Why lifeboats hurt people

A lifeboat is meant to save you on the worst day at sea. For many years, though, lifeboats hurt seafarers on ordinary days: during drills, tests and maintenance, with the ship safe alongside.

The pattern repeats. A hook opens when nobody meant it to. A wire breaks. A boat drops from the davit with crew inside. Some people fall several metres into the water, still strapped into the boat.

Investigators found the same causes again and again. Hooks were not fully reset. Equipment was badly maintained. People did not know the boat well enough, or did not talk to each other during the launch.

Almost every lifeboat rule you meet in this course answers one of those causes. If you know why a rule exists, you are much more likely to follow it when you are tired, rushed or sure that “it will be fine”.

What the numbers say

In 2001 the UK Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB) published a study of the lifeboat accidents reported to it over ten years. Its foreword is blunt: over a ten-year period, lifeboats and their launching systems “have cost the lives of 12 professional seafarers, or 16% of the total lives lost on merchant ships. Eighty seven people have been injured.” Every one of these accidents happened during training or testing, not in a real emergency (MAIB Safety Study 1/2001).

The study sorted its database by the part that failed:

Winches caused the most incidents, but hooks caused the most deaths. The MAIB concluded that “the most common cause of fatal accidents involving lifeboat launching systems is the failure of on-load release hooks”. It also noted that the SOLAS requirement for on-load and off-load release on ships built after 1 July 1986 had led to “over-complicated” hook designs.

Steamship Mutual noted in 2007 that there were no complete worldwide figures. An industry survey from 2000 by OCIMF, INTERTANKO and SIGTTO found that most accidents happened “during routine drills and maintenance activities at the human/mechanical interface”, according to the same Steamship Mutual article.

Cases you should know

Harmony of the Seas, 13 September 2016

The French investigation body BEAmer investigated this accident on a Bahamas-flagged cruise ship. During an abandon ship drill, lifeboat 14 was being lowered with five crew aboard. The forward lashing gripe had not been released. When the operator released the winch brake, the boat tilted heavily. The light stop pawls on the hooks did not hold under the violent movement, and the long links slipped out of both hooks. The boat fell into the sea. One crew member died and four were injured.

The report found several contributing factors. Roles were unclear. There was no step where someone cross-checked that the gripes were clear. Nothing mechanical stopped the boat being lowered by gravity while a gripe was still in place. The stop pawls did not hold the links when it mattered. After the accident, the owner added an unmanned test lowering before anyone boards.

Notice that no single person “caused” this accident. A missed step, a missing cross-check and a weak part lined up. That is typical.

What keeps going wrong

IMO collected the causes in MSC.1/Circ.1206/Rev.1, “Measures to prevent accidents with lifeboats”. Most accidents fell under these headings:

1. Failure of the on-load release mechanism.
2. Inadvertent operation of the on-load release mechanism.
3. Inadequate maintenance of lifeboats, davits and launching equipment.
4. Communication failures.
5. Lack of familiarity with lifeboats, davits, equipment and associated controls.
6. Unsafe practices during lifeboat drills and inspections.
7. Design faults other than on-load release mechanisms.

Only two of the seven are purely about hardware. The rest are about people, training and routine.

How the rules answered

The service technicians’ own training must now include the “causes of lifeboat and rescue boat accidents” (MSC.402(96) §8). This lesson is your version of that.

What this means for you

Treat every drill, test and inspection as the moment when accidents actually happen. Follow the manufacturer’s manual for your boat. Check the hooks yourself. Speak up if a step is missed. The rest of this course shows you how.

Why “over-complicated” hooks appeared

The MAIB study linked the problem to a SOLAS change. Ships built after 1 July 1986 had to have release gear with both on-load and off-load capability, so hooks had to be able to open with the weight of the boat still on them. In the MAIB’s view, this led to “over-complicated” designs.

IMO’s later answer is visible in the 2011 hook criteria. A fully reset hook must be designed so that “the weight of the lifeboat does not cause any force to be transmitted to the operating mechanism”, and locking devices must not be able to “turn to open due to forces from the hook load” (LSA Code 4.4.7.6, MSC.320(89)). In other words, a correctly closed hook must stay closed by itself. Lesson 4 looks at this in detail.

The MAIB comparison

The MAIB set its 12 lifeboat deaths against the other 73 deaths over the same period. Lifeboat-related deaths equalled each of the two largest other causes: enclosed spaces (12) and falls overboard (12). Enclosed space entry later got its own mandatory drills (SOLAS III/19.3.3, from 1 January 2015).

Reading investigation reports

Investigation reports aim to prevent the next accident, not to blame. When you read one, look for the chain: the condition of the equipment, the procedure, what people knew, and what nobody checked. You will usually find the same chain on your own ship, waiting for one more link.