In The Queen of the North Disaster by Colin Henthorne, Henthorne talks about how the Queen of the North had a refit prior to the sinking, which he believes could have contributed to the loss of the vessel. He talks about how there were some minor incidents caused by crew members learning the new system, but they had little to no consequences.
Note that I do not say “fortunately no accidents were caused.” This is because I believe that the occurrence of accidents is still necessary to safety. Without accidents, responses to unsafe situations are slow to come, if not completely absent. Had some small accident occurred and the steering system been identified as a contributing cause, the situation may have been improved and the sinking might have been prevented. (p.80).
This quotation makes me think of how people say, “Mistakes are good for you”. It may sound like something a parent would say just to make you not feel bad and maybe overused, but it’s true. If you make a minor mistake or accident, it can help you in the long run since you can make sure not to do it again when it’s something more important. However, if you don’t make that mistake early enough, it can end up a lot worse. Another example in maritime space can be something like the 1970 Queen of Victoria and Sergey Yesenin collision in Active Pass. It was a pretty big accident which killed 3 people, but it could have ended much worse had the ship sunk. The Queen of Victoria was able to be brought back into service after a while. Strict regulations were put into place after the incident, requiring ferries to sound their horns before entering, restricting it’s use to only ferries and pleasure crafts when it’s busy, and forcing ships like freighters to only be allowed to enter Active Pass at night when ferry traffic is low.