The Shipwreck Hunter

by David L. Mearns

  At 7.55 a.m., I announced over our communications system that the dive was over and for the recovery of Magellan to begin. In the ROV’s left manipulator arm was my makeshift scoop, filled with a nice helping of deep-sea sediment. It was our very last act before leaving the bottom, and the first thing I checked when Magellan was safely back on deck: that its contents hadn’t all washed away during the long ascent. To my relief there was still a good amount of the sticky greyish-green mud clinging to the inside of the plastic bottle when I slipped it from Magellan’s grip. I took the bottle to the nearest sink and began filtering away the mud to see what was left. Like a prospector panhandling for gold, my eyes widened when sparkles of iron ore fines began to appear in my hands: the first physical proof that Derbyshire was found. But there was more.

  A pungent smell and a black film covering my hands was evidence of the most remarkable and unexpected discovery. Mixed with the iron ore fines were small clumps of Derbyshire’s fuel oil, carried to the seabed with her wreckage. As the oil stained my fingers, its significance was not lost on me. In addition to being the marker that had led us to Derbyshire’s resting place, it was now part of the proof we needed to establish that fact beyond doubt. There was also no doubt we had an amazing story to tell the DFA and all the interested parties when we got back to London.

  The meeting organized by the ITF to brief representatives of the DFA and the government about the expedition’s findings was an important moment in their campaign to get the formal investigation into Derbyshire’s loss reopened. It was scheduled for the afternoon of 5 July, which gave me plenty of time to get back to the States and to carefully analyse the sonar imagery and video we had taken of the wreck. In the meantime, the news of the wreck’s discovery had been splashed across the front pages of all the national newspapers, and there was mounting political pressure on the government from the opposition Labour Party to reopen the investigation without further delay. The ITF’s expedition had raised the level of public interest and debate about the appalling rate at which bulk carriers were sinking (nine had already been lost in the first half of 1994, with 120 seamen missing and presumed dead). However, no one was prepared for the bombshell I was about to drop at the briefing.

  ITF’s meeting room was full to capacity when I began my presentation of the sonar analysis. Only Mark Dickinson, who I had met the day before, had an inkling of what I was about to say. I began with some basic facts, chief amongst them my count of 115 individual sonar targets, which to qualify had to have at least one dimension greater than, or equal to, five metres. The large number underscored the surprisingly high fragmentation of Derbyshire’s hull. I spent some time talking about target #63, which was the bow fractured at frame 339, and how the video we had shot of it matched the sonar imagery. Then I passed around a close-up sonar image of target #9, which in my opinion was potentially the most significant of all. I firmly believed this target was the stern of Derbyshire, and that it appeared to be fractured at or near the notorious frame 65.

  As everyone slowly took in what I was saying, I watched their faces to get a hint about how they were reacting to this new and unexpected information. Paul Lambert of the DFA was the first to ask me questions. As he did, I could see his eyes beginning to well up. He was visibly shaken by what I had just said, which surprised me at first, though on reflection after the meeting, the reason was obvious. In telling Paul that target #9 was the stern of Derbyshire, which of course incorporated the accommodation and working spaces of the ship, I was essentially telling him where his brother was buried. I felt stupid for not realizing how sensitive this information would be for a family member to hear, and regretted not sitting down with Paul beforehand. The other surprise of the meeting was that the government representatives present – the chief and deputy chief inspectors from the UK Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB) and a pair of sonar experts they’d brought along as impartial advisers – readily agreed with my interpretation that target #9 was probably Derbyshire’s stern. Was this an indication that the government was finally interested in getting to the bottom of the vessel’s loss?

  The ball was now firmly in the court of the MAIB, who were tasked to provide recommendations to the Secretary of State for Transport about what to do next. They asked that I share the sonar images we had collected with another geophysical survey company in order for them to conduct an independent review of my interpretations, which I was more than happy to do. Meanwhile the DFA, the ITF and the shadow minister for shipping all called for an immediate return to the wreck site so that more evidence could be gathered. Cost estimates were prepared for the MAIB, but in the end no action was taken and the year ended with little progress being made.

