The Shipwreck Hunter

by David L. Mearns

  The small number of relatives who were shown extracts of the video footage were understandably upset by images of the stern, with the words Derbyshire and Liverpool (the ship’s port of registry) still vibrantly painted on the transom. The DFA had campaigned long and hard for exactly this type of physical proof to be produced, but they would not have been prepared for the cold, hard reality of seeing what in effect was the grave site of their husbands, brothers and other family members. Despite the passage of time, the emotions of many relatives were still palpable and raw, as without a body to bury, the grieving process had never really ended.

  Their grief and anger was exacerbated by the treatment they felt they were receiving from their own government, even after the Department for Transport agreed to fund the new wreck investigations recommended by Lord Donaldson. The DFA considered that they themselves were responsible for a long list of evidence and technical achievements, including the actual location of the wreck, without which none of what the government was proposing in the form of an investigation would have been possible. Perhaps naively, they were expecting full transparency from the government and to be treated almost as technical partners during the investigation, invited to formally participate in the planning, execution and interpretation of the wreck surveys. They argued for DFA representation on board the survey ships, but their request, backed up by a Labour MP and the powerful Rail, Maritime and Transport Union, was rejected out of hand. The government’s justification for their unsympathetic treatment of the DFA was that because the investigation results could have a direct bearing on legal proceedings in which the DFA had a vested interest, they could not be party to the investigative process. Of course, this position conveniently ignored the fact that the body with the greatest vested interest was the UK government itself, with a potential liability of upwards of £25 million.

  Despite lobbying hard in Parliament and the press, the DFA did not get a representative on board the government’s Phase I survey, nor would they be allowed on board for Phase II, which was scheduled to take place in the summer of 1997. Unbeknownst to anyone, the contractor for the Phase II investigation was selected even before the Phase I survey was conducted, and it was a surprising and clever choice. The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), based in Massachusetts, was famous for having found the wreck of the Titanic and was a world leader in conducting science in the deep ocean. The engineers in WHOI’s Deep Submergence Laboratory (DSL) were also pioneers in the development of innovative and cutting-edge underwater imaging and lighting technology. Having been a defence fellow at the nearby Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which shares joint programmes with WHOI, Douglas Faulkner was well aware of WHOI’s capabilities and their previous work on deep-water shipwrecks under the leadership of Robert Ballard. Even though Ballard had left WHOI by the time of the Phase II survey and had earlier predicted the wreck would never be found, the team at DSL were clearly the best equipped to handle the key requirement of having to photograph the entire wreckage field and to digitally construct a single photomosaic from the many thousands of individual images.

  There were other advantages to the selection of WHOI. First, they were the only organization that could take the project on effectively a lumpsum basis for the £2 million budget the government and the European Union had earmarked. Second, the direct award eliminated the need for a time-consuming and potentially controversial tendering process, which would have drawn fierce competition from several offshore contractors. Finally, and most importantly, with WHOI the government was getting an organization that would essentially be a technical partner operating under a memorandum of understanding with the US National Science Foundation (NSF), where the focus of both parties would be on achieving the best possible results and scientific analysis. Oceaneering might have felt the contract award to WHOI was a stitch-up — and if I’d still been working there I’d have felt exactly the same – but in truth no offshore contractor could compete with the incredible value WHOI offered the government.

  The Phase II survey took place during March and April 1997 from the US research vessel Thomas G. Thompson. It produced a huge amount of exceptional, high-quality data and imagery and was rightly claimed to be the ‘most comprehensive photographic survey of a sunken vessel ever undertaken’. It set a new benchmark for wreck investigations and provided the three technical assessors (Dr Remo Torchio, an Italian naval architect, was added to the team as the European Commission had contributed a major portion of the £2 million budget) with virtually every piece of information they would need to determine the cause of Derbyshire’s loss. About the only disappointment was that WHOI failed to collect a physical sample of wreckage for the study of fracture surfaces because the hydraulic pump on their ROV could not produce sufficient power to run their cutting devices.

