A Study of the Guidance Announcements for General Passengers with the Exception of Passenger Ships

There are many ships open to the public during port festivals. The training ship “Toba Maru” (gross tonnage 244t, length 40m) has been open to the public every year for port festivals since 1997. However, guidance announcements have never been put into effect on the ship. The authors researched the guidance announcements on public transportation and verified the announcement system which is easy to use on ships. The announcements on public transportation are made by automatic broadcasting equipment, or are manually broadcast by the crew. The announcements of the automatic method are spoken slower than those of the manual. The authors proposed that the announcement system consists of a public address system and an audio playback device. A CD player is easiest to use for mariners. It is presumed necessary to announce slowly, and that technical words in the announcement script be simple for the onboard environment such as strong winds and loud noises. The onboard crew are able to use these methods. However, officers still have problems communicating accurate information in their announcements. Effective, good announcements are expected to improve communication within a ship.