Part B / B2 — Safety on Board

1. Overview

Source: INTERNATIONAL MARITIME ORGANIZATION. IMO Standard Marine Communication Phrases (SMCP). London: IMO, 2001. Resolution A.918(22), 29 nov. 2001 — Part B/B2, Safety on Board (linhas 3467–4574 do MD da obra): atividades gerais de emergência, segurança do trabalho, proteção e combate a incêndio, controle de avarias, encalhe/reflutuação/navegabilidade e busca e salvamento a bordo.

Syllabus: Anexo 2-B (bibliografia: IMO SMCP) · Anexo 2-A, item VI.1.5.2 — Segurança a bordo.

Part B/B2 of the SMCP is the vessel's own onboard vocabulary for emergencies: not what a ship radios to shore, but what it says to itself while the emergency is handled. The chapter is organised in six divisions, in the order the source presents them, and the first of the six is deliberately generic — it supplies the vocabulary that the other five draw on.

"The phrases of this section apply to most of the emergencies covered in this chapter." — opening line of B2/1, General Activities.

Two features of the phrase set are worth flagging before the divisions themselves. First, the phrases for abandoning the vessel (B2/1.7) and for the roll call at assembly stations (B2/1.6) are fixed wording, not paraphrasable content — they appear below exactly as the source gives them, in dedicated tables. Second, the source repeatedly shortens a group of related sentences by writing the fixed opening once and marking each variable ending with a tilde (~); section 2 below explains and preserves that convention at its first appearance.

2. Raising the Alarm (B2/1.1)

The alarm sequence moves outward in fixed order: sound the general alarm, inform the chain of command on board, inform the shore and nearby traffic, request assistance, transmit the distress signal, and confirm it was received — repeating it if not. The first three steps in the source are orders only; from the request for assistance onwards each order comes with its confirming report, and the table below pairs them where the source does.

The order "Request assistance ... and report" is followed by a block written with the source's tilde shorthand. Read a line starting with ~ as replacing the sentence above it, keeping the fixed opening and swapping only the part after the tilde:

Assistance was
~ requested from ... .
~ offered by ... .
~ accepted from ... .

That block is three separate, complete reports — "Assistance was requested from ...", "Assistance was offered by ...", "Assistance was accepted from ..." — not one sentence with three endings tacked on. The same shorthand recurs through the rest of this chapter and is not re-explained each time; wherever a line opens with ~ below, apply this same reading.

3. Briefing Crew and Passengers (B2/1.2)

The source gives two versions of the Captain's PA announcement, and only two: one for a situation being handled with no immediate danger, and one — introduced as "another announcement" — for a situation not yet under control. Both versions send the crew to their assembly stations — the first "for safety reasons", the second as a plain order. The rest of the second announcement is given without naming who it speaks to: leave the spaces listed immediately and close all openings (.3.2), take lifejackets (.3.3), take emergency equipment according to the muster list (.3.3.1), follow the escape routes shown (.3.6) and assemble at a stated place on deck (.3.8). The source also points to B4 "Passenger Care" for more on this step, a product outside this chapter's scope.

4. Checking Status of Escape Routes (B2/1.3)

This is the shortest check in the chapter, and it sets the pattern that the equipment checks in the sections after it repeat: a single order to check and report, followed by three possible states — clear, blocked, or clear within a stated number of minutes.

5. Checking Status of Lifeboats and Liferafts (B2/1.4)

This is the longest single checklist in B2/1: twelve items, each following the clear / not-clear-yet / clear-in-... -minutes pattern from section 4, applied item by item to the whole launching chain — from the launching track the boat runs on down to the raft's own inspection tag. It is broken into four groups below so that each table stays on one subject.

5.1 Launching gear, working parts and securings

The chain starts at the track, moves to the moving parts of the falls, and ends at the securings of the launching appliances, and with them the harbour pin(s), which the source checks only for being missing.

