Virtually every shipping company today uses noon reports to understand and monitor what is happening on their ships. These reports are traditionally based on data gathered manually by the crew and sent by the captain every day. The content and format of the report is usually pre-agreed by the company and sent at noon. The noon report has grown over the years to give a snapshot of what has happened onboard the ship since the previous noon, in other words, in the past 24 hours.
Since the time between noons is based on the time kept by the ship, this is not always 24 hours. The time kept by the ship is changed by the crew depending on which time zone she is operating in. Therefore, a ship sailing westward gains time, which means when the clocks are adjusted onboard, the time to the next noon is now 25 hours. Conversely, a ship sailing eastward will lose time, making the time between the two noons 23 hours.
For a ship on a voyage of several days, the data received from noon reports is not easily comparable as the data sample every day along the voyage is different based on whether the ship’s time was changed by the crew or not. In addition, the managers that monitor these reports ashore, receive them at different times of the day and night as the ships change time zones. This means that the companies have no real-time data about what the ship is doing.
Why does the entire shipping industry lay the foundation of ship monitoring and reporting based on a moving time target?The reason Greenwhich Meantime (GMT) has not been picked as the accepted standard for timekeeping is perhaps because the industry is steeped in tradition, or may be even linked to the origins of the noon report.
Historically, the only time the ship accurately knew its position in the open ocean was at noon every day. At all other times, the position of the ship was based on an estimated calculation (also known as Dead Reckoning) from the previously determined position. To determine the accurate position of the ship, the officer on watch used the sextant and the chronometer to calculate the longitude in the morning and the latitude at noon to know what course to steer. Gradually with better communication and an advantage in knowing the best estimated time of arrival, reporting the latest position of ship became a practice and hence the noon report began.
Initially, noon position reports were sent over telex and radio. Today, some noon reports have become so elaborate that it takes the designated crew several hours (from morning to noon) to collate all the data required from different areas of the ship, including cargo control rooms, engine rooms and the bridge. However, what started and evolved as an innocent position report has slowly but steadily become a monster. Now, various formats of noon reports are provided to shipowners and managers, and also to charterers, sub-charterers, weather providers, ports and terminals, oil majors, commodity traders, agents and more.
Adopting GMT as the standard time for all reporting would, in today’s global era, certainly make life a lot less complicated. Unlike in the past where accurate position was known only at ship’s noon, today the GPS position is available throughout the day. With modern communication systems and real-time data collection platforms, it no longer makes sense to continue noon reporting. Real-time access to onboard data will not only provide companies the status of vessels at any given time and more importantly at the time of need, but also free the crew to deal with the actual task of operating the vessel efficiently with minimal manpower.
To ensure the efficiency of the larger global supply chain (in which shipping plays a significant part), it is likely that a single unified time will eventually evolve to be the norm. There is no question that early movers will have substantial edge over their rivals when they can show greater efficiency and control of operations. It remains to be seen as to who is courageous enough to break with perhaps a 100-year tradition and bin the noon report in its current form. This in itself will be a giant leap for an industry that is known for being reactive instead of proactive in embracing change.
Captain Melvin Mathews is maritime director at Eniram and an Associate Fellow of the Nautical Institute and fellow of IMarEST