Thirty-seven years ago, on Friday, March 6, 1987, at half past seven in the evening, just twenty minutes after setting sail from the Belgian port of Zeebrugge, the British ferry Herald of Free Enterprise, owned by the Townsend Thoresen company, capsized. A total of one hundred and ninety-three passengers and crew members lost their lives that evening in the cold waters of the English Channel, making the wreck of the Herald the deadliest British maritime accident since World War II.
The next day, Saturday, reporters from all the island's media flocked to the small town of Stourbridge near Birmingham, looking for a certain Dennis Elwell, who only two weeks earlier had predicted the imminent disaster of their ferry in a dramatic letter to the management of Townsend Thoresen. Mr. Elwell, moreover, was not the only one: even two years earlier it was correctly predicted by a certain Dag Pike. And yet, Dag was not as interesting to the British media as Dennis, who in the following days gave interviews to all the island's newspapers and televisions, eventually ending up in the most watched BBC show, the cult "Day to Day" with Robert Kilroy.
Why? Perhaps also because Dennis Elwell was an astrologer and shaman, who saw a sign of a maritime accident in the total solar eclipse announced that March, therefore in the sign of Pisces, therefore in the water sign. Certainly, he was much more attractive to the media than Doug Pike, who was just a seasoned sailor, journalist and author of several books on maritime safety. Dag did not see the "sign" of tragedy in the stars, but in the construction of ro-ro ships, the race for profit and flawed safety protocols, mostly - you guessed it - nowhere near as interesting as shamanic divination from horoscopes.
In those eighties La Mancha lived its golden age, what low-budget airlines are today for the island's pensioners and wild partygoers, at that time there were cheap ferries that sailed from Dover to French and Belgian ports: two hundred and fifty such ferries every day buzzed the canal, carrying fifty million passengers a year. In the fight against the competition, the Townsend Thoresen company ordered three hundred and thirty-meter ro-ro ships, which with their construction - with doors on the bow and stern, and a huge open garage without the usual safety barriers - enabled the rapid boarding and disembarkation of one thousand three hundred passengers and three hundred and fifty car.
The dangers of that construction were striking: what if the door let the sea through, what if it fell in the middle of sailing, or the crew - God forbid - forgot to close it? The risk was empirically calculated in December 1982, when a cargo ship near the port of Harwich collided with the European Gateway, one of Thoresen's ferries: the sea poured through the damaged door and the Gateway sank in just ten minutes, killing six people. An even greater tragedy was averted a year later, when, during the departure of one of Thoresen's three sister ships, someone noticed at the last minute that the bow door had been left open.
In August 1985, experienced seaman Doug Pike wrote an article for the magazine "The New Scientist" about the safety problems of ro-ro ships, whose captains cannot see either the bow or stern doors from the bridge, and set sail relying only on the vigilance of the assistant deck manager in charge to close the ramp. Pike then proposed a simple and inexpensive solution: a light indicator that would tell the captain on the bridge that the door was closed. Otherwise, warned the experienced sailor, the question is not if the tragedy will happen, but when. The company's response was painfully expected: it is an unnecessary expense. Why on earth do they hire deck managers anyway?
Nothing much changed, except that in 1986 the British authorities signed the contract for the construction of the Eurotunnel under the English Channel: in a merciless fight to survive on the market, Townsend Thoresen introduced twenty-four-hour shifts with record short loading and unloading times, and then some silly prize money game, in which readers of the tabloid "The Sun" collected coupons for a day trip to Belgium at a price of - one pound. Nothing changed even when, a few months later, the tragedy was again prevented at the last moment, this time thanks to the crew of a ship who, at the exit from Dover harbor, noticed that Townsend's ferry had again set sail with its bow ramps lowered.