  The major technical achievement of the survey was the photomosaic of high-definition electronic still images covering 98 per cent of the 1.5 km × 1 km wreckage field. A total of 135,774 individual images were used in the photomosaic, with resolution better than 5 cm; that is the equivalent of having a photograph of an area roughly half the size of the City of London but still being able to pick out an object as small as a quail’s egg. Unlike modern-day aircraft investigations, where every piece of wreckage can be recovered and pieced back together on frames, the only way this could be achieved with the 2,000-plus pieces of Derbyshire’s wreckage spread out over an area the size of 165 football pitches was by taking the 135,774 photographs and electronically stitching them together into composite images. The navigational control and computer processing required to construct the 119 mosaics published in the UK/EC report was extremely impressive and completely justified the government’s selection of WHOI. Today, such is the advance of technology, anyone with a decent digital camera and some free software can make their own mosaics with the push of a single button. However, that shouldn’t take away what WHOI achieved nearly twenty years ago with their camera dangling from a cable suspended off the back of a heaving ship, 2.6 miles deep with zero ambient light.

  Now that WHOI had delivered big-time, it was up to the three assessors to sift through the evidence and find answers. They got off to an awkward start, though, when in October 1997 Douglas Faulkner resigned his position. While personal reasons were cited, the reprimand he had received from the government for co-authoring a technical paper on hatch cover failure is probably closer to the truth. While it was no secret that both Faulkner and Williams believed that the failure of hatch covers played a central role in the loss of Derbyshire, for one of the assessors to publish a paper on the subject was seen as calling his impartiality into question. This perceived presupposition of the results of the investigation angered Faulkner’s political masters and gave more ammunition to the DFA, who continued to complain bitterly about the assessors’ lack of objectivity and not being allowed to conduct their own independent assessment of the Phase II survey results.

  By the time the report was made public in March 1998, signed by both Williams and Torchio, the DFA had lost all hope of being told the truth about Derbyshire’s loss, which they still believed was precipitated by deck plate cracking in the area of the infamous frame 65. In the executive summary of the report, the two assessors went through each of the thirteen loss scenarios in order. First on their list was deck cracking at frame 65: ‘Forms and patterns of plating failures and fractures, implosion/explosion damages to adjacent compartments fore and aft of Bulkhead 65 and the integrity of the cofferdam structures (bulkheads 64/65) show that this scenario was not the cause of the loss.’

  Two more loss scenarios (deck cracking at mid-section and torsional weakness) were ruled out before the assessor’s view about hatch cover collapse was summarized:

  All the hatch covers were found within the wreckage field and indications are that all had been firstly driven into the holds by external pressure. No. 1 hold starboard was destroyed by dynamic impact.

  Hatch cover failure was the final consequence which cau
sed the loss. The slow filling of the bow prior to their failure indicates that this was not however the initiating event.

  Despite their technical language, what the assessor was saying was crystal clear. Derbyshire sank not because of a break at frame 65, but because all the hatch covers failed, which would have filled the entire hull with water. No matter how large or strong the ship might have been, if its hull was flooded it would sink.

  The report continued with elimination of the next two loss scenarios (hatch cover attachments and foredeck corrosion and fracture) before the crucial initiating event was finally revealed. As if the whole eighteen-year saga of Derbyshire’s loss wasn’t controversial enough, the next two paragraphs in the report would really pour fuel on the naked flames.

  The bow was mostly flooded prior to the sinking which reduced the forward freeboard and made the vessel sluggish to rise to the oncoming waves. This resulted in considerably increased wave heights and dynamic pressures on the forward cargo hatch leading to its failure.

  This was the initiating event of the loss and this scenario describes the loss. The subsequent hatch cover failure was the final consequence causing the loss of the vessel.

