On Wednesday morning, August 31, things are bustling in Harlingen, the Frisian port town from where the ferry service to Terschelling and Vlieland departs. The inhabitants are preparing for the annual Visserijdagen, a kind of village festival, fair and fair in one. The weather forecast predicts about 22 degrees and little wind, ideal conditions for an event that will attract tens of thousands of tourists in four days. Between the shanty choirs and flea markets, the smell of mussels and smoked mackerel will rise from long tables.
According to the script, mayor Ina Sjerps (PvdA) will open the Fishery Days that evening with a speech on the square. But when the time comes, she’s at home, shaken on the couch. A terrible accident has happened in her town; a meter-long wooden boom of the historic sailing ship Risk has broken off and landed on the head of 12-year-old Tara. That girl, who was part of a group of 160 schoolchildren of Dalton from The Hague, died on the spot.
From her living room, Sjerps can almost hear the deputy mayor addressing the crowd in her stead. “We would like to take a moment to reflect on the students who have experienced this, on the families, friends and especially the aid workers who have done their best today. Our people from Harlingen from the KNRM who have sailed. But I also want to reflect on the fact that it concerns our brown fleet. Look at each other in the coming days.” After that sounds Sailin’ Home across the square, as a tribute.
Sjerps deliberately left the opening of the Visserijdagen to her deputy mayor. She took care of the school children from The Hague all day long. “I didn’t think it was appropriate to be cheerful on that stage,” Sjerps later looks back. “It would also have been too emotional for me.”
The Hague school has been sailing across the Wad annually for three decades with the Harlinger brown fleet – chartered, traditional sailing ships that take their name from the color of the sails. Nothing ever went wrong until that sunny, windless day.
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Harlingen has had a tough year with three fatal accidents in five months. In May, a 79-year-old passenger on board the sailing clipper Wilhelmina died when a steel boom came down. At the end of October, three people were killed in a collision between a water taxi and the express boat to Vlieland and Terschelling. The fourth victim, a 12-year-old child, is still missing.
Exactly one month after the last accident, on November 21, Harlingen has sunk into a deep hibernation. In the inland ports, the windows of the sailing ships are covered with garbage bags to keep out the biting cold. A few go – thickly packed – with a drilling machine on the deck. The money that the skippers earned in the summer from sailing guests around is largely spent on maintenance in the winter.
Until thirty years ago, the shipyards, sail makers and mast makers determined the street scene. There are still warehouses along the two inner harbors with names such as Java, Sumatra and Russia. The ports are still there, but the cargo ships have largely made way for pleasure craft. The Zuiderhaven now houses the largest brown fleet in the Netherlands with seventy ships. The masts tower high above the houses. Once every four years, the largest and most impressive lakes tall ships in the world – giant sailing ships sailing to Antarctica or Cape Horn – for the Tallship Races. The event puts Harlingen on the map as a sailing city far beyond the national borders.
Surreal
Harlingen is used to the dangers of the sea, but this year was very hard confronted with the dark side. Before 2022, the last fatal accident on an old sailing ship was in 2016. In the forty years before that, there was not even a single fatal accident with an old sailing boat.
There was something surreal about it, remembers municipal clerk Stella van Gent, the formal fuss surrounding the accident at the Risk. That day she was involved in taking care of the school classes in the Entrepot building, where a musical performance for the Visserijdagen was actually to be prepared that afternoon. The safety protocol came into effect. Suddenly a crisis response commander and communication experts entered the Entrepot building. All children were asked for their social security number.
Harlingen is used to the dangers of the sea, but this year was very hard confronted with the dark side
“I really thought: stop it!”, says Van Gent in a room of the three hundred year old town hall. “In my opinion, we had only one thing to do: provide enough sandwiches, cakes, lemonade and a place where the children could be together.”
Harlingen’s pride has now also become the subject of grief, says Van Gent. Behind her, on the windowsill, is a miniature of an old three-master. Three years ago, the municipality gave all ‘brown’ ships with Harlingen as their home port the flag of the city to hang in the top. This way you can see whether Harlingers are sailing anywhere in the world. Or, as Van Gent puts it, “one of us”.
Mayor Sjerps also has a warm heart for the fleet – “the ships and skippers belong to Harlingen” – but she is also the mayor of her inhabitants and chair of the local KNRM branch. “It has to be safe,” she said a day later about pleasure craft. She consciously chose not to dismiss the accident as an incident during media appearances. A few months later she says: “I couldn’t and didn’t want to. Not as long as I can’t guarantee this will never happen again.”
