Where they are now

Recent thoughts of the formal investigations that we have referred to on this blog prompted our curiosity to find out more as to the whereabouts of the judges who acted as chairmen in those unfortunate inquiries.

Sir David Steel, for instance, is no longer judge at the Commercial and Admiralty Courts in London. David Steel was involved twice with the FV Gaul: first in a partisan position as lawyer for the Insurance Company, then in a neutral position as chairman of the 2004 RFI.

Although not yet arrived at the age when, as a poet said, passions relax their hold, or when expired judges are customarily wheeled out of HM’s Courts, in October 2011, Sir David Steel quietly left his judicial position and returned to the bar in a less demanding, though no less cushy role of Arbitrator at 10 Fleet Street. Simultaneously, he was also appointed Appeal Arbitrator for the London insurance market. Quite surprising!!! The commercial literature advertising the nobleman’s services now refers to Sir David Steel in terms of “the retired judge”.

The other honourable judge, Sir David Young – the former Sheriff Principal of Grampian, Highland and Islands – who presided over the more recent public inquiry into the sinking of FV Trident has also left his judicial position early, that is immediately after the conclusion of the Trident inquiry.

Justice Anthony Coleman, who chaired the MV Derbyshire investigation, in his turn, left the High Court in 2001, immediately after the MV Derbyshire inquiry had ended, and set out to the Czech Republic to advise the Ministry of Justice there on procedure with a view to the Czech Republic’s accession to the EU. Sir Anthony Colman then went on to become an International Arbitrator for that temple of austerity which is the Dubai International Financial Centre.

So, all these three former inquiry chairmen are no longer judges. The Brotherhood, it seems, has its own, discreet code of honour. Still, we are left with the feeling that these three judges fared far better than the victims of their judgments. This is Britain today – long live the Queen!

More to come

FV Trident RFI - More from the Department for Truth

In a press release issued by the DfT on 24th February 2011, concerning the outcome from the Formal Investigation into the loss of the FV Trident, the Department gave a summary of the Sheriff Principal’s findings, advising us that his report contained:

A complete rejection that a 1976 NMI report provides the answer to the loss of Trident

We have carefully looked through Sheriff Young’s report and noted his comment on the National Maritime Institute’s (NMI) Trident report dated 22 October 1976:

This report was the subject only of brief passing references during the inquiry

We have also noted that a subsequent technical paper, released to the public in 1979 by Dr A. Morrall and entitled "Capsizing of small Trawlers", repeated a substantial part of Dr. Morrall’s earlier NMI work, and that it was only this published paper that was examined by the Court in, as the Sheriff puts it, "considerable detail in the course of the evidence".

Yet, the Sheriff ventures to form an opinion on the NMI report from, presumably, a mere examination of this later technical paper:

In my opinion the NMI report is of no assistance to this court in explaining the loss of the Trident.

So we are left to conclude that the Sheriff’s weakly stated opinion, based upon his examination of a similar but different document, amounts to, in the DfT’s words, a "complete rejection".

Notes:

1. The 1976 NMI report contained a number of important conclusions that were not carried over into Dr. Morrall’s subsequent public report, one of which is reproduced below:

later experiments in which either displacement or GM were increased proved conclusively that the hull shape itself was not at fault but rather its weight distribution which produced an unfavourable value of GM [i.e. an unfavourable position for the Trident’s vertical centre of gravity VCG * ]

2. The complete Trident intact stability research folder, which included tank test video evidence from the National Maritime Institute, was allegedly destroyed by the DfT in 2005. 

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* The position of the VCG on the Trident was unknown at the time of her capsize, as an inclining experiment was not carried out on completion and prior to her departure from the building yard.

FV Trident RFI - A question

We have a question that nobody seems willing to answer and which is: why nobody from the Department for Transport, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, MAIB and the former DOT was ever called to give evidence under oath during the Trident RFI hearings?

FV Trident RFI - a costly farce

The Trident RFI followed the same script as the Gaul RFI - to the letter.

FV Trident RFI - “No evidence was led at the inquiry…”

Perhaps the most important question for the RFI, once it had established that the Trident had capsized in sea conditions that were not exceptional and that her intact stability was deficient, was whether full compliance with the IMCO minimum stability standard would have prevented Trident’s capsize and the loss of seven lives.

