Seamanship and Nautical Knowledge
What the paper tests
This section, relevant to B.Sc Nautical Science and other deck-oriented programmes, covers ship nomenclature, deck equipment, rope work, anchoring and mooring, the Collision Regulations, IALA buoyage, compass work, basic navigation, watchkeeping, emergency procedures and the framework conventions (SOLAS, MARPOL, STCW). Questions are definitional and practical: what a term means, what a light or shape signals, or which vessel gives way.
Core rules to have at your fingertips
- Ship terms: bow and stern, port (left, red) and starboard (right, green), beam, draft, freeboard, camber, sheer, flare.
- One nautical mile = 1,852 m; speed in knots = nautical miles per hour; 1 knot ≈ 0.514 m/s.
- COLREGs: Rule 13 overtaking vessel keeps clear; Rule 14 head-on, both alter to starboard; Rule 15 crossing, the vessel with the other on her own starboard side gives way.
- IALA Region A, used in India: port-hand marks are red cans, starboard-hand marks are green cones.
- Compass work, CADET: Compass + Deviation (East +) = Magnetic; Magnetic + Variation (East +) = True.
- Anchor cable is measured in shackles, one shackle being 15 fathoms (27.4 m).
Worked example
A compass bearing is 045°. Deviation is 3° West and variation is 5° East. Find the true bearing. Compass to magnetic: 045° + (−3°) = 042° (west is negative). Magnetic to true: 042° + (+5°) = 047°. The order matters because deviation is the error caused by the ship's own magnetism and variation by the Earth's field; applying them out of sequence gives the wrong answer even when the arithmetic is right.
Traps that cost marks
- Applying variation before deviation, or reversing the East/West sign.
- Mixing IALA Region A and Region B colours; India follows Region A.
- Confusing the give-way vessel with the stand-on vessel in a crossing situation.
- Quoting shackles in metres when the question expects fathoms.
- Treating port and starboard as directions of turn rather than fixed sides of the vessel.