  The final six loss scenarios were all ruled out before the assessors provided a more descriptive explanation of what they believed happened in September 1980 as the captain and crew of the Derbyshire were riding out the extreme sea conditions caused by Typhoon Orchid. Without the benefit of surviving witnesses, they postulated a scenario in which the entire bow of the ship forward of no. 1 hold became flooded with seawater, starting first with the bosun’s space and then the fore peak ballast tank. The mass of water caused Derbyshire’s bow to go down by some 2.5 metres, which in turn made the ship slower to rise to the massive waves during the storm. Because of the great length of the ship and the poor visibility caused by spray over the deck, the captain would not have been aware that the bow was riding lower, and in any event it would have been too dangerous for the crew to investigate further. At some point the ship was hit by a wave that was higher and steeper than all the others, made worse because the freeboard of the flooded bow was reduced by 2.5 metres. This wave destroyed the starboard hatch cover, causing the cavernous space of the no. 1 hold to fill with 10,000 tonnes of water in less than a minute. At this point, with all forward freeboard and reserve buoyancy lost, the ship was essentially doomed to sink.

  The forward end of Derbyshire was now so low in the water that waves no longer broke on the ship; they simply rolled up the deck as far as the bridge, as if up a shallow beach. So much water was riding up the length of the ship that the hatch covers, starting with no. 2 and progressing all the way to no. 9, collapsed sequentially from the sheer weight of water on top of them. As the hatch covers collapsed one by one and each hold was filled with water, the bow was driven deeper and the ship started to sink. At certain depths all the confined watertight spaces integral to the design of Derbyshire, like wing tanks and the double bottoms, imploded due to the hydrostatic pressure of the surrounding water. Like a balloon being squeezed until it burst, the implosion of these spaces released shock waves that caused even more damage to nearby structures. The enormous forces generated by this implosion/explosion behaviour were what caused the near total fragmentation of the ship. One calculation in the report estimated the force that ripped the hull apart as equivalent to more than twenty tons of TNT. The report further emphasized that the implosion/ explosion damage was a consequence of the sinking, not the cause.

  As for the cause of the sinking, or what in their view was a key initiating event, the assessors left no doubt about who was at fault: ‘The unsecured foredeck stores hatch cover is carried away and the Bosun’s store space fills with every wave over the bow probably being full in less than 1 hour.’

  With these thirty words, Williams and Torchio were clearly apportioning at least some of the blame for Derbyshire’s loss to her crew. That the foredeck stores hatch cover was knowingly unsecured – essentially left open by the crew – was an inflammatory and highly damaging accusation that implied serious professional negligence. The assessors must have realized that by concluding that ‘the hatch cover was not securely closed and sealed by its toggles’, which they presented in their report as a finding of fact, they were effectively impugning the reputation of Derbyshire’s officers and crew. That all the men were dead and unable to defend themselves only made matters worse for the DFA and upset the relatives to no end.

  The many positive aspects of the assessors’ report, in particular a lengthy list of recommendations for improved ship design and safety, were lost amongst recriminations by the DFA about a pattern of ignorance by the government and what was viewed as the patent bias of the assessors to the ‘hatch cover loss scenario’. Captain Dave Ramwell, a master mariner who ran ships in and out of the Mersey and who co-authored an investigative book that first detailed the frame 65 structural issues with the Bridge class of ships, called the latest official conclusion ‘predictable and wrong’. Despite these objections about the report, it and the Phase II survey results were deemed to be ‘new and important information which could not be produced at the original investigation’; in accordance with the Merchant Shipping Act 1995, this allowed the deputy prime minister John Prescott to order the formal inquiry to be reopened. Prescott gave interested parties three months to submit representations on whether it should be reopened in full or in part, and whether it should be held before a wreck commissioner (as with the 1987 inquiry) or in the High Court. Once again the DFA were told to wait.

  It took until 17 December 1997 before they got their answer. The formal inquiry would be reopened in full and held in the High Court. The attorney general would prepare the case and the government would contribute to the relatives’ legal costs. At last the DFA were to have their day in the country’s most senior Admiralty court, with proper legal representation.

