Washington Maritime Injury Lawyer Blog

On December 8, 2011, crews with the Coast Guard Cutter Sherman and an Air Station Kodiak MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter delivered steering system technicians to the 650-foot cargo ship MORNING CEDAR at a location 17 miles from Bobrof Island in the Aleutian Islands.

The cargo vessel suffered a steering casualty while in transit from Canada to Japan with 23 crew aboard and a load of packaged timber. The Coast Guard began monitoring the drifting vessel on December 5, when the master reported the steering malfunction.

The facts of the tragic sinking of the SWANLAND resemble those in Alaska fish boat cases.

Although, as noted in our earlier post, the SWANLAND is a Russian vessel, it was British managed. The British Maritime and Coastguard Agency is therefore conducting an investigation, much as the U.S. Coast Guard would conduct a marine casualty investigation.

The cargo ship which sank in the Irish Sea off Gwynedd, Wales with the loss of six crew had been at the center of repeated safety concerns, the BBC reported.

An analysis of safety inspection records for the SWANLAND reveals a high number of failings.

Members of the crew claim the vessel was vulnerable in rough seas because of a history of unsafe loading. This has been a recurrent issue in Alaska shipwreck cases.

The ship's operator, Torbulk Limited, said it had been regularly inspected and any faults "promptly rectified". This is the typical response by vessel interests after a loss such as this, but the 34-year-old British-managed ship had a history of defects, according to safety inspections by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency. Over the past five years, 85 faults were highlighted - including cracks in the ship's decks and defective life-saving equipment identified in May this year. Marine safety management expert Dr Phil Anderson said that, even allowing for the ship's age, the number of defects seemed surprisingly high.

"You wouldn't expect to see that number of deficiencies. It's quite serious. It could indicate a systemic breakdown of safety systems."

Former crew members have also raised concerns about the techniques used to load the ship.

Alexander Tsybin, a former Russian captain who worked on board the Swanland for 11 years, believes the vessel's hull had been weakened by the way the cargo was sometimes loaded to save time on each voyage.

Instead of loading evenly from either end, it would be deposited in the middle.

"While the ship was being loaded, it would cave in a little, and while it was being unloaded, it would bulge out," he said.

"So the middle of the ship would always be subject to pressure which meant that in the end it became weakened."

Maritime safety experts have also told the BBC that loading heavy, unsecured cargo into a single hull could cause displacement which might cause a ship to roll in bad weather.

They say the combination of the crew's concerns about loading and the historical defects involving structural safety and cracked decks "give rise for concern".

The vessel was caught in a gale force 8 storm off the Lleyn Peninsula, north Wales, at the end of November.

According to Vitaliy Karpenko, one of the two survivors from the all-Russian crew, the ship's hull suddenly cracked.

"It broke in half right across the middle. I saw it with my own eyes," he said. "We saw through the porthole that it was hopeless trying to save her."

The ship's Grimsby-based operator Torbulk Shipping said in a statement that it understood the vessel was loaded in accordance with good practice, adding: "Any working sea-going cargo vessel... will be inspected on a regular basis and may incur minor deficiencies.

"These deficiencies are required to be promptly rectified or the vessel would not be permitted to trade.

"We are unable to comment on specific instances. However, we can state that any deficiencies identified are always rectified within the time-scale specified [by the authorities]."

The vessel, which was British-owned, was flagged to the tiny Cook Islands in the Pacific.

The islands have a higher number of ships with safety problems, and the international shipping authorities regard their flag as inferior to those from European maritime regulators.

As the official British maritime investigation and civil litigation proceed, it seems unlikely that vessel interests will be able to sustain their burden of showing that they exercised due diligence to see that the SWANLAND was seaworthy when she departed Wales enroute to the Isle of Wight. An oceangoing ship should be able to withstand Force 8 winds without breaking in half.