Unfortunately, this was one critical question that the RFI's investigators were unwilling to answer. They were prepared to answer questions that skirted this central issue, they also touched upon matters on the fringes of this issue and were happy to pontificate at great length about many things that seemed to be related, but in fact deflected attention elsewhere.

Perhaps the nearest we can get to a straight answer on this important point is contained within the Sheriff's comments in Para [41] of his final report:

The first question here is what changes would have had to have been made to the design and construction of the Trident to secure full compliance with the IMCO recommended criteria when she was built. No evidence was led at the inquiry, which would allow me to answer this question, so it is impossible to hold that, if she had been built so as to secure full compliance with these criteria, she would not have been lost.

But surely, Your Honour, as you were in charge of this £7m inquiry, you should have given directions that evidence be obtained and led on this matter?

You were eager to dismiss the results of the 1976 NMI model tests, the report from which, co-incidentally, showed that Trident would have survived if the IMCO Stability criteria had been met. In the words of Dr A. Morrall:

Experiments in breaking waves were repeated and no capsize was obtained. Test periods of up to 1 hour full scale were carried out. Motions were extremely severe and decks were very wet and an impression was gained that limiting conditions for survival had been reached.

Instead we have been asked to accept the conclusions that were drawn by a panel of experts, whose objectivity can be disputed, from a very limited and questionable set of test results from the MARIN test facility in Holland.

Question

Why was the Trident model NOT tested at the MARIN test facility in a condition representing full IMCO compliance so as to see whether or not she would capsize?

If tests had been carried out in this condition, then we would have had a straightforward and conclusive answer to the main question above.

This would not have been a difficult or expensive test to arrange, and it would have provided concrete evidence for the RFI. In fact, when a similar test was carried out at the NMI test facility in 1976 Dr Morrall commented: "this was achieved quite easily by rearranging the ballast inside the model and carrying out an inclining experiment to check"

Perhaps we already know the reasons why evidence was not sought or allowed on this point. The OAG, DfT, Seafish and a number of other parties just did not want to hear the answer that:

If Trident had met the IMCO minimum stability standard, she would have survived.

More to come…….

FV Trident RFI - The development risks defence [*]

In earlier posts, concerning the Derbyshire and the Gaul disasters [http://mv-derbyshire.blogspot.com/2008/10/dry-run-for-litigation.html], we have highlighted the fact that formal investigations into maritime casualties are mainly driven, not by a desire to seek out the truth of the matter, but by the over-arching principle that any form of litigation ,which could be harmful to Government or the British Establishment, must be avoided at all costs.

We have now seen that, throughout the Trident RFI, this principle has remained the primary driver of events.

An example of this can be seen in Question 5, posed by the AG: 

5. At the commencement of her last voyage was the Trident unseaworthy (as determined by the standards which applied in 1974)…

This question enabled the Sheriff to give a ruling, which would support the ‘development risks defence’ argument, in any future product liability case, where compensation was sought.

His response, in paragraph [49], states:

What happened to the Trident on the day of her loss was not reasonably foreseeable to anyone in light of the knowledge and understanding of the design and construction of seagoing vessels available at the time.

While the clear intention of the Sheriff’s statement is to support any future ‘development risks defence’ argument, the statement in itself is clearly nonsense. In 1974, fishing vessel capsizes were an all too frequent occurrence and what happened to the Trident was, in fact, foreseeable; that is why, at that time in the UK, there was a requirement for fishing vessels to be designed and constructed to meet the IMCO minimum stability standard.

It is our belief that public inquiries should be about seeking the truth, not about providing cover for potential defendants.

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[*] http://www.jstor.org/pss/4507206

FV Trident - Design faults

The FV Trident had significant deficiencies in her stability reserves that remained unresolved from the time she was delivered in 1973 until she capsized in 1974. This factor has been glossed over in the Sheriff’s final RFI report published this week.

The Trident should have been designed and built to meet the requirements of the building specification and contract. This contract, amongst other things, stipulated that the Trident should satisfy the IMCO recommended minimum standard for intact stability (this criterion within the build contract had been included as a pre-condition to significant Governmental grant aid towards Trident’s building costs – an important issue at that time and part of an initiative to try and improve the fishing industry’s appalling safety record)

Unfortunately, upon completion of building, the Trident sailed from the builder's yard without undergoing an inclining experiment and the actual status of her stability reserves, vis-à-vis compliance with the IMCO minimum stability standard, remained a factor that was ignored until a detailed investigation into her actual stability reserves was carried out following her loss.