  The one thing the DFA and other relatives had learned was that justice moved slowly. The formal inquiry (FI), to be heard by the Honourable Mr Justice Colman, didn’t get under way until 5 April 2000. The parties to the inquiry included Swan Hunter, who built the Bridge class of ships; Bibby Line, who owned and operated Derbyshire; Lloyd’s Register of Shipping, the classification society where the ship was entered; the Department for Environment, Transport and Regions, and the DFA. All parties had vested interests in the outcome of the case and thus were individually represented by their own Queen’s Council barrister.

  In his opening address Justice Colman set the tone for the rest of the hearing when he emphasized that the inquiry was about seeking the truth and was not a trial of anyone’s civil liability. Part of the reason for the long delay before the hearing started was because the various parties and their expert witnesses had been instructed to cooperate in order to reduce technical disagreements. Colman encouraged this cooperation, and in the common purpose of seeking the truth he dispensed with the wigs and gowns normally worn by lawyers and judges in the High Court, saying that ‘they have nothing to contribute to non-confrontational proceedings’. His decision to rid the court of its most symbolic garments would have immediately eased the tensions of the many family members who packed the public seating areas. Those who attended the 1987 inquiry would have remembered it as a frustrating affair during which important evidence was ignored and the frame 65 theory was under constant attack by the lawyers for Lloyd’s and Swan Hunter.

  The inquiry lasted for fifty-four days and heard oral testimony from twenty scientific and technical experts, six master mariners and five other witnesses. Robin Williams featured far more than any other witness, appearing for ten days of the hearing, and was at the centre of the most contentious and controversial testimony, involving the allegedly unsecured fore peak hatch cover cited by the assessors as the main reason for seawater flooding the bow spaces in the first place. Williams’ opinion was that the hatch couldn’t be secured in the normal way because someone had stuffed a mooring line from the port windlass down it, prev
enting the lid from being tightly closed. Instead of securing the lid with the eight hatch toggles, the crew, according to Williams’ study of the wreck photographs and video, had attempted to lash it down with some heaving line tied between two toggles, with the line running over one corner of the lid. He also used the wreck photos to bolster his opinion that the toggles weren’t tightened, as several appeared to be in a loosened position.

  Williams didn’t need to spell it out; it was crystal clear in his reports and testimony that he believed Derbyshire’s crew had been negligent in the extreme by knowingly leaving a hatch so poorly secured, especially in light of a typhoon being forecast. The DFA’s barrister explained in his opening statement how much distress this had caused the families, especially the wives of the men whose job it had been to look after such things. It was particularly unfortunate that this accusation had been publicized in the press and on television from the release of the assessors’ report in March 1998 all the way up to the present day. He wanted it to be clear from the outset of the hearing that ‘The DFA’s position is that to suggest such a course of conduct by experienced and competent seamen, with ample notice that they might be affected by typhoon conditions, is nothing short of preposterous.’

  Throughout the course of the hearing Williams’ dogged stance about the hatch lid grew weaker and weaker as other experts stepped up to give opposing testimony and factual evidence was submitted to prove that his reading of the wreck photographs was wrong. The first leg of his position was conclusively kicked away when it was shown by the DFA’s technical experts that the mooring line emerging from the hatch was not attached to the port windlass. Several experts identified it as a four-square plaited polypropylene mooring line (only nylon mooring line was used on the ship’s windlasses) that was stored in the bosun’s space and floated out of the hatch when the ship sank. The second leg was lost when it was shown that the toggles were deformed when a heavy object struck the hatch during the sinking process, also causing the lid to be ripped away and one side of the coaming to be stoved in. Williams’ reliance on the apparently loosened position of the toggles evaporated as more experts testified that they were prone to work free in severe weather and could even have rotated and unwound as the ship plummeted to the seabed.