Suppose all skippers of historic sailing ships had followed some important safety standards of their professional association. Could the deaths of three passengers on two ships last year have been prevented? One of the fatalities was the Hague girl Tara (12). She was fatally injured by a broken boom during a school trip on the historic sailing ship Risico on the Wadden Sea.
Director Paul van Ommen of the professional association BBZ does not dare to say it. “Anyone who sails is constantly concerned with safety. But it remains a human job,” says Van Ommen, shortly after the Dutch Safety Board in Enkhuizen presented a sad report on Wednesday about safety on the so-called ‘brown fleet’.
Chairman Chris van Dam of the Dutch Safety Board also points out that these types of accidents “cannot simply be prevented”. These types of ships are “sailing museum pieces,” he says. And: “There is of course a certain risk of going out on the water with sometimes considerable wind force on this old material.”
But the Dutch Safety Board report makes it clear that there is a lot wrong with the safety culture and especially with the government’s supervision of it. The historic fleet has not become “demonstrably safer” since six years ago, when the council also published a report after a fatal accident on a ship, the researchers write. “This is a painful observation.”
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Major tourist attraction
Although there is a system of certification by three inspection agencies and supervision by the Human Environment and Transport Inspectorate (ILT), it still has “gaps”, the report states. Some skippers suffer from “a lack of proper knowledge”, attention to safety is “non-binding”, supervision appears to be “little effective”, regulations offer “too much room for interpretation” and the inspectorate is “barely” completing its supervision. in. And while sailing with the brown fleet, between three and four hundred ships in total, has developed into a major tourist attraction.
“Passengers are happy to go on a pleasant and adventurous sailing trip for a fee,” the council said, but they cannot verify whether safety is guaranteed. They can also expect that the government will monitor this. That doesn’t happen enough, says council chairman Van Dam. “The standards that the inspection agencies work with are not sufficiently defined and for certain topics, such as the rejection of masts, are often not defined at all. This causes differences in interpretation. Furthermore, the knowledge of the inspectorate has become considerably smaller after the liberalization of supervision. Moreover, this supervision is risk-driven, which means that supervision is more likely to take place on hotel ships, for example, because there are more people on board. And while six people have died on historic sailing ships in recent years.”
If you want 100 percent certainty, you have to stay in bed
Chris van Dam chairman of the Research Council
According to the study, cooperation between supervisors is also “difficult”. Van Dam: “That’s not possible, is it? Have a drink together.” He also points to the “culture” that “when the ropes are loose, the skipper on board is in charge.” Van Dam: “It would be good to put that stubbornness on shore and work together as an industry.” He says he cannot give “a definitive answer” to the question of whether parents can send their child on a sailing school trip without any worries. “If you want 100 percent safety, you have to stay in bed. But you can limit the risks enormously so that people can go on board with confidence.”
Safety on board would improve significantly if there were clear standards that were legally anchored, according to director Van Ommen of the trade association. A painful example is that five years ago his association published a standard stating that a skipper must consult an expert if the length and depth of so-called wind cracks in the wood have exceeded a certain size, as was the case with the ship Risk . “We have written this standard for everyone who is active in this sector,” says Van Ommen. Unfortunately, the skipper of the Risico was “unfamiliar” with the standard, the Dutch Safety Board notes in its report. Van Ommen: “We asked the government whether our standards could be made mandatory, after it became clear that we had not reached every skipper with the publication of those standards. We received the answer that it was not possible.”
Lack of expertise
Many skippers and owners of historic sailing ships say they take safety very seriously, but complain about a lack of expertise among regulators. “The lack of knowledge during the inspection is astonishing,” says skipper Len Pool of the clipper Nooit Volmaeckt. “I was confronted about matters that had previously been approved by the inspector, but for which I was treated like a criminal in front of my passengers. They entered the deck with five men while I was still maneuvering in the port of Vlieland.”
Most skippers say they welcome a clear system of standards and supervision. Harry Muter, skipper of the seagoing sailing ship the Morgenster: “What we think back to with nostalgia is that in the past we had one inspection office. Now a skipper, if things get a little too hot under his feet at one inspection agency, goes to the next.”
Time for action, in short. Skippers can already conform to the standards that the trade organization has already drawn up, council chairman Chris Van Dam suggests. And the government must also take action. Van Dam: “I hope the minister reads this report carefully and starts pumping. Profit is within reach.”