Subsequent stability calculations during 1975-8 and within the past decade have all indicated that Trident did not meet her contractual stability standard. The findings contained within the 2011 RFI report have now also confirmed that this was indeed the case:

A statement by the Sheriff Principal on this particular issue is contained in Para [46]:

I have already discussed the significance of the fact that, as designed and built, the Trident did not comply fully with the IMCO recommended criteria.

An indication of just how serious this stability shortfall was may be gleaned from the fact that significant structural modification work was required for her sister vessel, the Silver Lining, before she was finally able to meet the required standard and allowed to sail.

A further indicator of the magnitude of Trident’s stability shortfall, is also given by the Sheriff himself (perhaps inadvertently) in paragraph [41] of his report:

…I am advised by Mr Macwhirter (and Professor Macfarlane at one point in his evidence appeared to support this) that all that would have been required in the design of the Trident to secure full compliance with the IMCO recommended criteria would have been a modest increase in the depth of her hull amidships of the order of 0.3 to 0.4 metres reducing to zero at the bow and the stern

We would suggest that a 'modest' increase in the depth of the Trident’s steel hull of 0.3 to 0.4m (i.e. a 10% increase in her depth) would have resulted in a totally different ship being built. One that would have had significantly improved intact stability reserves, as well as ‘specific sea-keeping characteristics’ markedly different from that of the hull that capsized.

The Advocate General and a number of the parties in the current investigation have sought to cloud these issues by raising number of related questions and offering a multitude of views that cannot be supported by the overriding facts of her loss. The Sheriff has now confirmed that he was willing to go along with this charade.

Some examples:

The Advocate General, in questions 8(b)(i) and (ii) sought the Court’s views on whether the Trident possessed intact stability characteristics that were in 'substantial compliance' with those recommended for fishing vessels by the DTI and DOT (i.e. the IMCO standard). The Sheriff was happy to provide positive answers to these questions in paragraph [29] of his report.

Note: The building specification and contract called for compliance with IMCO requirements not just ‘substantial compliance’. If it takes lengthening the ship by 10 feet or increasing its depth by 1.5 feet in order to obtain full compliance, then the difference between the DOT’s understanding of ‘substantial compliance’ and full compliance is rather substantial in itself.

The Advocate General, in questions 8(d) sought the Court’s views on whether the loss of the Trident was 'caused or materially contributed to by any lack of statical stability'. As a result of the confusion and disinformation that was allowed to enter into the case, the Sheriff was able, in paragraph [31], to provide the following unsatisfactory reply:

I think the answer to this question is no

Whilst the post of Sheriff Principal is a very senior position within the Scottish legal system, we do not think that this confers the right to challenge the established principles of Naval Architecture, which are irrefutably based on Archimedes and Newton’s laws.

The failure of Trident to meet her design specification in respect of a mandatory  [*] stability standard, and the fact that this was unresolved until she capsized can be viewed as nothing less than a serious design fault - and one in our view that was a material factor in her loss.

More to come…

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[*] It was mandatory in the sense that Governmental grant monies should not have been advanced for this vessel until it had been verified that she met the required stability standard. The whole purpose of the conditional grant scheme was to improve the stability (safety) of UK fishing vessels.

FV Trident Inquiry - Final Report - Part 1

The Sheriff Principal’s report on the loss of the FV Trident has now been released [LINK].

The most important question that was asked at this public inquiry is contained in paragraph [32] of the Sheriff’s report:

Unfortunately the answer to this crucial question is not actually contained within the Sheriff’s main report.

One would expect that, following the 10-year and £7m investigation into the loss of Trident, the Sheriff and his Assessors should have been able (and obliged) to provide an answer to this question in writing, themselves. Instead, all they appear to have done is simply a cut and paste exercise from a document that is not in the public domain (i.e. the Joint Panel of Experts report, finished before the court hearing started), leaving it up to us to sift through a number of pages of verbal padding until we arrive at the following text. 

From the text above we are left to surmise that the Sheriff’s uncritical acceptance [*] of the conclusion lifted word for word from the JPE report (paragraph 12.1), as indicated above, provides us with the answer to the question that was asked in paragraph [32] – but we are not really sure about that!!

(More to follow...)

