Traffic separation at sea is barely five years old and inevitably most attention has so far been devoted to the delineation of routes and separation zones rather than the conduct of ships within them. Routing, however, is not a panacea; if it is to reduce collisions it must be observed intelligently and responsibly. And at the same time the routes themselves must be made safe and easy to navigate.

The twenty-third session of the Maritime Safety Committee of Imco instructed its Sub-Committee on Safety of Navigation to ‘give urgent consideration to matters concerning the safety of navigation in the English Channel and to suggestions of how to improve it …‘. This paper has been prepared under the authority of the Council with this directive in mind and was submitted to the Department of Trade and Industry's Safety of Navigation Committee at its meeting on 26 May 1971.