Under maritime law, vessel owners facing liability for an injured crewman can petition the court to limit their liability to the value of the vessel and pending freight. They make the request pursuant to the Limitation of Shipowner’s Liability Act (Act), 46 U.S.C. §30501. In order to limit its liability, the ship owner must show, by a preponderance of the evidence, the negligent acts or unseaworthy conditions that caused the crewman’s injury were not within their privity or knowledge. The owners of a fish tender in Alaska tried to limit their liability after a fisherman was injured by a broken crane hook. A federal court in Washington dismissed the owner’s petition.

Matthew Flora, 35, worked as a seaman on moving vessel LEO, which was owned by Coastal Villages Seafoods, LLC and other owners (petitioners). LEO is an ex-U.S. military landing and recovery craft modified to include two “knuckle” cranes installed in May 2007. The crane hooks were designed to have safety latches to keep heavy loads on the crane hook. LEO’s port side crane hook did not have a safety latch.

On June 12, 2009, LEO was being used as a fish tender vessel off the western coast of Alaska. On the first day of the voyage, within 3 miles of Alaska’s shore, LEO’s crew lowered the crane, with a brailer and scale, to a halibut catcher vessel, which loaded the fish to “lift” back to LEO. LEO’s crew would then ice the fish in totes before transporting them to shore for processing. As LEO’s crew loaded the halibut onto the vessel, the brailer and scale popped out of the crane hook. The scale struck Flora, who suffered a fractured skull and permanent brain injury. Flora sued petitioners under the Jones Act, claiming their negligence caused his injuries. Petitioners requested to limit their liability under the Act.

In this case, Flora sustained his burden of proving negligence. The petitioners, however, could not limit their liability because they knew of LEO’s unseaworthiness and were in privity with the vessel’s negligent manager. LEO was not seaworthy because its crane hook, without a safety clasp, was not reasonably fit for its intended purpose. LEO’s captain admitted he knew the crane lacked a safety latch when the vessel sailed from Seward, Alaska. The vessel manager likewise knew the hook was defective, but never took effective measures to ensure the hook was repaired. His actions and omissions constitute negligence and were the cause of Flora’s injuries. Petitioner’s knowledge of LEO’s unseaworthy condition and their negligent failure to remedy the defective equipment undermines their claim that they lacked “privity or knowledge” of the cause of Flora’s injury. Accordingly, the ship owners could not limit their liability under the Act. Their petition for limitation of liability was dismissed with prejudice.

Continue reading " Injured Alaskan Crewman Defeats Owner’s Limited Liability Claim-In the Matter of the Complaint of Leo, LLC et al. v. Flora " »

The captain of the Alaska crabber SEABROOKE recently wrote an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal. He extolled the benefits of the recently adopted quota system in the Bering Sea crab fishery. He states:

"In 2010, commercial fishing once again topped the list of deadliest jobs in the U.S. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, fishermen faced a fatality rate 33 times the average U.S. worker.

"Catching crab in the Bering Sea can be treacherous. But most people don't realize that it's become a lot less deadly since 2005, when fishing regulations for Bering Sea crab changed dramatically. The old regulations forced fishermen to race against the clock. To control overfishing, the government set a cap on how much crab fishermen could collectively catch, and we all had to stop when that limit was reached. Some years that meant we had seasons as short as three days. As in a car race, boats used to line up for the minute the season began.

"This intense competition was thrilling but it was also incredibly dangerous. Crabbers worked around the clock, sometimes in terrible weather. There was no time to go back and forth to the docks, so some boats would be overloaded with too many crab pots, making them unstable. The result was that from 1990 to 2005 an average of five crabbers died a year.

"Part of my finger was cut off during a violent storm when I got knocked off of my feet and landed on an air compressor. I decided against going to the hospital to have it stitched back on because I knew the fishing season could end any day and my crew had mortgages to pay. I nearly lost my hand after developing a nasty infection.