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[*] Note the passive connotation of the verb ‘accept’, which does not imply full endorsement

A small test of integrity

We are currently still waiting for the final conclusions of the FV Trident Re-opened Formal Investigation to be published. However, from what we’ve gathered so far, it seems that the government has already decided to prevent the truth from emerging at the end of this protracted and costly inquiry; we do not believe for a moment that the Aberdeen Sheriff will be able to deliver anything other than the outcome requested by UK ministers.

The current government should have had few reasons to manipulate the results of this formal investigation, unless pressures threatening to affect their political interests have recently provided them with suitable motivation.

Of course, it is not difficult to understand that those who directed the cover-up in the Gaul RFI have a vested interest in seeing that the Trident inquiry goes the same way. Delivering justice in the Trident case, they might fear, could open the Gaul’s families’ eyes and their appetite for a similar treatment.

What may be even more daunting is that subsequent disclosures about the miscarriage of justice in the Gaul case would be linked to some of the most prominent entries in the New Labour Party bestiary.

Notwithstanding that, we would urge our government once again to resist undue pressures, permit an honest conclusion to the Trident investigation and allow the families of the victims to finally obtain justice. It is too ugly to persist with the deception, especially when these families know very well that they are being deceived.
It is also imprudent to think that the truth - already difficult to contain - would not, sooner or later, overcome official censorship, lies and the suppression of facts. Any delay in acknowledging this can only make a future exposure many times more embarrassing.

The Trident RFI may be just a small test of official integrity, but small things like this determine the direction of a government’s course and the chances they have of passing other, more strenuous trials.

LINK

FV Trident Inquiry – the Joint Panel of Experts

The Aberdeen Press and Journal informed us this weekend about the latest goings-on in the Trident inquiry. It was thus that we learned that Mr Martin Pullinger, [*] naval architect and retained expert for the majority of the Trident victims’ families, was criticised by the advocate acting for the vessel’s designer for having formed an opinion on Trident’s stability "without the knowledge required", a claim which the advocate defended by citing Mr Pullinger’s decision to defer matters relating to the Trident’s seakeeping ability to Professor Colin MacFarlane.

We are thus given to understand that Professor MacFarlane’s unique expertise in the arcane subject of seakeeping should preclude other experts from having opinions not only on the subject of seakeeping but also on issues of stability in general (issues deemed up until now to be the bread and butter of any naval architect).

How odd is it then to read pages 64 and 65 of the transcripts of evidence from the inquiry for the 4th of November 2009 about the following exchange, which took place during that day’s hearings:

Cross-examination by MR ANDERSON: […] Well perhaps you could tell us then, Professor MacFarlane, what exactly is it about the prevailing sea conditions which has combined with the specific sea-keeping characteristics of the Trident to cause this to capsize?

WITNESS [Professor MacFarlane]:  I do not know […] I do not know the specific sea-keeping characteristics of the Trident at this stage which combined with those sea conditions caused it to capsize.

SHERIFF PRINCIPAL YOUNG: Sorry. You don’t know?

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[1] Mr Pullinger, it’s been reported, has refused to concur with the conclusions of the Joint Panel of Experts  - which did not mention static stability as a potential contributing factor to the loss of the vessel - and has submitted his own report to the inquiry. 

New Inquiry into the loss of FV Trident

The wreck of the FV Trident, which sank off the Caithness coast 35 years ago, was found by amateur divers in 2001.

This discovery, and the fact that the victims’ families had never accepted the conclusions of the previous investigation into the tragedy, prompted the former Secretary of State for Transport (Stephen Byers) to order the re-opening the formal investigation into her loss. This was in 2002.

Inexplicably, it then took our government seven years to set up this new investigation, which is now, finally, to be opened on October 19, 2009.

It is, however, very fortunate that the new inquiry will be conducted under the chairmanship of Sir Stephen Young QC, Sheriff Principal of Grampian Highland and Islands.

In 2002, Sir Stephen, then sheriff of Paisley, headed the investigation into the 1994 Mull of Kintyre helicopter crash and had the fortitude to openly dismiss the idea of pilot error, stating in his report that the conclusions of the RAF investigation, which had put the blame for the fatal accident on the crew, were "flawed".

The appointment of Sir Stephen should therefore be taken as a good omen.

We, on our part, will be following the proceedings and direction of the Trident investigation with great interest.