  In February of 1995, Mark Dickinson and I were invited to make a joint presentation to the all-party Parliamentary Maritime Group (PMG) in the House of Lords about the results of the ITF search expedition. Judging by the crowds of MPs in the oak-panelled room where our talk was held, the fate of the Derbyshire was still of great interest to politicians on both sides of the aisle, although it was no longer the front-page news it had been the year before. Mark began the presentation with an introduction of the ITF’s objectives, which addressed a number of concerns about bulk carriers in general in addition to the specific aims of the Derbyshire search project. When he finished speaking, a video behind him showed the names of recent bulk carrier casualties involving large losses of life. For an audience concerned with shipping issues it had to be very uncomfortable viewing, and they sat in silence for the few minutes it took for the long list of names to be played out. I’m sure my presentation was equally sobering, as it would have been the first time any of them had had a chance to see the full set of images and video footage documenting Derbyshire’s fragmented state. How much influence the PMG and any individuals present might have in the process was hard to say, but it definitely felt like the long period of silence and inaction from the government was coming to an end.

  I knew this better than most, as I had been asked to a secret lunch meeting the previous afternoon with Frank Wall, head of shipping policy at the Department for Transport. As the government’s most senior civil servant dealing with shipping issues, Frank was responsible for formulating the department’s overall plan regarding Derbyshire. He wanted to speak with me privately and confidentially about the various technical options and likely costs for a follow-up investigation of the wreckage. As if to impress upon me the confidential nature of our meeting, he chose a restaurant outside central London and made sure we sat in an out-of-the-way corner on the upper floor. Despite the unusual nature of our meeting, I was pleased to see that Frank had no secret agenda. His main question to me was perfectly reasonable and straightforward: what benefit would come from a second investigation of the wreckage? Essentially he wanted to know the likelihood that a second investigation would result in a definitive answer as to what happened to Derbyshire. My answer was that we couldn’t give full assurances, but I believed there was a very good chance – in the order of 80 per cent – that the ultimate cause of the loss could indeed be determined.

  Two weeks after my meeting with Frank Wall, his department acted. The announcement was left to Dr Brian Mawhinney, the Secretary of State for Transport, but the recommendation had clearly come from Frank and probably to some extent the MAIB. Former judge and Master of the Rolls Lord Donaldson of Lymington was to carry out an assessment into several questions, including ‘What further work would be needed in order to learn more of and, if possible, make a judgement about the cause of the loss of the Derbyshire; the probability that the cause could be determined with reasonable confidence; and the likely costs to be incurred.’ I wasn’t surprised to see these were the exact same questions Frank had put to me, as they were the obvious ones to be asked in any assessment. However, there was an additional question, which I knew would be controversial and would upset the Derbyshire families: ‘What benefit to ship safety would be secured if the cause of the loss of the Derbyshire was e
stablished?’ and would the likely costs of determining this be justified. This last bit about justifying the costs infuriated the DFA, as it was essentially putting a price tag on the lives of their loved ones, and potentially on the lives of seafarers currently serving on bulk carriers.

  In the meantime, the DFA were waging a public campaign to bring broader attention to their plight. Reorganized as the Derbyshire Action Group, they distributed 2,000 postcards for people to send to Dr Mawhinney urging him ‘to authorize a new expedition and inquiry’. When Mawhinney’s announcement about the new assessment didn’t include a commitment to a return to the wreck site, they felt let down again. Their anger at the government’s repeated mishandling of the case was evident in a Channel 4 television documentary entitled Total Structural Failure that aired two days later. Reported by Rory Maclean and produced by Rob White, the award-winning film gave relatives like Paul Lambert and Peter Ridyard a national platform to tell the story of their loss and their frustration with the government’s inaction and perceived blocking of their efforts to determine the truth.

