The case of the disturbing personal eMail - NORFOLK EXPRESS grounding

The Chief Officer of the NORFOLK EXPRESS received a personal eMail while on watch which troubled him so much that he lost all semblance of attentiveness, resulting in the ship going aground at full speed in the Gulf of Suez, because he was totally distracted.

Read more about it here:-

http://maritimeaccident.org/2009/10/norfolk-worries-led-to-grounding/

The lookout has been sent elsewhere for other tasks.

To quote from the article:-

A number of lessons arise from the incident, the most obvious relates to lookouts. Many of us prefer to be alone when dealing with personal issues and its tempting to send the lookout away so we can be alone with our thoughts. Unfortunately, those are the very conditions under which we need to have a lookout present in case we get so deep in our own concerns we lose track of what’s going on.
Whatever the psychological state of the officer of the watch a lookout might have made the difference.
At the same time, two alarms were not functioning, the bridge watch alarm which should have sounded every 12 minutes, and the echo sounder depth alarm. BSU says that it is uncertain that these would have alerted the chief officer to the situation.
Two GPS waypoint alarms sounded but were not responded to.