Advances in Lifesaving Equipment

It all began with the Titanic. The sinking of the world’s greatest ship on April 10, 1912, taking with her 1,517 victims – many of them rich and famous – galvanized the media and focused worldwide attention on the issue of safety. The fact that the luxury liner was carrying just 20 lifeboats when she went down, enough for roughly half of her 2,227 passengers, only added to the uproar, stirring outrage and spurring demands for reform.

Investigations followed on both sides of the Atlantic. They found that many safety rules were simply out of date, such as the requirement that the number of lifeboats on board be based on a ship’s gross tonnage rather than on the number of passengers it could carry. By this antiquated measure the Titanic complied with the lifeboat requirement which, when tragedy struck, proved woefully inadequate. Investigators also learned that the ship had sufficient lifeboat space for all first-class passengers but not for the lower classes. In fact, most third-class passengers had no idea where the lifeboats were, much less any way of getting up to the higher decks where they were stowed. As a result of these and other findings, numerous safety improvements for ocean-going vessels were implemented, including updated lifeboat requirements, access throughout the ship for the movement of passengers, improved hull and bulkhead designs, new life-vest designs, the holding of safety drills, and better passenger notification in the event of emergency.

Today, safety has become big business, and there is no shortage of companies offering the latest and greatest in lifesaving equipment. Here are a few of them.

Fassmer – “More Than One Step Ahead”

Germany’s Fassmer is a 160-year-old maker of everything from freefall lifeboats to housing for wind turbines. Its U.S. subsidiary, Fassmer Service America, is based in Miami, conveniently close to its biggest customers, and is run by General Manager Tim Klaybor. Klaybor says the SOLAS requirements for one- and five year inspections of lifeboat equipment and especially the all-important onload release mechanisms are big business for his company. The U.S. subsidiary has established a Safety Management System to ensure that all work is done in accord with the highest standards and by certified personnel who are authorized to issue and sign the mandatory Certificate of Serviceability. “We offer our customers peace of mind,” said Klaybor, “and more importantly, we save lives.”

Added Hans-Christian Mornhinweg, Managing Director of Fassmer Services Germany, who is responsible for worldwide after-sales service, “We like to stay more than one step ahead. For instance, you may have read that the IMO has pushed back the effective date for the implementation of new requirements for lifeboat onload release mechanisms. Well, our stainless steel hooks are already fully compliant with the newly drafted regulations, so our customers don’t have to worry.”

The fifth-generation, family-run company outfitted the Norwegian Epic with 22 state-of-the-art lifeboats, each with a capacity of 292 passengers. These Space Age vessels are like nothing you’ve ever seen. On the Epic the loading and embarkation points for the lifeboats are the same, an unusual feature that makes it easier (and quicker) for passengers to board in time of emergency. In addition to lifeboats, Fassmer makes tenders and fast rescue boats, special ops vessels for the military, offshore survey vessels, and deck equipment like gangways, boarding systems, davits of all kinds and winches.

Viking – Global Safety Solutions

Denmark-based Viking bills itself as “a market leader in marine and fire safety equipment,” and its five manufacturing facilities churn out marine evacuation systems, offshore evacuation and crew transfer systems, liferafts, boats, lifesaving appliances, and protective clothing such as immersion suits, work suits, fire suits and lifejackets. It’s an especially big supplier to the military, where its inflatables, chute and slide-based evacuations systems, and immersion suits are in high demand both on the water and in the air. The company recently received final approval from the U.S. Naval Air Force to supply up to 4,500 of its PS4049 Quick Donning Suits. Designed specifically for use by U.S. military flight crews, the innovative suits will be employed on the P-3, C-130, E-6 and the new P-8. "We've been working closely with NAVAIR to deliver a suit that greatly improves the safety of naval airmen," stated Kurt Bertsch, Sales Director for the Americas. Bertsch is based in Miami, where Viking Life-Saving Equipment (America) is headquartered.

Liferafts are another big item. They come in all shapes and sizes, including self-righting, and can be easily entered from the water. Viking’s six-person RescYou liferaft was instrumental recently in the rescue of a couple off the coast of New Zealand who had just completed a spectacular 10-1/2 month adventure cruising from Port Townsend, Washington across the Pacific Ocean. The couple’s Golden Wave 42 Kattywompus unexpectedly hit a reef, quickly started taking on water and capsized. With a little help from an EPIRB (“Emergency Position-Indicating Radio Beacon”) and, of course, their Viking raft, the couple was located and quickly rescued.

Viking’s innovative Shipowner Agreement service contracts have been a big hit with customers. They offer fixed-price services covering the life of the contract for liferafts, immersion suits, lifejackets and other required safety equipment at any of the company’s 270 servicing stations around the world. The latest to sign up was Stolt Tankers, a leader in the chemical tanker trade. The Stolt agreement provided for a liferaft exchange program to satisfy the carrier’s requirements for years to come. “The transparency offered by fixed price contracts and the convenience of one-stop shopping for all of a customer’s safety needs are key selling points for the Shipowner Agreement,” noted Bertsch.

