten degrees of starboard that the wheel did not give it.
The crossing. It has happened on eleven crossings that I have found in the recordings I have gone back through, always on the stretch, always the same order, always answered, in the same two voices, whoever is actually on the bridge.
The voices.
I have played them to the crew, one at a time, in my cabin, without saying why. Nobody owns them. Two of the older hands went quiet, and one of them asked me where I had got a recording of the old ship.
The old ship was broken up in the nineties. Her bridge audio, if it was ever recorded, would have been on tape, and there is no tape.
What the ten degrees does.
Nothing, at that point of the crossing. The stretch is open water and ten degrees of starboard for forty seconds moves the ship a few hundred metres to the right of her track and back.
I have plotted it. The track with the alteration in it passes a hundred metres to the south of a position on the chart that is marked with nothing, over thirty one metres of water, and the track without it passes over that position.
The old ship, in her last year, had a grounding scare on that stretch, in fog, that was never explained and that is in the museum's file, and the position in the file is the one on my chart.
What is done about it.
The alteration is logged as a steering anomaly, and the recorder audio is in a folder the company has and has not asked about, and the ship is safe, because ten degrees of starboard for forty seconds on that stretch is, as far as I can tell, someone keeping her off something.
What I do.
I have the ship.
The one thing I have changed is that I con the stretch myself, and on the stretch, at the point where the order comes, I give it. Starboard ten, and the helmsman answers me, in her own voice, and the rudder goes over, and I bring it back.
Since I started doing that the recording carries only my voice and hers. I have listened, every crossing, and it is us. Except once, in the winter, when I gave the order and the helmsman answered and, under her answer, faint, in the deckhead microphones, a second answer, in the man's voice, and it said thank you.