At about half past six on the night of the 6th of March 1987, the unthinkable happened to the British car ferry, Herald of Free Enterprise. Having just left the Belgium port of Bruges, Zeebrugge for Dover in England, she was only 19 inches from the shore when she capsized leading to the deaths of 193 passengers and crew.
The seven-year old ferry was a roll-on roll-off craft which mainly have doors at both the bow and the stone and it soon became apparent that through over site the negligence she’d left the harbor with the bow doors still opened. Only a minute and a half into the voyage at the speed of just on the 19 knots, water began to pour into the car deck. This caused the ship to list the port before riding herself and then listing again. This time she went right over ending up half submerged in the shallow water.
With the electrical systems flooded, the ship was plunged into the utmost but the nearby dredges saw the lights go out and raised the alarm. Help began arriving within half an hour, but unfortunately, the three degrees Celsius water made up many of the victims trapped in the ship die due to hypothermia. It was later discovered that the crew member responsible for shutting the doors have gone on a break and was asleep nor was the first officer on the car deck as the ship set sail as he was trying to keep to a tight schedule, and the captain was not able to see that the doors were still open.
An inquiry into the disaster found out that there was a “disease of sloppiness’ throughout the Townsend Thoresen Company. It was also noted however, that ferry’s had sail with open doors before without sinking but there were other contributing factors here to do with the pressure created by the ship in the shallow water, the height of the bow doors and the speed of which the vessel was traveling, but even with all these factors disaster could still have been averted if the ship had been divided into water type compartments and not featured an open car deck. This facilitated easy loading and unloading of vehicles but also meant that the entire car deck was flooded leading to the ships cup-sizing when she turned.
In October 1987, the coroner’s in-quest jury returned the verdict of unlawful killing and many people involved to prosecute if a man slaughter as was the operating company P&O European Ferries. And since the accident, there had been design improvements made to this type of ferry including switches on the bridge displaying status of the bow doors, watertight rams fitted to the bow sections and ‘freeing flaps’ which let water escape from the car deck in case of flood. This was all too late for the Herald of Free Enterprise though which was raised and made one last voyage to India where she was dismantled in 1988.
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