But what to do, Harlingen struggles with. Legislation for ships is determined nationally. The municipality is investigating what it can do itself, for example to check the certificates of the boats more strictly. The municipality wants things to change, but is not yet sure what.
Break down
For the volunteers of the local rescue service, dangers are part of their daily lives. “They experience much more than the accidents that make the news and do not go public about it,” says Van Gent.
Over the years, Edward Zwitser of the KNRM saw several boys and men silently “destroying goodness”. That is to say, they may not admit it out loud – they are fishermen, sailors, “tough fellows who like to battle the elements” – but suddenly collapse in an unguarded moment. He saw men burst into tears when the story came up again six years after an accident. Someone started shaking like a straw twelve years later when he found diary fragments. “Yes, he sometimes has that,” his wife told Zwitser.
We can practice sailing in heavy storms, but in major accidents it comes down to improvisation and instinct
Edward Swiss KNRM
The rescue team consists of about 25 people, who all live and work in Harlingen. You have to, because from the moment the beeper sounds, the first lifeboat must be in the water within ten minutes. From home, office or pub straight to the harbour, put on a rescue suit and go. “The alarm sounds and you really only know two things: whether it is a prio 1, 2 or 3 accident and a short description, no more than ‘person in distress’ or ‘ship takes water’ The team has no idea what it will find. You can’t train on it either. We can practice sailing in heavy storms, but in major accidents it largely comes down to improvisation and instinct. When you find a group of shocked students, it is mainly a matter of putting on your dad hat.”
Deadly and close
According to Zwitser, the accidents on the water taxi, in which three people died and a child went missing, and on the Risk have three things in common: they were large, deadly and close by. “The boy on the water taxi was an acquaintance of ours. And the victim on the Risk was the same age as the child of one of our rescuers. But you can’t run away if you notice that you can’t pull a child or acquaintance out of the water. Once at sea you are stuck on that ship.”
A day after such a nervous breakdown, many rescue workers dismiss the incident. Some of the rescuers find it difficult to acknowledge trauma, says Zwitser. “But it is definitely there, although it sometimes comes much later. We now have people take trauma courses in every team. Not to treat, but to recognize it. That starts with something as simple as: is someone still themselves?”
Most skippers keep the hatches tightly closed, interview requests are invariably rejected. Too early, too personal, too much division and chatter. On the one hand, there is the sadness of colleagues whose lives will never be the same after such an accident. On the other hand, the fear of reputational damage runs deep. Because no matter how free-spirited and adventurous, all charterers remain entrepreneurs who have to earn their living from sailing.
Home and pension
The fact that the sector as a whole was dismissed as ‘unsafe’ – as many believe the mayor did with her sensitive statement shortly after the accident – not only affects them commercially, but also emotionally. For most skippers, their boat is their life’s work. It’s their home and retirement. They would rather eat their shoe than neglect their ship. Always having to justify yourself, most skippers are not waiting for that, they say.
Just because of that nagging self-doubt. Because if a boom can come down on two ships that are known for the thorough maintenance and craftsmanship of the skippers – why not with them?
What does not help is that the official investigations into the circumstances of the accidents on the Risk and the Wilhelmina take a long time. Wood rot in a mast or boom is a diagnosis that no one wants. No matter how good the quality of the wood and how carefully inspected, an incipient hole in the middle of such a giant beam is impossible to detect even with the most trained eye, say experts.
“So far I have consciously worked every journalist out again. I didn’t feel the need to talk about it at all,” says Joost Bakker, owner of Rederij Vooruit, the largest booking agency in Harlingen. Bakker mediates for De Risk and 35 other brown fleet ships. He takes a deep breath and then makes only two cups of tea. “Maybe it’s good too. Then I can give it a better place.”
Bakker was in the harbor that day in August. He saw how the students were brought ashore with a fast lifeboat, while the skipper of the Risk sailed with his own ship to the police boat in the harbor to be arrested and interrogated. “Because he was a suspect, he did not receive victim support. But even the skipper does not just get that film off his mind.”
He calculates aloud: his company has been offering sailing trips for 55 years. About 30,000 passengers board each year. “That’s more than a million guests.” Baker hesitates for a moment. He could say something about odds and percentages. “But then I give the impression that I am trivializing the accident. One accident is too many. We will carry this with us from now on.”