Survitec – Where Survival and Technology Meet

Belfast-based Survitec has been around for more than 150 years. During that time, it has laid claim to a number of “firsts”: the first life preserver, the “Mae West,” in 1940; the first Submarine Escape Suit in 1952, and the first Marine Evacuation System in 1979. The company is built around a collection of market-leading brands like RFD, DSB and Beaufort. It serves a broad range of customers including the UK Ministry of Defence, the U.S. Navy, Shell, Lockheed Martin, Carnival Cruises, Royal Caribbean and Princess Cruises.

Perhaps its most innovative products are Submarine Escape and Survival Systems and Marine Evacuation Systems (MES). The company pioneered the development of submarine escape technology in the 1950s, and its latest generation RFD SEIE (“Submarine Escape Immersion Equipment”) MK 11 – an ingenious whole body suit and one-man liferaft – enables free ascent from a stricken submarine without hypothermia and provides extensive protection for the submariner upon reaching the surface. In the last 15 years more than 30,000 SEIE suits have been supplied to over 20 navies around the world. The MES, introduced in 1979, involves sliding down a chute to an enclosed raft and is a viable alternative to lifeboats. The best-known MES, the Marin Ark, was introduced about ten years ago and encompasses two fully enclosed chutes and four fully-reversible liferafts, each capable of carrying more than 100 passengers. The entire system can be stored in a single stowage unit.

Since its acquisition by private equity firm Warburg Pincus last year, Survitec has been in a growth mode. Its latest purchase was U.S.-based Revere Supply, a leading distributor of inflatable liferafts, lifejackets and immersion suits. Revere’s product mix complements Survitec’s nicely and will enable Survitec to expand its U.S. presence.

ACR Electronics – The Science of Survival

The undisputed leader in the manufacture of EPIRBs (“Emergency Position-Indicating Radio Beacons”) and PLBs (“Personal Locator Beacons”) is Fort Lauderdale-based ACR Electronics. The company notes facetiously that it has been “Putting Vultures out of Business Since 1956” and that its vast selection of EPIRBs and PLBs represent “Your Best Last Chance.” Its products have been credited with helping to save thousands of lives over the years, including the crew of Apollo 13 in 1970. The company is, in fact, a major supplier to the military. Its survival beacons, hand-held VHF radios and Firefly emergency pocket strobes are standard gear for combat troops. For the marine market, in addition to EPIRBs and PLBs, ACR makes emergency VHF radios, manoverboard lights, strobe lights, and AIS (“Automatic Identification System”) and SAR (“Search and Rescue”) transponders.

ACR’s products rely on GPS technology, which “takes the search out of search and rescue.” A worldwide network of polar-orbiting and geostationary satellites, together with Russia’s Cospas spacecraft, makes up the international Search and Rescue Satellite-Aided Tracking System known as Cospas-Sarsat, which has been credited with more than 28,000 rescues and relies on the 406 MHz frequency. The notification process – from the time the first signal is sent to when rescuers are dispatched – can take as little as three minutes with GPS embedded in the transmission.

ACR is part of $3 billion Cobham plc, whose stock is traded on the London Stock Exchange and whose best-known product is the Aegis surveillance and fire-control radar system used on the newbuild Arleigh Burke Class of U.S. guided missile destroyers.

AMVER – Saving Lives at Sea Since 1958

No article on lifesaving equipment and search-and-rescue technology would be complete without mention of AMVER, whose initials originally stood for “Atlantic Merchant Vessel Emergency Reporting” system but today mean “Automated Mutual Assistance Vessel Rescue” system. AMVER is a unique, computer-based, voluntary global ship-reporting system used worldwide by search and rescue authorities to arrange for assistance to vessels in distress. More than 22,000 vessels of all sizes and shapes, from nations, are enrolled in AMVER, which is based at the U.S. Coast Guard’s Martinsburg, West Virginia facility. Prior to departure, these vessels file a voyage plan with the AMVER computer center and then report in every 48 hours until arrival at their destination. In an emergency, the AMVER coordination center can identify vessels in the vicinity of the stricken vessel, which are then dispatched to the scene.

AMVER began as an initiative of the U.S. Coast Guard, and it still remains under the Coast Guard’s umbrella. Its basic premise is to enable mariners to help mariners, regardless of nationality, and it couldn’t really begin until the advent of the Computer Age. In fact, AMVER’s history closely parallels the evolution of computer technology and, up until AMVER’s founding in 1958, there was no global emergency reporting system for the world’s commercial shipping fleet or its burgeoning airline industry. AMVER’s first computer, an IBM RAMAC (“Random Access Method Accounting Control”), relied on “dead reckoning” to determine the location of vessels. A Control Data mainframe followed in 1971 and from there the progression went roughly like this: vacuum tubes→punch cards→printed circuit board→microchip. This past September AMVER announced its most ambitious update yet – a new system using state-of-the-art Blade server technology to replace its aging Hewlett Packard 9000 series. “With the number of enrolled vessels doubling in the last decade and a tripling in the number of daily messages sent to AMVER each day, it is imperative to keep our system in line with technological advances,” stated Ben Strong, AMVER’s Maritime Relations Officer.

“We’ve come a long way from the Titanic, when ships passing within sight of the stricken vessel were unaware it had hit an iceberg and was sinking,” added Strong. “They apparently mistook distress flares for celebratory fireworks. Today we have satellite technology and GPS and EPIRBs and AMVER and, while we cannot prevent accidents at sea, we can maximize the efficacy of rescue operations.”