Just three weeks later, on Friday 6 March, the exhausted and weary crew of the Herald disembarked five hundred pensioners, partygoers and raffle winners in Zeebrugge, Belgium, and Assistant Deck Manager Mark Stanley washed the entire garage, then took a short break and retired to the cabin kill the eye. When the last car entered the ferry at seven in the evening, no one noticed that Marko, who was in charge of closing the doors, was not in his place. About twenty minutes later, after leaving the harbor, the ferry moved forward with full force, and enormous amounts of water began to seep into the wide open garage.
It was all over in ninety seconds.
In the end, the unfortunate Mark Stanley was blamed for the tragedy, and the company was fined a ridiculous three hundred and fifty thousand pounds. Eh, yes: the new safety protocol after the Herald tragedy introduced mandatory light indicators of closed bow and stern doors on the command bridges of ro-ro ships. Charge? Five hundred pounds per ship. Five hundred. Pounds.
Why am I telling you all this?
The tragedy of the Herald reminded me of the episode "Zeebrugge Ferry Disaster" from the series "Tragedies that changed Britain", which I watched ten days ago as a passionate fan of the genre on History Channel 2. The story of the Herald clearly shows how these things go in the inexorable capitalist West: in the race for profit, instead of investing five hundred pounds, safety is entrusted to exhausted people in twenty-four-hour shifts, so first there is an accident that indicates a flaw in the construction, followed by company silence, then the first incident with an open bow door followed by company silence, then the second incident followed by company silence , and finally, clearly, a tragedy with two hundred dead, days of mourning and urgent regulatory changes.
That, I said, is how things look in the unruly and orderly capitalist West. How, however, do such things look to us who are uncaring and unkempt?
Exactly the day after I watched the documentary about the disaster of the ship Herald from Free Enterprise on History, the crew of Jadrolinija's ferry Hrvat from Free Enterprise, excuse me Hrvat, on the regular line from Supetar to Split realized that the ramp on the bow door of the ferry - was blocked. The unpleasant incident - but nothing more than that - once again reminded of the catastrophic state of Jadrolinija's fleet, used pink wrecks bought through Temu, and the fatigue of the crews who work in fourteen-hour shifts in hellish heat and crowds.
Something more than an unpleasant incident happened, however, ten days later, this Saturday, when on the same line, this time on the Mljet ferry, just before entering the port of Supetar, the cable of the garage door broke, and the bow ramp - fell! What, namely, if the ramp had fallen in the open sea, according to the fortunes of the south?, the experts asked, recalling the tragedy of the British Herald from 1987. Or if, far from it, it had fallen only a few minutes later, when the passengers were disembarking, while crew members and employees of the Supetar wharf were flying under it on the Supetar jetty?
As we learned from this story, it is not a question of if tragedy will happen, but when it will happen. In the unruly West, we have seen, order is known, so the inevitable tragedy occurs after an unscrupulous company magnificently ignores all the warning signs. Such an order is unknown to us who are uncaring: the inevitable tragedy will happen here, let's say - a full three weeks days earlier! Just twenty days before the incident in Supetar and ten days before the documentary about the tragedy in Zeebrugge, on Saturday August 11, when disembarking passengers from Jadrolinija's ferry Lastovo in Mali Lošinj, the bow door suddenly gave way and killed three crew members who happened to be there at that moment. under a heavy ramp.
Incidents that unmistakably warned of the disastrous state of Jadrolinia's ferries, in short, happened after one had already claimed three lives. After! Where in the orderly, careless West, courts politely punish corporations, and parliamentary committees introduce changes in laws, in the careless and careless us, ferries still happily sail with the ramps lowered.
Except, of course, if Croatia is not part of the orderly, non-judgmental West, and if a serious tragedy with Jadrolinija's ferries is still waiting for us. If you don't believe sailors, maritime unions and journalistic writers, maybe the information that the next total solar eclipse is scheduled for two years, on August 12, 2026, therefore in the sign of Leo, therefore in the fire sign, will mean something to you.
I'm just saying.
Bonus video:
