The supervision of the historical sailing fleet in the Netherlands, the so-called “brown fleet”, is still inadequate. The Dutch Safety Board draws this conclusion in an investigation following two accidents in 2022. In the meantime, the Dutch Public Prosecutor is prosecuting the skipper involved in one of the two accidents.
Back in 2017, the Dutch Safety Board already made recommendations to the brown fleet to make them safer. However, the shortcomings in supervision have not made the fleet demonstrably safer in recent years.
At the time, the following recommendations were made to the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management:
- Ensure that the Council for Accreditation (RvA) and the Environmental and Transport Inspectorate (ILT) fulfil their responsibilities for the supervision of the historic sailing fleet on the basis of a joint view of tasks. In doing so, ensure that all relevant roles are assigned within the supervision process and that supervision is guaranteed in practice.
- In addition to the ES-TRIN, lay down the professional requirements appropriate to the degree of commercial operation within the historic sailing fleet. In doing so, make use of the industry standards that have been and are being developed by the industry itself.
- Ensure that safety requirements relevant to the historic sailing fleet remain current. All parties involved should continuously monitor the latest developments and adjust requirements if necessary. Make the outcome of this widely known so skippers know what to act on.
- Set up and enforce a system whereby the main certificate becomes invalid upon expiry of partial certificates/certificates.
In addition, the Board stated that other parties (skippers/owners, the BBZ, inspection agencies and RvA) should be expected not to wait for the Minister and ILT to follow up on the recommendations. They should fulfil their own responsibility by taking to heart the lessons from the Dutch Safety Board’s investigation and the Harlingen Mast Breach investigation and initiate actions accordingly.
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Follow-up investigation
In 2022, two fatal accidents occurred aboard the historic sailing vessels Risico and Wilhelmina. On both ships, the boom landed on passengers. In 2017, the Dutch Safety Board released the report “Mast breach Harlingen” (Mastbreuk Harlingen). After the accidents in 2022, the council decided to conduct a follow-up investigation to see if the recommendations from the 2017 report were followed up.
While initiatives have been taken in response to those recommendations to make the fleet safer, the intended result remains lacking, according to the Board.
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Government supervision
The investigation shows that supervision is still flawed. Passengers boarding a historic sailing ship should be able to assume that a ship is safe. For this, government supervision is very important.
ILT supervises the historic sailing fleet. In practice, inspection and certification is outsourced to three inspection agencies. These agencies are in turn tested by the RvA whether they meet the appropriate standards. This oversight system is still not functioning adequately.
There is a lot of room for interpretation of laws and regulations, the agencies are not well equipped for their task due to limited inspection standards, and skippers and owners are not held accountable enough.
According to the Board, ILT has a limited implementation of supervision and does not give it sufficient priority. As a result, ILT cannot live up to its responsibility and guarantee that the safety certificates issued by inspection agencies meet the correct quality requirements. Because of this lack of supervision, skippers and owners who do have the right level of safety on board their vessels cannot show consumers that this is actually the case.
Expertise
The Safety Board sees that in recent years, the industry association BBZ, in cooperation with a number of skippers, owners and other parties, has taken good initiatives to improve safety. But despite those efforts to improve professionalism and safety awareness, there is still a big difference in knowledge and expertise between the various skippers and owners. That difference in professionalism creates safety risks.
Skippers who are already highly committed to safety deserve recognition and support from ILT, inspection agencies and the industry association, according to the Dutch Safety Board. Initiatives such as the exchange of practical safety knowledge by the various organisations should therefore be more encouraged and supported.
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Skipper Risico prosecuted
In the meantime, the Dutch Public Prosecutor has announced the skipper of the Risico is being prosecuted. The 49-year-old man is being charged with culpable homicide. As skipper of the sailing vessel Risico, he is accused that the boom of his ship was in such a bad condition that it broke. As a result, a 12-year-old girl from The Hague was killed.
The girl was part of a group of children from a school in The Hague. They were on a school trip and took a trip on the Wadden Sea on 31 August 2022. During a manoeuvre of the boat, the boom broke and landed on the girl.
According to the Public Prosecutor, the criminal investigation revealed that the ship’s boom was not properly maintained and not replaced on time. There were long “wind cracks” in the wood of the boom in which water could also remain. This caused the boom to rot. The wind cracks were also longer than the brown fleet’s industry guideline allows. Because the boom was not in good condition, it could break, causing the tragic accident.
Moreover, the skipper set sail with the boat when several of the vessel’s inspection reports had expired. As a result, the Risico should not have set sail in the first place.
It is not yet known when the case will be heard by the court in Leeuwarden.
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