11 January 2008
Becky Allen

The history of the modern lifeboat - like many pieces of safety equipment - is a history of disaster. For the purposes of this story, two disasters are particularly relevant.

It was the sinking of the Titanic almost a century ago - when hundreds of passengers and crew were famously left to the mercy of the waves for lack of space in the boats  - that led to the first international regulations requiring ships to carry enough lifeboats for all on board. For the decades after, lifeboats remained largely unchanged, until another disaster - this time in the North Sea - again forced the international community to act.

During the night of 27 March 1980 a fierce storm hit the Ekofisk oilfield, and the Norwegian accommodation rig Alexander Kielland collapsed into the sea.
Though four of its seven lifeboats were launched, they could not be released from the heavily listing rig and 123 workers perished.

A Norwegian inquiry blamed part of the lifeboat launching system - the so-called "off-load" hooks - for failing to save the crew. As a result, the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) amended SOLAS - the Convention of Safety of Lives at Sea - so that all hooks on lifeboats in ships built after 1986 had to be operable "on-load".

On-load systems are designed to release the lifeboat whether or not the falls suspending it are under load, where off-load systems would only release the boat when it was waterborne.

Drill risk

It seems unnecessary to say that lifeboats exist to save lives. But during the 20 years following the Ekofisk disaster, many in the shipping industry have become increasingly concerned by the number of sailors' lives being lost in lifeboat accidents, particularly during drills.

Because there is no global reporting system, the UK decided to examine its own data. The results were alarming. The  Maritime Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB) discovered that between 1991 and 2001, lifeboat accidents had killed 12 seafarers - 16% of all lives lost on merchant ships under the MAIB's jurisdiction - and injured a further 87.

As well as uncovering the scale of the problem, the study also identified its primary cause: the on-load hooks fitted to lifeboat launching systems since 1986. According to the MAIB: "The most common cause of fatal accidents involving lifeboat launching systems is the failure of on-load release hooks. In the 11 accidents [of this type] reported over the 10-year period, seven people were killed and nine injured."

To add insult to injury, all these accidents happened during mandatory lifeboat drills and, the MAIB concluded, they would continue unless changes were made.

"There has been no balancing payoff in lives saved by these systems. During the last 10 years [1991-2001] the MAIB has never received a report where a lifeboat has been used in an evacuation ... MAIB's data suggests that seafarers will continue to be injured and lose their lives while operating these systems in the future," the report concluded.

On the hook

Though the nature of the problem has become even clearer since 2001, remedial action has been slow. In 2006, the UK's Maritime & Coastguard Agency (MCA) published a detailed report on lifeboat launching systems.

Again, the report blamed on-load hooks. According to the MCA: "Lifeboat accidents occur for a number of reasons, but ... most of the more serious accidents, particularly those leading to fatalities, occur because of problems with the on-load release hooks. Through premature or unexpected opening of one or both hooks during a routine test or drill, the lifeboat either becomes suspended vertically or drops completely into the water, typically resulting in injury or fatality to the crew."

The report found that not only were on-load hooks far too complex to be
operated safely, many designs were unstable: "They have a tendency to open under the effect of the lifeboat's own weight and need to be held closed by the operating mechanism.

"As a result, there is no defence against defects or faults in the operating mechanism, or errors by the crew, or incorrect resetting of the hook after being released ... There is no point expecting there to be first-class seafarers on board with PhDs in lifeboat maintenance; instead lifeboat designs need to be made seafarer-proof."

Though they complied with regulations, many on-load hooks were "inherently unsafe and therefore not fit for purpose" and radical action was required (see box above), the MCA said. "The solution lies not in training or maintenance, but in radical redesign of the hook types involved," it concluded.

Too little, too late?

Since the MAIB and MCA reports were published, the IMO has introduced two changes to lifeboat regulations and guidance.

Amendments to SOLAS now mean that a ship's crew do not have to be on board a lifeboat when it is lowered and raised from the sea during testing. IMO's Marine Safety Committee circular 1206 also made recommendations on servicing and maintenance of on-load hooks, though these are unlikely to become mandatory until 2010.

But many in the shipping industry say that more rapid and far-reaching change is required. Seafarers' unions such as the International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF) want to see on-load hooks banned for new ships and phased out on existing vessels.

Jon Bainbridge, assistant secretary of the ITF's seafarers' section, told HSW: "Following debate right across the ITF and its affiliated seafarers' unions, the consensus is that if the on-load release hook cannot be made safe in all circumstances for seafarers, it should be banned."

There are also calls for more radical solutions.

"For passenger ships, we need to move beyond lifeboats to more novel systems like pods or capsules that can float free from the side of ships," says Allan Graveson, senior national secretary of the UK seafarers' union Nautilus. "But the problem is that there's no will to do this. It's not a big revenue generator."

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MCA recommendations

• The UK Maritime & Coastguard Agency's 2006 report on lifeboat safety makes the following recommendations.
• All on-load release hooks should be designed and constructed to be stable, ie self-closing, when supporting the weight of the lifeboat.
• To achieve this, a safety case regime should be introduced for lifeboat on-load release hooks.
• SOLAS should be amended to include both this safety case requirement and additional safe design requirements for lifeboat launching equipment.
• In the meantime, bypassing on-load release hooks during drills should be considered.
• Single-fall capsules should be considered for ships carrying small numbers of people.

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Making headway depends on reaching agreement at the IMO, where decision-making is a lengthy process. "We are looking for international agreement, but this takes time ... There is a willingness to address the matter, but we are faced with a set of prescriptive requirements rather than requirements to ensure survival," Graveson says.

If, as seems likely, on-load hooks are set to stay, manufacturers and regulators must move to safer, more standardised designs, as has happened in aircraft and car seat-belts.

Alf Martin Sandberg, senior technical adviser at the Norwegian maritime insurer Gard, told HSW magazine: "When the IMO introduced the requirement for on-load hooks they focused on the ease of release of lifeboats, but not on safety against accidents.

"And they did not specify the design of on-load hooks, so manufacturers did their own thing and there are now 70 or 80 different hook designs in use ... We need to get rid of the first generation of on-load hooks and replace them with the four or five newer designs that are safer."

Whatever happens, both Graveson and Sandberg believe that the status quo is unacceptable. "Seafarers are now afraid of lifeboats. Everyone is nervous of drills and this is a situation that needs correcting," Sandberg says.

On-load hooks will be back on the agenda at the IMO's next ship design and equipment sub-committee meeting in February 2008, and the IMO told HSW that agreement on the way forward is "probable". Even so, regulatory change will take until at least 2010 to come into force.

Until then, the risk remains. According to Sandberg: "There is momentum now, but it is not acceptable that [in the interim] seafarers die testing lifesaving equipment."

Unless of course, another major lifeboat disaster occurs - this time involving passengers rather than merely crew - to hasten change, Graveson says: "Why bother when you only lose seamen? If a large number of passengers were lost, this would not happen ... Without another Titanic, we are years away."

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Risk assessment, Risk assessment, Safety, Transport, Article, Safe systems of work, Safe systems of work