Chapter 4: The RAN and the Rules

IN BRIEF · A warship is fully bound by the Rules; sovereign immunity changes only who can call her to account, and that is her own service. The RAN binds its ships by command authority, and a well-found warship is held to a higher practical standard within the Rules, not a lower one. Inside a task group the tactical instructions layer over the Rules for warship-to-warship manoeuvring; toward everyone else the plain COLREGs govern, and CUES fills the gap between unfamiliar navies.

The last chapter stopped deliberately just short of the warship. For civil shipping the chain of obligation is complete, and it ends in enforceable law. The Convention is put into domestic legislation, and a merchant master who breaches the Rules has broken the law of the flag state. The warship sits at a different point in that chain, and the difference is sharp enough to raise a fair question. An international convention binds states. A state enforces it through a civil regime aimed at its merchant fleet. So what exactly compels the bridge of a warship, when that warship stands, by long-settled international law, outside the reach of almost everyone else’s jurisdiction? This chapter answers that. And the answer matters more for a warship than the question suggests, because the reasons a warship obeys the Rules also set the standard she is held to when she does.

The answer, in two parts

The first part of the answer is that the navy binds itself, and does so in the firmest terms. The professional doctrine an OOW is trained on does not treat the Rules as advisory for a warship. The Admiralty Manual of Navigation states that when operating at sea the Rules are to be strictly adhered to, subject only to the supplementary tactical instructions that govern manoeuvring between allied warships (BR45 Vol 4, para 0124h). It describes the proper and timely application of the Rules as the primary means of preventing collision at sea (BR45 Vol 4, para 0127). A warship’s compliance is therefore not a matter of the OOW’s discretion. It is mandated from inside the service, through doctrine and through the Commanding Officer’s orders, and it carries the full weight of a lawful command. The external enforcement that disciplines the merchant fleet is simply replaced, for the warship, by internal command authority.

DRAFTING ISSUE: RN doctrine and the RAN instrument

The Admiralty Manual of Navigation (BR45) is shared professional doctrine across the Royal Navy and the Royal Australian Navy. The passages cited here state the requirement in the Manual’s own (Royal Navy) voice, referring to RN policy and RN warships. The principle holds identically for the RAN: the service binds its own ships to the Rules by command authority, not by civil law. The precise Australian instrument that mandates it, the relevant Defence or RAN navigation publication or instruction, should be cited here in place of this note. It is named on purpose rather than guessed at, because a sourcing claim about which authority binds an Australian warship is exactly the kind of statement that needs the actual reference, and that reference is not yet to hand. [Insert RAN authority.]

The second part of the answer is the one that should stay with an OOW longest, because it does not depend on any instrument at all. The Rules work only because they make every vessel predictable to every other, as Chapter 1 set out. That system breaks the instant any participant opts out of it. A warship that manoeuvres unpredictably is not made safer by her immunity, her armament or her tonnage. She is exactly as dangerous to the bridge watching her as a merchant ship behaving the same way. And given the closing speeds a warship can generate, often more so. Sovereign immunity protects a warship from another state’s courts. It gives her no protection at all against a collision. The Rules are about avoiding the collision, not about the courts. The Manual’s own statement of purpose is the same one this guide opened with: the aim of the Rules is to make the actions of other ships as predictable as possible (BR45 Vol 4, para 1003). A warship that exempted herself in practice would be defeating the very system her safety depends on, and would gain nothing for it. The legal answer tells you the warship must comply. This one tells you why compliance is in her own interest, even if no one could ever make her.

The standard a warship is held to

Once it is clear that a warship is fully inside the Rules, a further point follows that an OOW should not miss. She is generally held to a higher practical standard within them, not a lower one. The Rules set obligations that every vessel must meet, but several of them are written in terms of what is reasonable in the circumstances. And the circumstances of a warship include resources most merchant ships do not have. A warship typically keeps a full bridge team, posts dedicated lookouts by day and night and in restricted visibility, and runs radar and plotting capability of a standard the Rules assume only in general terms (BR45 Vol 4, para 0127). When Rule 5 requires a proper lookout by all available means appropriate to the circumstances, the available means on a warship’s bridge are considerable. So the standard of lookout she is expected to keep rises accordingly.

This connects directly to Rule 2 and the ordinary practice of seamen, which Chapter 10 treats in full. Rule 2 holds every vessel to the standard of good seamanship. It refuses to let mere compliance with the letter of a rule excuse a poor decision. The Manual puts it bluntly: slavish obedience to the Rules is no defence where it would be seamanlike to depart from them, and such a departure is itself in accordance with the Rules (BR45 Vol 4, para 1003d, reflecting Rule 2). What good seamanship requires is measured against what a competent mariner in that vessel, with those means, could and should have done. For a warship the means are high, so the expectation is high. The Rules set a minimum every vessel must reach. The better-found and better-manned the ship, the further above that minimum good seamanship expects her to operate. Immunity does not lower the standard. If anything, the warship’s resources raise it.

