In our maritime knowledge base, you will find many exciting articles on maritime terms and expressions. If you’d like to contribute to this section, just get in touch with us and submit a question or marine topic that you would like to add to FleetMon’s Marine Knowledge Library. This article explains why the command center of a vessel is called the bridge.
A modern bridge contains all the necessary elements for the control of the ship.
In the early days of sailing, the rudder was connected to a tiller, which was operated by a helmsman. The term helmsman translates as “servant of the boat”. The tiller was located in the so-called cockpit, a pit in which the steering elements of the boat were located. Over the years, the tiller was replaced by a wheel. This was not connected directly to the rudder but was connected by ropes and pulleys. This allowed the wheel to be moved. Ships became larger and were built with more and more decks. The largest deck was the main deck. The ship’s steering wheel was located on the quarterdeck. The raised profile of the aft deck allowed the captain to walk around and have a good view of the entire ship as well as the sea around it. As he walked around, he could give verbal orders to the helmsman.
Navigation in itself is a multi-century old phenomenon, which has been there since mankind discovered what they could do with a piece of wood. However, modern ship navigation has experienced a lot of changes, and subsequent ‘rebirths’, over the last couple of decades.
One such year of rebirth was 1952: For the very first time, vessel routing services got introduced into the industry. 1952 is when vessels were retrofitted with a prototype that would later evolve into the Automatic Identification System (AIS) in the late 90s, something that ushered a new era in maritime navigation so to speak.
AIS data, when clubbed together, gives us all-around insights into the vessel involved, its speed, position, ship dimensions, as well as its draft, helping us identify when the ship was loaded or unloaded with its designated cargo. However, the last point is an application of various data points obtained via AIS, and not available via raw data obtained from the systems onboard.
AIS, as stated above, was originally meant for ensuring navigational safety, but has quickly proved to be a vital source of business intelligence for maritime personnel.
The FleetMon community provides us with many interesting and beautiful ship images every day. In our opinion, the quality of these pictures is unmatched on the internet so far. Read more…
With the valuable input and suggestions of our top image uploaders, the Digital Seas Image Moderator’s team has completed an extensive review of the Image Quality Guidelines for Digital Seas. The new Guidelines are a little bit more relaxed, for example on bow and stern shots, and encourage a limit on multiple uploads for the same vessel. We felt that such a limit was necessary so all uploaders can follow equal rules and some disappointing situations can be prevented.
As always, image quality is most important and will always be the determining factor!
We hope the new Guidelines will make it easier for you to choose your most fascinating images for sharing on Digital Seas!
The changes in summary:
More liberal attitude to images – Bow and Stern shots are now allowed
A cap (maximum) on the number of photos a member is permitted to upload of any one vessel
A suggestion as to the optimum image size and shape to make images more acceptable in appearance when viewed full screen
Guidelines that are easier to understand to members whose first language is not English
Clarification of the site’s attitude towards modified (HDR) photos
See the Guidelines in detail on the FAQ page: http://www.digital-seas.com/faq_quality