5.2 Fuel, oil, engines, bilge pumps, drain plugs and slip gear

Five separate items, each with its own report — although the source does put fuel and oil under a single order (.4 Check the fuel / oil of the lifeboat engine(s) and report.), splitting them only at the reports: .4.1, on the fuel tank, and .4.2, on the oil level. The drain plugs (.7) and the slip gear (.8), by contrast, each get an order of their own, even though all sit inside the same boat.

5.3 Equipment, launching and securing the lifeboat

5.4 Liferafts

The liferaft check closes on the raft's own inspection tag: where the tag is expired, the source orders the liferaft replaced in the next port — the same deferral it uses for a damaged liferaft container, and unlike the portable extinguishers of section 12, whose broken or expired tags are met with an order to replace the extinguisher, with no deadline given.

6. Ordering Evacuation (B2/1.5)

Five spaces, five identical order/confirm pairs — the phrasing changes only in the name of the space being cleared. After the five, the source turns to casualties and first aid, and closes the sequence with confirmation that the danger area itself is empty.

7. Roll Call (B2/1.6)

The muster count is a fixed sequence: numbers reported by assembly station, a search ordered for anyone missing, watchkeepers called in, and then the lifeboatman checking first the crew's equipment and then the passengers' outfit before anyone is sent forward to the boats. Because this is standardised, examinable wording, the table reproduces it exactly as the source gives it.

8. Ordering Abandon Vessel (B2/1.7)

Abandon vessel is the other block of fixed, examinable wording in this chapter, and it is reproduced verbatim below in the source's own order: swing out, lower to the embarkation deck, enter, let go, inform the shore of the number of boats launched and of the crew members remaining on board, stand clear of the vessel and, last, order the rescue boat or motor lifeboat to assist.

9. In-boat Procedures (B2/1.8)

Once the boat is in the water, the source's phrases turn to running it: engine, pumps and lookout manned, survivors recovered and counted, the injured tended, and a sea anchor let go to hold position. The source also points to B4 "Passenger Care" 2.5 and 2.6 for this stage, again a product outside this chapter's scope.

10. Occupational Safety (B2/2.1–B2/2.2)

Occupational safety opens with the training cycle itself — last session, next session, who has and hasn't been briefed — then moves to the concrete measures applied on board before and during work.

10.1 Instruction

.5 Participation in training sessions on occupational safety is mandatory.

10.2 Practical occupational safety

Dangerous goods get their own location report, written with the tilde shorthand introduced in section 2 — one fixed opening, three possible stowage locations:

11. Occupational Accidents (B2/2.3)

An accident report follows one path: locate it, count the injured, establish what happened from a fixed list of causes, act to recover casualties and control the danger area, then call for whatever assistance is needed and write it up.

12. Fire Protection — Checking Status of Equipment (B2/3.1)

Thirteen items, one system each — patrols, alarms, extinguishers, mains, extinguishing systems, ventilation, openings, doors, lighting, power, and the firemen's own outfits — each closed with the same operational / not-operational (yet) / operational-in-... -minutes pattern used throughout the chapter. Split below into three tables.

12.1 Patrols, alarms and portable extinguishers

The portable extinguisher check is one of the chapter's longest tilde blocks — one fixed opening, five possible faults:

12.2 Fire mains and fixed extinguishing systems

12.3 Ventilation, openings, doors, lighting and power

The ventilation check covers the system itself and, separately, its remote control, its indicators, and its fire dampers — four checks for one system, each with its own report.

13. Fire Fighting — Reporting Fire and Readiness (B2/3.2 .1–.2)

The moment a fire is found, the report moves fast through a fixed sequence: what and where (with locations written as another tilde block), casualties, whether the smoke is toxic, whether the fire is under control, and the immediate isolating actions — engines, fuel, openings, ventilators, heading. Readiness of the teams and standby stations follows as its own short block.

