A senior pilot I spoke to recently in a major North European port made clear that he thought that ship operating standards, on the bridge and on deck, were in too many cases lamentably low. He backed this up with numerous accounts of bad practice and near-disasters.

Those were, of course, anecdotes that could not be verified. But they rang true, not least because they were strikingly similar in tone to the reports filed regularly to the UK's Confidential Hazardous Incident Reporting Programme (Chirp). Although UK-based, Chirp's maritime programme is aimed at enhancing maritime safety worldwide; it does this by providing a totally independent and confidential - but not anonymous - reporting system.

Chirp produces a regular newsletter, which ought to be compulsory reading for all involved in operating vessels in any way. The most recent edition features the usual crop of hair-raising near misses. In one case, a large container ship carried out a completely unnecessary and dangerous overtaking manoeuvre within a Traffic Separation Scheme in the English Channel. On the positive side, the vessel's operator acknowledged to Chirp that the vessel was at fault, and undertook to ensure that a similar situation would not happen again.