Design Errors in Ship Design

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper presented is not a typical scientific work with a research design, with a research methodology, tests and results. The type of work seems more suited to different types of journals. In any case, if the topic is considered adequate for the journal from the Editor, I would suggest the Author:

• to insert the caption under all the images;
• to pay attention to the layout pg. 7;
• to review the second paragraph, for same disasters there are some inaccuracies and shortcomings;
• to point out the conclusions highlighting the improvements and innovations compared to the state of the art.

Author Response

I have already written comments on this reviewer to the Guest editors for the Special Issue. I don't wish to comment further on what I find (as an eminent authority on ship design) insulting remarks from this reviewer - in stark contrast to the other reviewers. This reviewer seems to think papers on "Maritime and Ship Design"  should meet their view of "a typical scientific work" - ignoring the bulk of scientific papers of a form similar to my submitted paper. The reviewer has only to look at my Reference 3 - it has 148 references (40 of which are by this author) to see there is a substantial body of work to the most eminent journals (including the Original Royal Society Proceedings) to see how narrow and limiting is their criterion of "scientific". I would suggest this reviewer is inappropriate for such topics as design.

Reviewer 2 Report

The work is interesting and touches on a clearly important issue. I am sympathetic to the idea of the work done and the results/thoughts appear meaningful. I appreciate reading such an excellent article and agree with the authors to include the human factor into ship design. I'm by profession a Naval Architect and therefore I know Naval Architects use their own experiences as
well as innovative thoughts, as do many other designers while designing or modifying a ship. However, if these ideas do not adequately include an understanding of the operational environment and address the practical challenges faced by the seafarers, such innovations may eventually end up with the tag of ‘another poor design’. 

Author Response

The author notes Reviewer 2 strong support for the paper, especially the need to better address wider HF and design for operational issues.

Reviewer 3 Report

This is an interesting paper by a well-known personality within the world-wide naval architecture community. In many ways, it is a personal 'story' and is not quite like a traditional academic paper. However, given the experience of the author, it is material of suitable archival quality for a Journal paper. The topic is important to naval architects, as it highlights the risks to designing, building and operating complex systems with many competing objectives, and complex design and checking procedures. 

This reviewer's main comments on the paper are that is is a bit long, although given the flow of the paper, it is hard to see where to make significant changes. Also some of the grammar seems to be a bit rushed. Perhaps I could suggest that the author reads the paper out loud to get a sense of where commas and periods naturally occur. 

Some other details... 

The Section Heading describing HMS Captain has no date, whereas all the others do. 

Unfortunately the images for 'Vasa', 'Captain, and 'Ocean' are very pixelated. Can better images be found. Alternatively the paper could be shortened by removing them, as they add little value. 

This reviewer has some concerns over including 'rumours' in a scientific paper. Lines 290-292 about the Soviet helicopter carrier illustrate a point about design responsibility, but the consequences of working in different political systems has shock value rather than technical merit. 

The links to citations should be checked. Reference 1 and 2 are given as historical observations in the introduction. However several times (e.g. lines 180, 362, 382, 383) reference 1 is citied and it seems to be out of context with the discussion in the text. 

The formatting of the paper changes. Line spacing is not consistent throughout the paper, and the section on 'Estonia' is centred, rather than justified. 

The style of the author seems to use a lot of parentheses in the text. Are these necessary? Perhaps some material could be removed? 

Author Response

The author notes the reviewer's support to the paper.

The author thanks Reviewer 3 for several editorial comments, all of which have been addressed. (there was an error in not referencing References 1 and 2 which meant reference 3, which is regularly referred to in the main text "as a seminal work", was wrongly referenced as Ref 1. This has been corrected and the style tightened up from the originally submitted draft. Note also the six illustrations for Section 2 have now been omitted to reduce the length of the paper, avoid complications in reducing the illustrations and any copyright issues.