A trip down memory lane

Having recently leafed through some old books about the Gaul, we found an interesting paragraph at page 62 in John Nicklin’s book, The Loss of the Motor Trawler GAUL, which we have reproduced below.

Sadly, Mr Nicklin is no longer with us and will not be able to read copies of two of the official memos that were circulated at that time (see below). These memos provide the answer to his question as to why the Department of Trade, who had commissioned the NMI report on the Gaul, declined to make its findings public.

The last paragraph in the memo above shows that the Department of Trade were not prepared to permit the publication of the NMI report on the Gaul’s stability, for fear that its conclusions might provide evidence to one of the parties to the litigation.

The above memo shows that only after the prospect of litigation had disappeared did the NMI think it likely that the Department of Trade would grant permission to make the results of their research public.

Unfortunately, this is all we have time for at the moment, but we shall come back to this subject (and to the Trident affair) in due course.

Openness

We have published below a copy of an internal DOT document, dated 16th February 1977, which suggests that, at the time it was written, government officials in the Department for Transport (DOT) were actively suppressing the results of the TRIDENT/GAUL model experiments.

As we have shown in an earlier post, the Gaul had inadequate stability for her intended service - a fact which was never disclosed during the 2004 formal investigation.

The Stability of the Trawler Gaul (part 2)

36 years have passed since the trawler Gaul sank in the Barents Sea on the 8th of February 1974 and 5 years since the Re-opened Formal Investigation into its loss laid the blame for the tragedy with her crew. Today, by way of remembrance, we are going to reveal a few more facts about the stability of the trawler Gaul.

On 5 December 1972 the Department of Trade (DOT) finally completed their examination of the stability of the Ranger Castor (renamed Gaul in 1973) and issued their official stability certificate:

This document was meant to attest that the Gaul’s reserves of stability in her foreseeable sailing conditions had been examined by the DOT and found to satisfy IMCO’s minimum stability standards.

Unfortunately, the stability documentation that had been examined by the DOT prior to their certification of the Gaul contained a number of basic errors and, what is more, it did not reflect the fact that two of Gaul’s seawater ballast tanks had been converted to carry fuel oil. The effects of this conversion were, however, significant for the vessel’s stability because they meant that she could no longer meet the IMCO’s minimum stability standards in all of her operating conditions.

The Original Formal Investigation (OFI) September - October 1974

In the original formal investigation, the Builders, the Owners and the DOT were all able to draw upon the testimony of their expert witnesses who were well versed in ship stability matters; unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the relatives of the deceased who, instead, had to rely upon the integrity of the Court.

The loss of the Gaul, obviously, raised a number of questions concerning the safety of her remaining sister vessels, and, therefore, a part of the 1974 OFI was spent in considering the safety of the Ranger C class vessels [1] as a whole.

The effect of the ballast tank conversion on the stability of the Ranger vessels was examined in some depth, leading to the agreed view [2] that, even if these vessels sailed with fuel oil (instead of water ballast) in their no 2 Double Bottom tanks, the IMCO minimum stability criteria would still be met provided operational measures (i.e. where the ships’ staff were instructed on the sequence of fuel tank usage) were implemented, and that these would be sufficient to ensure the safety of the remaining vessels.

An extract from the transcripts of evidence for Day 12 OFI:

(Mr Ward represented the Gaul’s builders - Brooke Marine and Mr Gilfillan was an independent consultant Naval Architect who had been engaged by the Gaul’s owners to examine the safety of their Ranger Class vessels.
In the above transcript they were discussing the content of a letter concerning fuel tank usage that had been sent by the owners, shortly after the Gaul was lost, to the skipper of the Kelt, a sister vessel to the Gaul.)

This operational measure (i.e. that the No.2 double bottom tank was to be used only when the ship was fully laden or on her homeward passage) was introduced prior to the completion of Mr Gilfillan’s detailed research into the safety of the Ranger vessels, in which he would draw a different conclusion: namely that - in order to improve their operational stability following the conversion of their no 2 DB tanks for fuel oil - between 20 and 50 tons of permanent ballast should be provided onboard the Gaul’s remaining sister vessels.

Extract from transcripts of evidence Day 11 OFI - 8th October 1974

The lie

In the above extract from the OFI transcripts, it can be seen that the DOT’s counsel (Mr Brice) is asking the witness patently leading questions, suggesting to him that operational procedures would be sufficient to ensure compliance with IMCO stability standards, and also that such procedures were, perhaps, preferable to the provision of 20-50 tones of permanent ballast.

With regard to stability following the conversion of no 2 DB tank for carriage of fuel oil, the shipyard’s hand calculations [3] of 1974 can be readily replicated, and these clearly show that the IMCO stability criteria would not have been met in all of the Gaul’s normal operating conditions, regardless of any diligent skipper’s desire to ensure ‘proper distribution and use of fuel’ and the ‘proper operation of the ship’, as Mr Brice puts it.

Such calculations show that not only was the OFI proposition, that operational measures would suffice, incorrect, but it was also a lie. In carrying out their detailed analyses of the Gaul’s stability reserves, the owners, the builders and the DOT would all have been well aware of the fact that it was not possible for the vessel (as modified) to meet the IMCO minimum stability criteria for the ‘arrival in port’ condition and the seagoing conditions that preceded it.

In fact Mr Gilfillan admits this in paragraph 3 above, but Mr Brice quickly brushes over this fact by suggesting that a lack of adequate stability would only arise if the vessel were “improperly operated”.