  Rory and Rob’s hard-hitting investigative report also uncovered questionable practices at the Haverton Hill shipyard where Derbyshire was built. These practices included forcing seriously misaligned parts of the ship together with jacks and large wedges that would have saddled the hull with inherently dangerous weak points. Finally, the documentary suggested that the government’s reluctance to investigate Derbyshire’s loss in any greater detail was because they could face massive payouts to the insurers who had initially covered the £25 million loss, as in the process of denationalizing Swan Hunter in 1986, the government had retained liability for ships previously built by the company.

  Lord Donaldson’s report wasn’t made public until December 1995, adding yet another year onto the long wait the DFA was made to endure in their fight for the truth. To be fair to Donaldson and the two technical assessors assisting him, Professor Douglas Faulkner and Mr Robin Williams, the assessment was wide-ranging and considered all possible causes of the loss including some not addressed during the 1989 investigation. The possibility that Derbyshire could have been hit by a ‘rogue’ or steep-sided abnormal ocean wave while she was hove to in the dangerous semicircle of Typhoon Orchid featured prominently in the report. In a separate paper Faulkner presented the scientific basis for such abnormal waves and calculated that there was a 60 per cent probability that the extreme wave height during the storm was in the range of 30–35 metres. A wave this high hitting Derbyshire would have resulted in green-water * loading of 11.6 metres over the eighteen MacGregor side-rolling hatch covers fitted to the ship’s nine cargo holds. As if this wasn’t a terrifying possibility by itself, the static design pressure of these same hatch covers was only 1.75 metres and the ultimate collapse load less than four metres. Donaldson found this information ‘personally quite astonishing’. As for the frame 65 theory of failure, he concluded that this ‘cannot be ignored and should be regarded as being a serious possibility’.

  On the central question of whether the wreck site should be re-examined, and whether the expenditure of funds was justified – with respect to the probability that the cause of the loss could be determined with reasonable confidence – Donaldson was unequivocal, concluding that ‘the case for expenditure is not only made out, but is compelling’. Nevertheless, he cautioned that there could only be one re-examination, ‘once and for all’, because of the large costs involved, which he estimated to be in the order of £2 million. In setting out the case for such a re-examination, Donaldson made an interesting argument comparing the way the aircraft industry designs new planes against the design of new ships. Whereas meticulous research and testing goes into the proving of each new prototype aircraft, at vast expense, no such degree of research goes into new ship designs. The shipbuilding industry is far less precise and doesn’t concern itself with theoretical weaknesses. What concerns it most is proved failure. But how can failure be proved without a serious commitment of time and money to investigate accidents, as is routinely done in the aircraft industry? For these reasons Donaldson felt it was ‘particularly important to make every possible effort to prove the cause of the loss of the Derbyshire at the very least to show that some of the theoretical causes are so likely to be the actual cause, whether singly or in combination, that the regulators who govern ship design will be obliged to take notice’. The DFA couldn’t have put it any better.

  Throughout 1995 I continued to support both sides in their respective efforts regarding Derbyshire. It helped that despite my work for the ITF, I was seen as being independent, with no agenda other than wanting the true cause of Derbyshire’s loss to be determined. I advised Paul Lambert and John Jubb of the DFA and featured in the Channel 4 documentary, but equally I met with Professor Faulkner and Robin Williams to answer their questions and provide the cost estimates used in Lord Donaldson’s assessment. However, by the end of the year I had left Oceaneering to join Blue Water Recoveries Ltd, a private salvage company formed to recover cargoes, mainly in the form of refined non-ferrous metals, lost in merchant ships sunk during both world wars. While I no longer had an active role in the investigation of Derbyshire’s loss, I watched with great professional and personal interest as the government came under serious pressure to provide definitive answers to the public and the DFA.

