Daily Lessons from Life 04 November 2010 - Stranded British submarine damaged in tug collision: navy

"Stranded British submarine damaged in tug collision: navy - Thu, Nov 04, 2010 AFP

LONDON - Britain's newest nuclear submarine, which became stranded on a sandbank off the coast of Scotland last month, has now been damaged in a collision with a tug that came to rescue it, the Navy said.


The one-billion-pound (S$2.06 billion) HMS Astute was towed free on October 22 after its rudder got stuck while undertaking sea trials near the Isle of Skye.

It was freed by tugs ten hours later but collided with one of the rescue vessels, thought to be the Anglian Prince, heaping further embarrassment on the country's military."

S$2.06B of wonderful technologies and innovation. Yet, it cannot avoid being stranded on a sand beach nor can it avoid colliding into a tug boat that came to free it! This is embarrassing? I think it is more revealing that no matter how cool or expensive technologies are, things can still go wrong. Terribly wrong if lives were lost. In this case, it was just things went wrong. Not terribly wrong!

Lessons for me are:

1. we spend a lot of money on weapon. Some times we get it right. Other time we don't. Of course a lot of the innovation are state of the arts and really very very new. So new that we cannot know the consequence until and unless we use it for a while. A long while actually. So, we can laugh at this irony or we can accept it and say: it will get better!;

2. it is amazing that it can go round the globe without surfacing and yet it cannot make it safely through the sand beaches! It carried a lot of warheads and destructive power (or defensive power if you must insist) and yet it could have killed its own crew in the most unlikely and unexpected manner! Being stranded and exposed to enemies' fire!;

3. let's hope it makes it safely back to its port and that the incident of a British and French submarines colliding into each other do not get repeated her. It will be devastating to have 2 nuclear subs firing up involuntarily in the open seas! :-)

Tomorrow is Deepavali or Festival of Lights celebrated by the Hindus. May there be light in the British Navy too!