Passenger Ships: Evacuation, Search and Rescue Plans

Lord Greenway Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd May 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greenway (CB)]

My Lords, I am tempted to say,

“We few, we happy few, we band of brothers”.

The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, seems to have a knack for coming up with debates just before a recess when the House is sparse. Nevertheless, I welcome him bringing forward this very important subject. As he said, the cruise business has expanded enormously and we are always faced with the potential of a horrific accident at sea, which I hope will never happen.

I have been associated with the cruise business since about 1990. I worked with an organisation called Cruise Europe for about 14 years, which was set up to try to bring more cruise ships into northern Europe. It was an association of port members. We started with 25; when I left, we had over 100. It has gone from strength to strength. What astounded all of us was the enormous increase in the cruise business, referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley. As a result of that growth, ships have become ever larger, not only to cope with increased passenger numbers but to take advantage of the economies of scale.

The question of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, refers to large UK passenger ships. In my book, there are only about five of them because a lot of the so-called UK ships are registered in Bermuda. However, if we look at the ships on order at the moment—including deliveries so far this year—I have worked out that approximately 37 new ships will be completed by 2026, carrying 4,000 to 5,000-plus passengers. Passenger numbers are difficult to work out: a ship will have a certain number of passengers in a single-berth occupancy, but you can have double, triple or even quadruple-berth occupancies. Those make larger ships capable of carrying up to 7,000 passengers, with a crew of perhaps 2,000 on top of that. We are talking about 9,000 people.

In effect, these new large ships have become floating resorts. They tend to operate in areas that cater for the mass market, and not so much in the remote areas about which the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, asked. They have extraordinary features and compete for the latest ones. I noticed that one of the new ships has a go-kart track, but we have had climbing walls, surfing things—you name it. It is all getting quite extraordinary.

Huge strides have been made in safety during the past 10 or 15 years. The industry has learnt lessons from disasters such as the ferry “Estonia” and even the Kings Cross fire. Ships are in many ways very much safer than they used to be. The noble Lord mentioned the “Costa Concordia”. That to my mind was simply human error. The captain was behaving in an extraordinary way and I could never see it happening in a British ship. If I had been an officer under him, I would have made certain that I knew where the ship was and would have told the captain, “You’re standing into danger”. That did not happen because the culture on board the ship was that nobody dared counteract the captain—and he was busy talking to his mistress. There have also been disasters with the Carnival company and generator fires in the Caribbean. One of the biggest problems to occur is if a ship loses all its vacuum toilets.

The noble Lord mentioned SOLAS. Partly as a result of “Concordia” but also of incidents before that, the new SOLAS regulations and the polar code have made an enormous difference to ship design and ship safety. Large passenger ships are designed for improved survivability, based on the age-old principle that a ship is its best lifeboat—so you do not get off until you know that it is about to sink. The regulations have brought in new casualty thresholds, providing for safe areas with essential systems, orderly evacuation and abandonment, medical care in such safe areas, and shelter from heat stress by means of light and ventilation. There is also a “seven days get home” provision. Some ships have new podded propulsion, retractable in some cases, which might get a ship home, but that is only a seven-day facility which does not help much in the Arctic, Antarctic or the middle of the Pacific.

I can testify to the principle that the ship is its best lifeboat. I was in the 1979 Fastnet yacht race, where we were taught, “Never leave your yacht until it is actually going underwater”. A lot of people got into the life rafts, which proved to be unsuitable, and drowned as a result.

The polar code also tightens up on safety requirements and operating in extremely cold temperatures et cetera. I shall not talk too much about the polar aspect, because very large ships do not often go into such areas. I have a feeling that the Arctic treaties do not allow ships with a certain number of passengers on them. They are simply not allowed to land, because they would trash the ecology. As a result, the ships that go there tend to be much smaller; indeed, a large number of what I would call expanded yachts are being built at the moment, designed specifically for the Arctic and the Antarctic.

On evacuation, these very large passenger ships have extraordinarily large lifeboats. The “Britannia”, which is the P&O cruising ship and one of our largest, has lifeboats capable of carrying 350 people. The two new ships which have been ordered for P&O Cruises, to come in in 2020 and 2022, have lifeboats that will take 440 people—incidentally, they will be powered by liquefied natural gas, a feature being introduced to cut down emissions. I understand that work is being done also on developing very large inflatable chutes, rather like those you come out of an aircraft on, that can carry 500 passengers and even have a small engine allowing them to move clear of the ship. The idea would be to have one of these on either side of a ship. That is fine if you are in the North Sea or the Caribbean, but not a lot of use in the middle of the Pacific, where one of these things is not going to get you very far.

Another thing that is being worked on is that crews are being trained in crowd management: that is very important when you have to evacuate a ship in an emergency. I mentioned the Pacific just now: another problem arises that is not necessarily anything to do with a ship, but if it happened near a small island, could that island cope with 6,000 or 8,000 people? Would it have the facilities or even the airlift capacity to deal with that? Communications have come a very long way recently and there is no problem remaining in touch. I think that a British ship, if it were to suffer a major problem, would probably immediately communicate with Falmouth coastguard, which is well practised in co-ordinating international rescues.

I am satisfied that the UK cruise companies, which have always enjoyed a very high reputation with regard to safety, have robust risk management structures. It is in their own interest to do so, because a modern, large cruise ship will cost approaching $1 billion. To put that slightly in context, Mr Abramovich’s new yacht cost about the same but he does not carry 8,000 people. The other reason companies look so closely at these things is because the adverse publicity and potential loss of business that could arise from a serious casualty could affect them very greatly. What is surprising is that the “Concordia” accident had comparatively little effect on the Carnival Corporation’s profits: it did not seem to put off the appetite of those who wish to take a cruise.