Manoeuvring inside a task group

The hardest part of the warship picture is that a warship often has to obey two systems at once. When warships operate together, their manoeuvring relative to one another is governed by allied tactical instructions, the NATO special rules contained in ATP-1. These exist purely to govern interactions between warships and military aircraft, and, for the avoidance of doubt, they do not apply to merchant or civilian vessels at all (BR45 Vol 4, Chapter 10, nomenclature, and Section 9; see also para 0124h). Inside a force, then, ships manoeuvre to tactical signals and to the direction of the officer in tactical command, and a junior OOW can be forgiven for feeling that the COLREGs have somehow been suspended. They have not. The tactical instructions are a supplementary layer laid over the Rules, for the specific, closed case of warships working with warships. They do not switch the COLREGs off, and the duty to avoid collision underneath them never lifts.

The principle to hold onto is that the supplementary layer is bounded by who is in the encounter. Between the ships of the force, the tactical instructions organise the manoeuvring, but they assume the collision-avoidance obligation rather than replace it. The moment a vessel outside the force enters the picture, a merchant ship crossing the formation, a fishing vessel, any civilian craft, the tactical instructions have nothing to say about her, because by their own terms they do not apply to her. The warship’s conduct toward that vessel is governed by the plain COLREGs, exactly as it would be for any power-driven vessel. A warship in company is therefore under two systems at once: bound to her consorts by tactical instruction, and bound to the rest of the world by the Rules. Confusing the two, and treating a merchant ship as though she were part of the tactical picture, is exactly the error that puts a warship in the wrong.

The special rules themselves

The tactical instructions are not vague. MTP-1(E) Volume I, the releasable edition of ATP-1, sets them out in a short chapter headed Special Manoeuvring Rules, and its opening article states the governing principle before any rule is given: ships, whether acting independently or in formation, must take such individual action as may be required to avoid danger, and when necessary may leave their stations to avoid risk of collision or a navigational hazard (MTP-1(E) Vol I, Art 2241). Everything that follows sits under that sentence. No station, no signal and no priority below relieves a ship of the duty to avoid collision.

Article 2242 then gives the rules that apply to allied naval ships and overrule the International Regulations in the circumstances described. Their heart is an order of right of way between ships engaged in particular operations, and it is an order, not a list: each entry yields to the ones above it.

  1. A helicopter hovering with sonar in the water is treated as a ship not under command, and is not to be approached within 500 yards (Art 2242a(1)).
  2. Mine countermeasures units, including helicopters operating tethered MCM equipment, have right of way over ships engaged in replenishment or in launching and recovering aircraft when showing the appropriate signal. An MCM helicopter with gear streamed is not to be approached within 1,000 metres (Art 2242a(2)).
  3. Ships engaged in replenishment, other than VERTREP, have right of way over carriers and other ships engaged in flight operations (Art 2242a(3)).
  4. Ships launching or recovering landing craft utilities have right of way except over ships or formations showing the signals for (1), (2) or (3) (Art 2242a(4)).
  5. Ships launching or recovering aircraft have right of way except over ships showing the signals for replenishment (other than VERTREP) or mine countermeasures; other ships keep clear (Art 2242a(5)).
  6. Ships launching or recovering arrays have right of way except over ships showing the signals for (1) to (5) (Art 2242a(6)).

The second part of the article deals with screens. When a formation consists of a main body and a screen, the screen ships keep clear of the main body, and Rule 15 does not apply between screen ships and the main body. But the article immediately closes the gap that might otherwise open: if a main body ship finds herself so close that collision cannot be avoided by the screen ship’s action alone, she too must take such action as will best avoid collision (Art 2242b). This is Rule 17 in different clothes, and it is worth noticing that even inside the special rules the drafters could not leave the stand-on ship with nothing to do.

Article 2243 is titled Sea Manners and Customs, and it makes the relationship between the two systems explicit. With the exceptions in Article 2242, the International Regulations are to be observed by ships in formation. The instructions that follow exist to facilitate manoeuvring, and where one ship is directed not to hamper another, the ship required to keep clear conducts herself so that her heading and proximity introduce no doubt whatsoever about her intentions, and indicates them by signal if possible. If doubt does arise, the International Regulations, or any local port rule, apply (Art 2243). The customs themselves are short. Ships joining, leaving, approaching or passing through a formation must not hamper the ships already in formation (Art 2243a). Vessels or formations engaged in mine clearance are not to be approached nearer than 1,000 metres, and under no circumstances is a ship to pass through a mine clearance formation (Art 2243b). Ships not in station are not to hamper those in station, though a ship in station should not stubbornly maintain course and speed if danger of collision exists (Art 2243c). No ship is to pass between ships in a line without, as a junior, asking permission, or, as a senior, indicating her intention; the ship passing through then carries the responsibility for not hampering the others (Art 2243d), and the same responsibility falls on ships passing through a formation or between lines (Art 2243e). If a senior officer wishes a junior who has the right of way to keep clear of him, the senior is to issue timely orders (Art 2243f). In restricted waters a small ship must not hamper the movements of a large ship (Art 2243g).

