The parents of the deceased Tara again hold Rederij Vooruit liable for the fatal accident last summer on the ship the Risk. They do that after this newspaper announced that the papers of the ship were not in order and therefore should not have sailed. This was apparent from documents from the Human Environment and Transport Inspectorate.
The 12-year-old student from The Hague was on August 31 with her school at a sailing camp on the Wadden Sea. On board the clipper, the boom broke off, fatally injuring the girl.
Two weeks later, her parents held the Harlinger Rederij Vooruit liable, assuming that this was the owner of the ship. That turned out not to be the case: the skipper is the owner of the Risk. Rederij Vooruit is the booking office with which almost forty other charter skippers were affiliated at the time, including the Risk.
Pro-active
This week discovered the Leeuwarder Courant based on documents from the Human Environment and Transport Inspectorate that the skipper did not have a valid Proof of Rigging. This certificate guarantees that, among other things, the boom, masts and other round timber are in order. The proof had already expired six weeks earlier.
Tara’s parents therefore hold Rederij Vooruit liable again. This time as a party that has committed an unlawful act, their lawyer Herman Zandijk explains. “The shipping company should have proactively checked whether its contracted ships had valid inspection certificates. Let’s see if everything’s okay. They shouldn’t have sat back and said ‘I’ll do the reservations and nothing else’.
In the letter to the shipping company, the lawyer writes: “If you had proactively included in your contracts with the owners of the chartered ships, that they must annually show the shipping company copies of these valid certificates, the shipping company would have in that case not only can refrain from contracting the Risk, but should also refrain from doing so. In that case, this accident would not have happened.”
Wood rot
In September, the ILT announced that almost 15 percent of the total brown fleet – about 250 ships – did not have valid certificates at that time. The requested documents from ILT now show that this also applied to the Risk, and seven other brown fleet ships from Harlingen that were affiliated with Rederij Vooruit.
Last autumn, the Dutch Safety Board reported that the accident was caused by wood rot. The Public Prosecution Service could not say this week when the investigation into the accident will be completed or whether criminal prosecution will take place. The skipper, who also owns the Risk, indicates that pending this investigation he will not respond to questions from this newspaper.
The first liability claim has now been processed by the insurance companies on behalf of the skipper, says Zandijk.
Video of boom
The lawyer has received a video that a fellow student made on the Risk, just before the accident with the boom. A still from the video shows a large crack in the boom. According to the maker of the video, about four children were on the deck at the time. Whether there is a connection between the crack and the breaking of the boom is not yet known.
According to a Frisian charter skipper of a clipper, the crack in the boom looks like a drought or shrinkage crack. They are more common in masts and other round timber. “That in itself can do no harm, but you never know with wood,” says the skipper, who wishes to remain anonymous. “During an inspection you stick a knife in it and you can see whether or not it is good. Mold can get into wood, then it can start to rot.”
In the past, the ships of the brown fleet only had wooden masts and booms. “And these kinds of cracks were the order of the day,” says the skipper.
But nowadays many skippers switch to steel when round wood needs to be replaced. He did that himself. “I have, among other things, a steel mast and have replaced the rigging. That gives me a great feeling in strong wind.”