Passenger Ships: Evacuation, Search and Rescue Plans

Lord Tunnicliffe Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd May 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, I too thank my noble friend Lord Berkeley for initiating this debate, except that it is a bit unfair. He admitted that he had taken an interest in this issue for some time, while I know that the Minister has an army of civil servants to help him, but all I had was Google.

The first question I had was: is there a problem? The “Costa Concordia” clearly shows that a catastrophic event can occur. However, how frequently might it do so? It is a long time since a catastrophic event occurred on a large ship. Being interested in safety, I therefore went behind the catastrophic events to look at precursor events and alighted upon the “Queen Mary 2” as a British ship—so you would think, although it is actually registered in Bermuda—to see whether it gave some indication of accidents and incidents that might lead to catastrophe. I have taken my data from a website called CruiseMapper, which seeks to list all events on cruise ships.

The “Queen Mary 2” was introduced into service in 2004 and I have found three events which stood out in my mind. At 1.30 am on 15 August 2008, during a westbound transatlantic crossing from Southampton to New York, the vessel experienced a total power loss which lasted for one hour. This ship is electrically powered, so a total power loss meant that it was drifting. At 4.30 am on 23 September 2010, while operating in the Mediterranean and en route to call at the port of Barcelona, the vessel experienced a total power loss—the shut-down of all four main engines—and an electrical power outage. The incident was triggered by a deteriorated capacitor within the harmonic filter which caused an explosion. The electricity was restored in 15 minutes, but the power loss lasted for one hour until the main generators were restarted. The third incident I found took place on 12 December 2015 when the ship suffered a small engine-room fire. It was quickly extinguished and no injuries were reported. The incident resulted in a temporary loss of power and the ship drifting.

This ship carries more than 3,000 passengers. Drifting in a nice, quiet, calm sea is a benign event, but drifting in the middle of the North Atlantic in a storm is far from a benign event, and drifting off a hostile coast is clearly potentially catastrophic, so it seems that we have a problem. I tried to get a feel for the incidence of the problem. The ship has been in service for 14 years. I reckon it does an average of 50 cruises a year, so that is 700 cruises in that time and you have a 1:250 chance of being on the “Queen Mary 2” and having a total power loss, albeit so far they have been benign and short, so there is a risk.

Are there standards? Who sets the standards? Once again, Google tells me: it is the Maritime Safety Committee of the IMO. Does the UK participate in that committee? How are the standards enforced? What responsibility does the UK have outside the UK search and rescue zone? I ask that because it is not clear to me whether there are any UK large cruise ships. I was fairly shocked to discover that the “Queen Mary 2” is registered in Bermuda. Most of the ships I looked up on Google are not registered in the United Kingdom. If we have UK ships, how are the safety features in the regulations tested? Are there physical tests of the lifeboats? Do they run through the procedure for getting 3,000 people off the ship? How are safety events recorded? As I understand it, the United States has a marine accident reporting requirement run by the US Coastguard. Do we have a similar system?

I am sorry I cannot inject this with party-political excitement, but there are so many outstanding questions that I first need to be better informed, so it is in the Minister’s court.