The Merchant Shipping (Minimum Standards of Safety Communications) (Amendment) Regulations 1999

5.  For regulation 5 the following shall be substituted:

“Duty to ensure safe communication

5.— (1) It shall be the duty of the company and master to ensure that on every ship and hovercraft:

(a) there are at all times means in place for effective oral communication related to safety between all members of the ship’s or hovercraft’s crew, particularly with regard to the correct and timely reception and understanding of messages and instructions; and

(b) there are adequate means of communication between the ship or hovercraft and the shore-based authorities in the English language.

(2) It shall be the duty of the company and master of every passenger ship and hovercraft carrying more than twelve passengers to ensure that–

(a) for the purpose of ensuring effective crew performance in safety matters–

(i) a working language, determined by the company or master as appropriate, is established, and recorded in the ship’s official log book or, in the case of a hovercraft, in the operational record;

(ii) each seaman is required to understand and, where appropriate, give orders and instructions and report back in that language; and

(iii) if the working language is not English, all plans and lists that must be posted include translations into the working language;

(b) personnel nominated on muster lists to assist passengers in emergency situations are readily identifiable and have communication skills that are sufficient for that purpose, taking into account an appropriate and adequate combination of any of the following criteria–

(i) the language or languages appropriate to the principal nationalities of passengers carried on a particular route;

(ii) the likelihood that an ability to use elementary English vocabulary for basic instructions can provide a means of communicating with a passenger in need of assistance whether or not the passenger and crew member share a common language;

(iii) the possible need to communicate during an emergency by some other means such as by demonstration, or hand signals, or calling attention to the location of instructions, muster stations, life-saving devices or evacuation routes when verbal communication is impractical;

(iv) the extent to which complete safety instructions have been provided to passengers in their native language or languages; and

(v) the languages in which emergency announcements may be broadcast during an emergency or drill to convey critical guidance to passengers and to facilitate crew members in assisting passengers.

(3) It shall be the duty of the company and master of a United Kingdom ship or a Government ship, which is an oil tanker, chemical tanker or liquefied gas tanker to ensure that the master, officers and ratings are able to communicate with each other in a common working language.”.