The wheelhouse front glass of a Fore-Bridge-Ship (Ro-Ro Ship) was broken by the shipping of water in rough seas, and then the flooding of seawater into the wheelhouse caused the uncontrollable condition of the ship. The hull which was entered into the floating condition rolled severely, and the heavy rolling caused secondary damage such as the collapse of a lot of cargo. It was an incredible accident because the height of bow freeboard was about 2.5 times higher than the standard height of minimum bow freeboard regulated by the International Load Line Convention(1966). And it would be also difficult for navigators to imagine a great deal of seawater flooding into the wheelhouse because the front glass was positioned at about 20m height above the sea surface. In this paper, we carried out the evaluation for the safety navigation of the Fore-Bridge-Ship numerically against ship's speed and encountering angle to the wave in each sea state of rough sea, by using the integrated seakeeping performance index (ISPI) which is able to evaluate synthetically the safety operation of ships. And then the problem on the application of the past criteria proposed as the safety navigation of a merchant ship was clarified by inquiring the dangerousness of the shipping of water at her bow deck, which caused the breakage of the wheelhouse front glass.

It is of great importance for any vessel under way, especially in rough sea, to be maneuvered safely with proper seakeeping performance. In this paper, the author aims to develope a navigational safety evaluation system in rough sea by analyzing ship's with the theory of wave spectrum using random process analysis and the theory of evaluating the seakeeping performance. The scope and the method of this study are as follows ; (1) Modelized typhoon mathematically to represent the sea condition in rough sea. (2) Estimated sea conditions by getting wave spectrum, supposing that the wave by typhoon is fully developed short crest irregular wave. (3) Defined evaluation factor of vessel's seakeeping performance and obtained response amplitude operators thereby. (4) Obtained the response spectrum of factors on seakeeping performance. (5) Defined and obtained evaluation index, dangerousness, relative and maximum dangerousness of factors on seakeeping performance. (6) Analyzed the calculated dangerousness of evaluation index and picked the vertical acceleration out of 7 factors as the presentative factor on seakeeping performance. (7) Carrid out the judgement of danger by obtaining dangerousness value according to steaming hour, course alteration and speed change. By synthesizing the above items, the authors suggests a computer model of navigational safety evaluation system and examined the validity of the model by computer simulation.

A vessel encountered heavy weather is face to two kinds of danger ; the danger of upset due to the lack of stability and the lack of the longitudinal strength. Generally a small vessel is face to the former and the large vessel to the latter. Most of people do not consider the danger of upset by the latter but the former. But many ships missed at sea, the exact causes being not known. This pper investigated and analyzed the causes of accidents. The result was that the lohgitudinal strength of the hull is not enough to cope with heavy weather, and the particular cautions are needed to handle a ship in heavy weather.