13.1 Reporting readiness for action

14. Fire Fighting — Orders and Cancellation of Alarm (B2/3.2 .3–.4)

Once fire fighting starts, the orders cover the route to the fire, team composition and safety measures (including the retreat signal, which the source has agreed and reported together with the order restricting action to a stated number of minutes), the extinguishing agent, and the attack itself. Cancellation mirrors the same care: the fire is checked for re-ignition at intervals before the alarm is formally lifted.

14.1 Orders for fire fighting

14.2 Cancellation of alarm

15. Damage Control — Checking Status of Equipment (B2/4.1)

The source flags this division as continuous with B2/1 "General Activities" — the same equipment vocabulary (watertight doors, pumps, power) reappears, now checked specifically against flooding. Three of the five checks here use the tilde shorthand.

16. Damage Control — Activities (B2/4.2)

Damage control activities follow the report-readiness-orders-cancellation pattern already seen for fire fighting, applied to flooding instead of fire.

16.1 Reporting flooding

16.2 Readiness and orders for damage control

16.3 Cancellation of alarm

17. Grounding — Reporting and Damage (B2/5.1–B2/5.2)

The source flags this division too as continuous with B2/1 "General Activities". The grounding report opens with the fact itself and immediate securing actions, then moves to a structured damage and environment survey — sea bottom, tide, wind, sea state, draft, depth — each posed as its own question.

17.1 Reporting grounding and ordering actions

17.2 Reporting damage

18. Orders for Refloating and Checking Seaworthiness (B2/5.3–B2/5.4)

Refloating works through weight distribution before it works through power: cargo, ballast and peaks are reported, transferred or jettisoned before the engines are asked to pull the vessel off. Once refloated, the seaworthiness check is a single structured survey — plating, engine and pipe, underwater hull — ending in a yes/no verdict on whether the vessel may proceed.

18.1 Orders for refloating

18.2 Checking seaworthiness

19. Search and Rescue On-board Activities — Own-ship Emergency (B2/6.1–B2/6.2)

"For details also see IAMSAR-Manual, London/Montreal, 1998." — heading note to B2/6.

B2/6 covers on-board action, and this holds for both halves of it: first, a vessel's own man-overboard drill and emergency (this section); then, later in the chapter, standing by to assist another vessel's distress (section 20). Where the source's own phrases order a transmission to shore — as in .5.4.2 below — they are kept here because ordering the transmission is itself an on-board action; the shore-side handling of that traffic belongs to this book's separate chapter on search and rescue communications, not to this one.

19.1 Checking equipment status

19.2 Person-overboard activities

The alert itself is short and drilled: sighting call, lifebuoy dropped, alarm sounded, the Oscar flag hoisted, the wheel put hard over. What follows is locating the person, manoeuvring back, and — if the search in the vessel itself is negative — escalating to a distress transmission.

20. Search and Rescue On-board Activities — Assisting a Vessel in Distress (B2/6.3–B2/6.6)

The remaining four subsections cover the other side of a SAR case: not one's own emergency, but the on-board readiness, search and rescue actions a vessel takes when it responds to another vessel's distress. The source itself flags the overlap at the start of this block:

"Also see AI/1.2 'Search and rescue communications'" — note at the head of B2/6.3.

That sibling chapter covers the content and protocol of the distress communications themselves; the tables below stay on this chapter's own ground — the actions taken on board to get ready, search, rescue and stand down.

20.1 Rescue operation — reporting readiness for assistance (B2/6.3)

20.2 Conducting search (B2/6.4)

One vessel is designated On-scene Co-ordinator, and the subsection covers both sides of that: declaring oneself in the role and informing the shore of it, or standing by to receive its information and signals. The search itself is stated in the first person — "We carry out search pattern ... / radar search" — and sightings are reported by the bridge team and lookouts, with information and signals transmitted to the searching vessels.

20.3 Rescue activities (B2/6.5)

Survivors are taken aboard in a fixed order of priority, then questioned in a fixed sequence to reconstruct what happened to the vessel in distress.

.1 Rescue persons in following order:

20.4 Finishing with search and rescue operations (B2/6.6)