Why Did MV Derbyshire Sink?
It Took 20 Years To Find Out…
Only four years after she was launched, the MV Derbyshire became the largest ever British-registered merchant ship to have sunk. What happened next took a long time, but it was a turning point in the safety of bulk carriers. They still sink, but not nearly as often as they did in 1980, mainly due to the recommendations of the final investigation.
The loss of MV Derbyshire
The MV Derbyshire was a “combination” cargo ship, one of six “Bridge” class ships designed to carry ore, bulk cargo or oil.
Her gross tonnage was 91,665 RT. She was 294 meters long, with 44 meters beam and 18.44 meters draft. Built by Swan Hunter at their shipyard on the River Tees, Newcastle, and registered in Liverpool, she was launched in 1976, entering service in June.
British shipbuilding has a long-standing reputation for quality, and Lloyds Register had classified Derbyshire as A1; their highest classification for merchant ships. She had an experienced master and crew. There were 44 people on board altogether, including the wives of two crew members.
On 9 September 1980, Derbyshire was transporting 157,446 metric tons of iron ore from Canada to Japan, and was nearing the end of her journey when Typhoon Orchid hit her. The last message received from the ship reported this as a severe tropical storm, but there was no Mayday message. The ship must have sunk very quickly, or lost its ability to communicate.
*“Typhoon” is the Asian name for storms known in the West as hurricanes or cyclones. Strong winds and rain revolve around a central “eye” and the resulting storms are categorized from “tropical storm” up to Category 5, which is the highest category we use at present.
Such storms have a regular season, usually late summer- autumn. They can be observed with modern technology, such as satellites or special planes. But they can move erratically, and there is also the possibility of freak waves.
You can imagine how it would feel to be out at sea in such conditions.
Derbyshire’s last known position was around 370 kilometers (230 miles) South-east of Okinawa:
Initially, it was believed she had simply been a victim of the weather, as so many ships are. But there was more to it than that. Derbyshire was one of six ships built to the same design, and as the others revealed structural problems, so the families of those lost began a campaign to find out the full story.
Sister Ships
They say once is chance, twice is coincidence, and three times is a pattern:
In 1982, one of Derbyshire’s sister ships, the MV Tyne Bridge, was caught in severe weather in the North Sea. The ship survived, but later inspection revealed deck plating in Frame 65 was starting to crack. Each of the other ships was checked, and also had signs of potential cracking. Tyne Bridge returned to service but had other problems and was scrapped in 1987.
Meanwhile, Peter Ridyard, a Ship Surveyor and father of Derbyshire’s 4th Engineer, started collecting information about the cracks. In June 1985, an interim report by Britain’s Department of Transport also referred to this damage, but it was omitted from their final report which was published nine months later. It’s not only on ships that you might smell a rat.
In November 1986 the crew of another sister ship, Kowloon Bridge (her original name was English Bridge), noticed cracks in her deck around the area of Frame 65. She lost her rudder before running aground on Stag Rock off the south coast of Ireland, where she broke her back.
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If Derbyshire sank because of such cracking, the pattern would be detrimental to those who built and operated her.
Further enquiries
After the Kowloon Bridge sank, the UK government finally agreed to a formal investigation into the loss of Derbyshire.
This started in October 1987, and lasted six months. The conclusion, published on 18 January 1989, stated the ship was “probably overwhelmed” by Typhoon Orchid on the night of 9/10 September 1980, adding: “the evidence available does not support any further conclusion.”
Understandably, the Derbyshire victims’ families were disappointed, and suspicious. There was no mention of possible weakness in Frame 65 which had caused serious problems to two of her sisters. They wanted an underwater survey, and were told the wreck site was unknown and suitable technology was unavailable. They started a campaign, supported by (among many others) maritime trades unions, Tyne Tees Television, and Liverpool MP Eddie Loyden.
The campaign started in 1990. Brunel University supplied research which showed the role of Frame 65 in the other incidents was seriously underestimated. A book A Ship Too Far was published about the Derbyshire. These efforts paid off.
Searching for the wreck
If you want to find something, you start by looking for its most recent known location.
On 29 May 1994, US firm Oceaneering Technology, funded by the International Transport Federation, sent the search ship Shin Kai Maru to a place where oil had been observed after Derbyshire’s sinking. It took them only 23 hours to discover the wreckage, at 4,200 meters depth (two and half miles).
Using a side-scanner vehicle, and then the remote-controlled deep water vehicle Magellan 925, they identified the wreck. With this evidence, the UK government and the EU joint-sponsored a further expedition to the wreck site. They took 125,774 photos. Eleven months later, it was announced that the cover to one of the foredeck store hatches was not secured. As water entered, the flooding caused the bow to sink down and other hatches also flooded.
If correct, this could have implicated the crew as careless, but it still was not the full story. On 5 April 2000 expert analysts overturned the store hatch theory and asserted that air pipes on the foredeck had been damaged in the heavy seas, causing the hatch (which had, in fact, been properly secured) to collapse. So the sinking happened fast, as each hatch followed.
Interestingly, Frame 65 was not involved in the sinking of Derbyshire after all.
To conclude:
If you go back far enough in an analysis, and keep asking “why?” like you did when you were four, you find the full story eventually. It might not be what you expect, and sometimes not what you hope for, but it will fit all the known facts.
Finally, the Derbyshire families had their answers. With so much experience and many connections, some of them are still involved as consultants regarding marine safety.
In Liverpool, a memorial garden was dedicated to the Derbyshire victims on 15 September 2018:
It’s good that the families got a comprehensive answer to their questions about this tragedy. But to me there is one further loose end: Why was the British government so reluctant to hold a full investigation? Perhaps fear of losing shipbuilding orders and the jobs they create was politicians’ motivation.
Maybe it’s true about the unknown wreck site and inadequate technology, but only five years after they said that, the first organized search found the Derbyshire, very quickly. I’ll rest my case there, but it’s not hard to guess the possible answers.
Sources:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeRjGPI9S_8
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Derbyshire
https://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/merseyside-maritime-museum/mv-derbyshire