  The first indication of how Faulkner and Williams were to conduct the government’s investigation of the wreck was made public at a colloquium organized by the Royal Institution of Naval Architects in mid March 1996. The list of participants at this invitation-only meeting showed that interest in Derbyshire’s loss was at a much higher level since the Channel 4 documentary was broadcast. It included a wide spectrum of organizations and maritime experts with huge vested interests in the Derbyshire case specifically, and in naval construction and shipping safety in general. Amongst the audience of engineers, metallurgists, shipping companies, maritime lawyers, classification societies, MPs and civil servants from multiple ministries were the two staunchest members of the DFA: Paul Lambert and Marion Bayliss.

  Marion’s husband Curly, the ship’s chief engineer, had already given notice that this was to be his last trip when the Derbyshire sank. Angry at the loss of the new life she had planned with him running a children’s home together, and at what she perceived as the government’s obfuscation of the truth, Marion sat through most of the initial formal investigation in 1987, but this made her even angrier and eventually quite ill. I hadn’t met her before, but when Paul Lambert introduced us at the colloquium, the first thing she said was ‘Can I give you a kiss?’ She then told me how she had travelled to Japan after we had found the wreck in order to be as close as possible to Curly’s grave. The visit allowed her to say goodbye and to rid herself of the oppressive guilt she had felt since 1980. ‘I felt so much lighter suddenly,’ she said. ‘When I went to Japan I was part Marion, part Curly. I realized I had been carrying him on my back for fourteen years. Now I was Marion again, and Curly was part of my past.’

  Marion’s affectionate embrace was the one moment of emotion in an otherwise sobering day of technical discussions led by Faulkner and Williams after an opening address by Lord Donaldson. I was pleased to see that the technical assessors had decided to investigate a series of thirteen loss scenarios that, in theory at least, would cover every possible failure mechanism, including structural failure at frame 65. Their systematic and comprehensive approach indicated a level of commitment by the government that had been previously lacking. Lord Donaldson and the assessors also made a point of paying tribute to the DFA for their perseverance and persistence, which they believed had ‘already made contributions to the cause of marine safety by maintaining the issues in the public eye’. Above all, it was Paul and Marion’s presence that reminded everyone present of the human cost that needed to be at the forefront of the government’s work into the loss of Derbyshire.

  If the prevention of future losses was seen as a potential benefit of t
he investigation, a report that came out the following week from the colloquium on the latest bulk carrier losses underscored the scale of the problem. The numbers made for grim reading. Dry bulk carrier losses in 1994 were 50 per cent up on the previous year, with fifteen of these massive ships being actual or constructive total losses. More than 70 per cent of all the losses due to leaks, plate failures and outright disappearance, like Derbyshire, occurred in heavy weather. The number of seafarers killed was 141. An opinion piece that ran in Lloyd’s List the same day summarized the sickening situation, declaring that the continuing bulk carrier losses ‘remain a maritime scandal and a source of bewilderment to those who cannot understand how these very large ships can sink like stones’.

  Because of concerns about the seabed conditions where Derbyshire’s wreck was located, the government decided to conduct their investigation in two separate phases. The first phase was a short visual and sonar survey carried out in late July 1996 to ensure the conditions were suitable for the comprehensive photographic survey that was to be a major component of the second phase. Basically the government wanted to be sure that the wreckage wasn’t buried in mud and that the water clarity was ideal for photography before proceeding with the second, far more costly phase. My former company, Oceaneering International, was again hired for this first survey, in large part because they already had a ship and deep-water ROV system in the region, thus saving the normally high mobilization costs.

  Although I was told by one of the assessors that the survey was far from smooth, with disagreements between the various government representatives on board, the official report spoke of a successful outcome. Most importantly, they confirmed that the conditions for Phase II were suitable and that target #9 was indeed Derbyshire’s stern. They were also able to eliminate one of their thirteen loss scenarios, loss of the ship’s rudder, as it was still bolted firmly in place. This scenario stemmed from another of Derbyshire’s sister ships – renamed the Ocean Mandarin – having to be sold for scrap in early 1994 after losing its rudder.