(Note: Mr Brice’s rejoinder to Mr Gilfillan’s advice: “but not in all conditions” should have been to seek clarification regarding those conditions in which the vessel did not meet IMCO minimum stability criteria.)

Additionally, the appropriate viewpoint [4] for the DOT, in terms of trawler safety, should have been that an operational solution (which would still retain the inherent risk of human error) for a stability shortfall would always be inferior to a permanent solution that restored a ship’s stability to its desired condition.
The provision of permanent ballast onboard the Gaul’s sisters would have been a permanent solution, and one that would not have affected the vessels’ ability to catch fish or the quantity of catch (470 tons) that they could carry.

The Re-opened Formal Investigation 2004 (RFI)

During the 2004 RFI, the cover-up that had its origins in the 1974 OFI was duly consolidated, orchestrated by the DfT who were familiar with the Gaul case and the issue of her questionable stability.

Additionally, a new cover-up was put in place, one that would also conceal the obvious design faults in the duff and offal chutes on the Gaul and put the cause for her loss down to ‘crew and operator error’.

The cover-up continues to this day.

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[1] Ranger Cadmus, Ranger Calliope, Ranger Callisto and Ranger Castor (Gaul)

[2] Consensus between the DOT, the Owners and the Builders. It should be noted that all three parties had an interest in obtaining a favourable outcome from the formal investigation, as all could be open to criticism:
- The DOT, who only carried out a superficial document review prior to erroneously certifying the Gaul’s stability in 1972
- The builders, who had produced the Gaul’s stability documentation which contained errors and which over-estimated the Gaul’s stability reserves
- The Owners who had operated the vessel outwith the scope of Gaul’s official stability documentation.

[3] Manual integration of statical stability curves using Simpson’s rules. Calculations have also been carried out using modern ship stability software (with free trim capabilities and automatic free surface correction for tanks) and these show that (after correction for shipyard errors) whenever fishing was poor, the vessel would have had to leave the fishing grounds at a point when approximately 50% of their fuel had been used, to enable them to arrive back in port with more than 100 tons of fuel remaining onboard (this residual weight of fuel was necessary to enable the vessel to meet the IMCO stability criteria on the return voyage). In brief, the conversion of the number 2 Double bottom water ballast tanks for the carriage of fuel oil did not actually extend the operational range of the vessels, it merely substituted fuel oil for seawater, which still had to remain onboard the vessel as ‘ballast’ if minimum stability standards were to be met.

[4] The DOT’s unusual views regarding the provision of ballast become more explicable if we consider that, had permanent ballast been proposed for the Gaul’s sister vessels following the Formal Investigation, then this would have indicated that there had been a fundamental flaw with the Gaul’s stability. Whereas, if safety improvements were required that were of an operational nature only, then it could be argued that the effects of the fuel tank conversion had not been really significant and that the Gaul’s intact stability had been basically satisfactory and that, therefore, the DOT’s certification of the Gaul’s stability documentation in 1972 had not been incorrect.

The puzzle tour

We have often asked ourselves why such an obvious fault in the design of the Gaul had escaped the attention of scores of technical experts and assessors during years of legal battles and official scrutiny.
Why was this fault not noticed when the drawings were examined, immediately after the loss of the vessel?

Is it really possible that the design fault was, in fact, noticed?

Is it possible that the 2002 discovery of the design fault in the duff and offal chutes was, in fact, a re-discovery?

The labyrinthine trail of the Gaul’s history has eventually lead us back to the autumn of 1977 when, probably for the first time, the possibility of a problem with the chutes on the Gaul, as a likely cause for the loss of the vessel, was recorded. In a memo dated 14 September 1977, the Surveyor General in the Department of Trade (DOT) wrote:

“ It would indeed be a bonus if we not only located the GAUL but also established the cause of the loss. However, most evidence points to the GAUL being an intact ship, so we can give little guidance as to damage and I would expect small openings[1] which may have allowed the entry of water to the factory deck to be indetectable. The soundings also indicate the wreck which we suspect is the GAUL, is lying on its side…”

(Source RFI formal report paragraph 8.25)

On 22 December 1977, the NMI released to members of the DOT the report of their DOT-sponsored research into the sea-keeping and stability characteristics of the Gaul. These findings refuted the conclusions of the 1974 Formal Investigation by establishing that flooding of the factory deck would have been a precondition for the vessel’s capsize.

In a strange twist of logic, the results of the NMI research were subsequently interpreted as clearing the vessel’s builders and designers of any responsibility and, thus, the case[2] against them was dropped. In the whole maze of tangle and misdirection, this was probably a significant point. A supreme example of slothful induction, the decision implied that a design fault on the vessel could have only been contemplated if the capsize and sinking had been caused by water accumulated on the trawl deck - that is water accumulated on the factory deck could not have been put down to a design fault or construction error, but only to crew action or inaction. (?!)

During the 30 years of floundering and confusion that followed, no one managed to reach the centre of this circular labyrinth – the place where, as the legend has it, you will probably find a monster.

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[1] There were only two “small openings” capable of admitting water to the factory deck that would be undetectable if the vessel was lying on its starboard side: the duff and offal chute openings.

[2] In February 1997, a writ alleging negligence had been issued against the Gaul’s owners and its designers/ builders, Brooke Marine shipyard, by the families of the crew.