"If that accident happened today, there wouldn't be nearly as much pressure to keep fishing. Since August 2005, we fish under a much better system called 'catch shares,' which are also in place in some other fisheries. Now regulators divide up how much crab the fleet can catch among individual fishermen, as opposed to collectively, so we can fish at our own pace during significantly longer seasons. Tighter Coast Guard requirements have also improved safety." "Making the 'Deadliest Catch' Less Deadly," Wall Street Journal, November 14, 2011.

Capt. Campbell concludes: "Crabbing before and after catch shares is like night and day. There's no reason I'd choose to go back to the old derby days."

Capt. Campbell's assessment of the effect of the catch share system is encouraging. However, his account of the severed finger episode reflects an attitude which continues to plague the fishing industry. The determination to maximize profits at the expense of crewmember health and safety could have cost Capt. Campbell his hand. The same impulse has caused countless injuries and deaths in the Alaska fishing industry. It will take much more than suspension of derby fishing to solve the problem.

The NTSB recently completed its investigation into the sinking of the Fishing Vessel Katmai on October 22, 2008.

The National Transportation Safety Board released their report on the disaster, and it concluded that the boat had a number of stability problems that made it unable to withstand extreme storm conditions in the Bering Sea. As a result, seven lives were lost when the head-and-gut vessel flooded in 2008.

The marine accident brief stitches together testimony from the four survivors who were aboard the 92-foot boat. At the time of the sinking, the Katmai was traveling through Amchitka Pass, about 120 miles west of Adak. It was heading toward Unalaska with 120,000 pounds of frozen cod when a severe storm hit. The Katmai lost its ability to steer, and the boat started taking in water just before midnight on October 21, 2008. The skipper called for an evacuation of the boat shortly after that. One of the eleven crew members is believed to have gone down with the ship. Six others were lost when the two life rafts aboard rolled in rough seas. The four survivors were ultimately rescued by the Coast Guard over 15 hours after the sinking.

The National Transportation Safety Board came to many of the same conclusions that the Coast Guard reached during their investigation. They found that the probable cause of the sinking was that watertight doors were left open and that the vessel was carrying twice the recommended amount of cod.

In its report, the Coast Guard listed 35 discrepancies which contributed to cause the sinking of the KATMAI.

We often have occasion to praise the princely courage of our Coast Guardsmen, their valor in rescuing mariners in peril. British news sources now report an instance of an actual prince rendering courageous service of the same sort. RAF Search and Rescue and Prince William have been praised for rescue efforts following the November 27 sinking of a Russian-crewed cargo ship in the Irish Sea.

The Russian Ambassador to the UK, Alexander Yakovenko, has written a letter to the Duke of Cambridge praising his role in saving the lives of two Russian seamen, following the sinking of the cargo ship Swanland in the Irish Sea off the Llyn peninsula in North Wales.

Mr Yakovenko wrote:

Your Royal Highness,

All day long we were anxiously following the rescue operation searching for Russian seamen from the sunk Swanland vessel.

We know that you took an active part in the rescue and that the two seamen were saved thanks to your selfless effort under the bad weather conditions.

Let me express to you and your colleagues my deepest gratitude for saving the lives of the Russian citizens.

In his role as an RAF Search and Rescue helicopter co-pilot, the Duke was part of a crew which flew from their base in Anglesey in response to the Swanland’s distress call in the early hours of Sunday, November 27.

The operation involved four helicopters and seven coast guard vessels, but their work was hampered by severe weather conditions.

Two of the eight all-Russian crew were pulled from the water clinging to liferafts; a third man was recovered from the sea but pronounced dead. A search for the remaining 5 crewmembers was underway at last report, with hopes fading.

The 265ft SWANLAND was carrying 3,000 tons of limestone from Llanddulas to the Isle of Wight when it was hit by what the men described as an “enormous wave”.

Continue reading " Russian Ship SWANLAND Sinks, Prince William Assists in Rescue " »