Read these against the earlier point and the shape is clear. The special rules re-order right of way for a handful of operations the COLREGs never contemplated (a dipping helicopter, a ship with an array streamed, a mine clearance formation), settle who keeps clear inside a screen, and impose manners on ships entering or leaving a formation. Everywhere else, and toward every vessel outside the force, the Rules stand.

Three further articles matter to an OOW in company. A ship that breaks down sounds at least six short blasts, hoists flag 5 and two black balls by day, shows two red lights under Rule 27 by night in peacetime, and indicates any turn with the Rule 34 one- or two-blast signal; ships ahead of her in column stand on, ships astern manoeuvre to keep clear (Art 2260). When ships are darkened, any ship that considers herself endangered switches on her navigation lights, dimmed if fitted, and the ships around her do likewise (Art 2271). And the Rule 34 manoeuvring signals, one, two and three short blasts, may be used by ships in formation when manoeuvring in fog or at night even though the Rules require the vessels to be in sight of one another (Art 2272). Fog signals in formation are sounded as the officer in tactical command orders, in peacetime, to avoid the confusion of many ships all sounding at once (Art 2273); in fog, no change of formation, course or speed is made without that officer’s signal, fog lookouts are stationed, and navigation lights are shown (Art 2274).

Foreign warships and CUES

The last case is two sovereign-immune warships meeting, and it exposes a real gap. Both are bound by the COLREGs, because the Rules apply to all vessels regardless of flag (MISCPUB 0127, Rule 1(a)), so the basic obligation is intact. But the allied tactical instructions that would organise a manoeuvre between friendly warships do not necessarily apply between warships of different and unaligned states. That can leave two professional bridges correct on the COLREGs but with no shared supplementary language for the kind of close, deliberate manoeuvring that warships do. Into that gap comes the Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea. CUES is a product of the Western Pacific Naval Symposium, approved in its current form at Qingdao in April 2014 (CUES, WPNS, Version 1.0, 2014). It provides agreed safety procedures and manoeuvring instructions for naval ships and naval aircraft of different states that encounter one another in an unplanned manner (CUES, para 1.1). Australia is among the Western Pacific Naval Symposium navies, and CUES is distributed to WPNS members (CUES, distribution note), so it is part of the RAN’s own toolkit for exactly these meetings.

Two things about CUES need to be understood precisely. The first is its legal character. Navies that adopt CUES do so on a voluntary and non-binding basis (CUES, para 1.4.1). CUES does not constitute an international agreement or treaty, and is accordingly not legally binding under international law (CUES, para 1.6.1). It is a common standard, not a treaty obligation, and it cannot override the COLREGs or anything else binding. The Code itself states that it does not supersede rules applicable under international agreements, treaties or international law (CUES, para 1.5.2). It also states that nothing in it absolves a Commander or Master from the consequences of neglecting any precaution required by the ordinary practice of seamen or by the special circumstances of the case (CUES, para 1.4.2). That is the same reservation Rule 2 makes within the COLREGs themselves. CUES sits alongside the Rules as a shared professional standard that makes two unfamiliar warships more predictable to each other. It is not a substitute for them. The second thing to understand is the reason CUES exists at all, which is the thread that runs through this entire guide. CUES is the predictability principle reaching into the one corner the binding rules leave thin: the unplanned encounter between warships of states that share no other framework. It is the same idea as the COLREGs, built for the same reason. An OOW who has understood why the COLREGs are written as they are will understand at once why navies reached for something like CUES to cover what the COLREGs could not.

A short worked case: the warship under two systems

Picture an RAN warship stationed in a task group on a steady course and speed. A merchant ship is developing on a crossing bearing from the group’s starboard side. Toward her consorts the warship is manoeuvring to tactical instruction, holding station under the officer in tactical command. Toward the merchant ship she is nothing more or less than a power-driven vessel in a crossing situation, and the COLREGs govern that encounter in full. The merchant ship is on her own starboard side, so the warship is the give-way vessel and owes the merchantman early and substantial action to keep clear, tactical station or not. The hard judgement is when keeping station and keeping the Rules pull in different directions. Here the order of priority is not in doubt. The duty to avoid collision with the vessel outside the force is the governing obligation. The tactical requirement yields to it, and the OOW reports and acts. There is a related and subtler trap worth flagging now and developing later. A warship manoeuvring within a formation can, by her own movement, create a situation she then has to resolve. She cannot shelter behind a stand-on role she manufactured by her own helm. That principle is treated where it belongs, in the analysis of how situations develop and in Rule 2 (Chapters 8 and 10). The lesson of this chapter is the simpler one underneath it. A warship is never less bound by the Rules than the ship she is meeting, and usually she is held to more.

See also: Ch 3 (how the Rules reach civil shipping, and the enforcement chain a warship sits outside), Ch 8 (how situations develop, including manufactured stand-on positions), Ch 10 (Rule 2, good seamanship, and the standard a well-found ship is held to).