MV Derbyshire
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The MV Derbyshire was an ore-bulk-oil combination carrier (ship) built in 1976 by Swan Hunter. She was registered at Liverpool and owned by Bibby Line.
She was lost September 9, 1980 during Typhoon Orchid, south of Japan ( ); all hands (42 crew and two wives) vanished. At over 90,000 gross tons she was, and remains, the largest UK ship to have ever been lost at sea.
Initially, the crew were charged with negligence but the International Transport Workers' Federation launched their own investigation to find the wreckage. The search was declared to be hopeless by a major marine consultancy, but the union persisted even though they could only afford eight days of search. A team of mathematical experts was employed and Bayesian search theory methods were used. The wreckage of the ship was found in June 1994 after the eight-day period was almost up. The survey managed to deploy a remotely operated vehicle, the Magellan, to take preliminary photos of the wreck which confirmed the finding. The strange orientation of the wreckage was published in a report on March 12, 1998. This prompted the British Government to reopen a Formal Investigation into the sinking.
The Formal Investigation commenced on April 2, 2000. They eventually concluded that the ship sunk due to structural failure and absolved the crew of any responsibility in the sinking. Twelve ventilation holes were found to be responsible for allowing water to get into the ship, flooding it, and pulling it down by the bow. Coupled with the rough waves bobbing the ship, this resulted in the ship experiencing greater stresses than it was designed for. The 1986 grounding of the similar MV Kowloon Bridge resulted in its break up, and faults found in two other sister ships lend weight to this conclusion.
The Derbyshire Family Association was awarded the Marine Society's Thomas Gray Silver Medal in July 2004 for campaigning for better safety regulations regarding bulk carriers.
The story of crew negligence is based on the deduction of two of the three assessors appointed by Lord Donaldson of Lymington on behalf of the British Department of Transport. They examined the 135,774 pictures of the Derbyshire wreck taken during two surveys by a research vessel of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. These assessors, Robin Williams and Remo Torchio, both naval architects but lacking any seafaring experience, concluded that a mooring rope coming out of a fore access hatch was evidence that the crew was busy preparing the arrival of the vessel and left the access hatch open with the rope half out when the typhoon was approaching. But on all ships worldwide this operation takes place only a few hours before arrival and not two days out at sea as it was then the case. During the re-opened formal investigation of April/July 2000 it was easy to prove that the access hatch had been forced open by a heavy impact, probably the broken winch or fore mast, and due to its buoyancy the rope floated half way out.
The third assessor was the Douglas Faulkner, Professor of Marine Architecture and Ocean Engineering at the University of Glasgow. He resigned before that allegation of crew negligence had been drafted.
[edit] 2001 RINA Analysis
In 2001, Prof. Douglas Faulkner, Emeritus Professor of Naval Architecture, University of Glasgow, published a lengthy and highly analytical paper examining the Derbyshire's loss in light of the emerging body of scientific evidence regarding the mechanics of freak waves. Among other things, it is now becoming more widely accepted in the scientific community that such rogue waves are far more common than previous mathematical models (and the older ship-building standards that stemmed from them) had suggested. Prof. Faulkner's paper won the Royal Institute of Naval Architect's award for excellence that year. In his paper, Prof. Faulkner took direct issue with the conclusions of the original assessment, noting that given the meteorological conditions, and the length of time she was exposed to the peak conditions of the storm, it was almost certain that Derbyshire would have encountered a wave of sufficient size to destroy her. As Dr. Faulkner concluded: "Beyond any reasonable doubt, the direct cause of the loss of the m.v. DERBYSHIRE was the quite inadequate strength of her cargo hatch covers to withstand the forces of typhoon ORCHID.' This conclusion has potentially dire implication for many earlier-generation bulk carriers, as they were all built to loading standards considered safe before the mechanics of these giant waves were understood. Indeed, such waves may account for the very high loss rate and numerous outright disappearances among this class of vessel.
