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Comment by gruez | Hacker News Reader

didn't the ship lose power before running aground? If so that means the ship would still be coasting and there would be time to warn the ship behind to stop. It'd be much worse if the ship was intentionally steered into the canal banks.

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There was some early speculation that they might have lost power, but according to most reports they did not.

How do they warn folks behind? Lamps? Radio? aIS?

Radio running on backup power?

I would think a call or text would do the trick.

I'm not sure if they strictly need to be warned. Every ship of such size runs lots of radars already. They probably noticed the ship slowing down already, and adjusted their own speed.

Probably radio, they all have pilots on board who radio each other and the harbor.

Handheld radio would work as a backup.

Fixed wing pilot here. Handheld radio checklist item before I head out for flight. Even though my plane has redundant comms. Comms don’t work in a failed power scenario!

Marine VHF radio. Ships are supposed to maintain a listening watch on Channel 16. Modern radios also have DSC capability to automatically alert when another ship signals distress, even if they’re working a different frequency.

And yes, a large ship would also be monitoring AIS and have onboard radar.

Yes, even my 18ft Zodiac has these features on the VHF. A container ship definitely has redundant radios with battery backup.

In the absolute worst case, they would fall back to flaghoists, blinkers and semaphore.

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