An Accident Waiting To Happen

I don't remember the date that well, Friday 6th March 1987, but I remember exactly how I reacted when I heard the news of the Herald of Free Enterprise sinking off Zeebrugge.

The documentary on BBC1 on Wednesday night brought the events of nearly twenty years ago back into the forefront (?) of my thoughts. One of the three drivers who were the last people to be taken off the stricken ferry alive was somebody who I had talked to and joked with on many occassions, he was a driver for a client company whose premises I was at, auditing the annual accounts, during the week of the accident.

There was a horrible irony surrounding the fact that he was on that particular ferry in the first place, the company who employed him had led a mini-boycott among haulage companies of P & O's ferries because they were concerned about the way that company loaded it's ferries and it's apparent disregard for safety issues. Unfortunately for the trip in question, although the company was able to secure a place on a non P & O vessel they picked one that was recently purchased by P & O from Townsend Thoresen.

The final death toll of the disaster was 193. What made it all the more surreal was that the whole thing took less than 90 seconds to occur, in calm conditions and shallow water, only 100 yards from the shore. As people are now aware the turnaround time for loading and unloading at Zeebrugge was longer than at most other ports because there was only room for access to a single ramp onto the car deck. Water had to be pumped into the ballast tanks to lower the level of the ferry. It appears the ferry then left port with her bow doors open, caused in part by a series of events which included the person responsible for closing the doors being asleep in his cabin, and the extra ballast still in her tanks. Water began flowing onto the car deck and the vessel quickly became unstable.

A formal investigation blamed company management for failing to give clear instructions about safety procedures. New safety measures were finally brought into effect in 1999 following a second ferry disaster. The Estonia sank in 1994 with the loss of 850 lives.

Passenger details now have to be recorded before a ship sails so the harbour authorities know who is on board and CCTV cameras have also been fitted to the car decks and bow doors.

I remember going in to the clients on the Monday morning and the normal jovial, piss-taking attitude was gone, everybody was hoping that their driver would pull through - which he did. He stopped driving shortly afterwards, unable to recover fully from the experience, he did attend some counselling but found it difficult to reconcile why he was receiving counselling when his parents who had survived the Blitz had just got on with their lives.

One of those weird twists of fate occurred later that year when the replacement tractor unit (cab) for the one lost in the Zeebrugge disaster, crashed into a railway bridge in Portugal killing the driver.

For the company, and my association with them as auditor, this was to be the first of a series of adventures over the next ten years which would also take in the Iraq Supergun fiasco, the arms to Iraq episode, which must rank as one of the most shameful chapters in the life of the Conservative Government, the Scott enquiry and me having to keep schtum for five years to prevent me being in contempt of court. Oh happy days!