A massive cargo ship vanishes in a raging typhoon. There’s a fantastic mystery how a ship nearly 1,000 ft long
could just disappear. Authorities blame captain and crew, but
not everyone is convinced. I trusted the crew. They wouldn’t put their lives in danger. We’ll prove it.
Their evidence lies at the bottom of the world’s deepest ocean. Look at that. What’s uncovered, no one expected. The
ship did something which is to implode and then explode. For sure. 44 of them were all alive as
she went into Typhoon Ar. For sure they’re all dead. How did that happen?
[Applause]
September 8th, 1980. The MV Darbisher is passing through the Western Pacific on
route to
Japan. Captain Jeffrey Underh Hill is in command of the massive ship.
The 47year-old father of two is in charge of every detail of the Darbisher’s operation and its crew of
42. Morning, Carly. Morning, Captain. Have
the MEP reports come in? Yeah, I have them right here. Jeff Underh Hill or Gavu as he was
nicknamed by everybody cuz that was his initials was a very competent seafaring
master. As far as his personality went, he liked to control by consensus.
Nigel Malpass served aboard the Darbisher as chief officer. He knows the ship and her crew very well. Darbisher
was a wonderful ship to sail on. She was almost like brand new. There was hardly any wear and tear on her and things
worked. Unless you’ve actually sailed on one, it’s hard to visualize how big they were, but they were really massive. At
294 m, the Darbisher is longer and twice the weight of the Titanic. Her nine
cargo holds have a capacity of 160,000 tons, and the bridge deck is 10 stories
high. A ship of this size can take more than 3 km to stop and over a kilometer
just to turn. The Darbisher is a bulk carrier. Her huge holds can be filled
with anything from grain to crude oil. But on this trip, she’s carrying 157,000
tons of iron ore. After leaving Canada and passing around the southern tip of Africa, she’s now just a few days from
her final destination, Kawasaki, Japan. Because of her size, she’s had to
take the long way around. She was called a capesiz ship because she was 145 ft
wide and drew 60 ft of water and was just simply too deep to go through either the Panama Canal or the Suez
Canal. So she had to go beneath the capes, Cape Horn, Cape of Good Hope, into some of the roughest waters of of
the world. By now, ship and crew have been at sea for more than 2
months. Most are experienced seaman, including 19-year-old deckhand Peter
Lambert. This is his second year at sea, and he loves it. He couldn’t stop talking about it. He loves it. You know,
I always I always feel a seafarer is born. and you can’t make one. You form
very close bonds with the seaf farers that you’re with. Your life at times depended on it. Ship’s crew is like a
family because they’re on the vessel for extended periods of time together.
Ah, yes. You can just set it there. An unusual but well appreciated company perk allows wives to travel with their
husbands. Thank you. That’s perfect. 24year-old Ann Marie Hutchinson is one
of the two wives on board. So far, the voyage has been
uneventful. Captain, anything exciting?
A little too exciting. Chief Officer Curly Bis delivers weather forecasts
predicting a fastmoving storm. Typhoon Orchid is heading their way.
The western North Pacific has this nickname of Typhoon Alley. And that’s
because the typhoons that form there can be upwards of 300 to 400 m across.
Tremendous winds upwards of 100 mph, generating tremendous waves, very
destructive force. To avoid danger, Underh Hill needs to keep his ship at least 320 km
from the storm. But there’s a problem. He received three weather reports. one
from Guam, one from Tokyo, and one from Hong Kong. And each one had given
Typhoon Orchid a different location. Brilliant. Three forecasts,
all different. With conflicting weather reports, Captain Underh Hill has to make
his best guess how to dodge the storm. still have to rely your expertise, your
knowledge base in being able to identify where you are in relation to the storm. Both the typhoon and the ship are
moving. Figuring out how to avoid the storm is an enormous challenge. Being the sensible seaf farer that he was, he
would have said, “Right, that’s three typhoons.” He wouldn’t have tried to second guess which was the right one. He altered course to the north and the east
to avoid all three. If we maintain a good speed, we should be able to sneak
through here. You want to make a plan that if I can keep this course and this speed over the
next 24 hours, it may pass behind me. I might catch some of the weather, but I won’t bear the brunt of it. Let’s make
sure the ship is secure. Yeah. Yes, sir.
This is the captain speaking. Looks like the weather’s getting worse. So, please take care to the storm abates and make
sure the ship and the cabin are secure. It was a procedure within the company
that as you approached bad weather, you would go through the procedures of battening down ventilators, putting
canvas covers on them, and basically checking that everything was snug and
ready to take any kind of sea. Sailing in heavy weather is part of life at sea. It’s just part of the job.
That’s not to say that you take it lightly. One of the most important tasks is to
batten down the hatches, large and small. Peter Lambert is still learning
the ropes. Make sure you do it nice and tight. Everybody adors him. Everybody loves
him. He’ll help you no matter what you need doing, he would help you.
Captain, we’re down to 8 knots. Within hours, it’s clear the captain’s plan
isn’t working. Despite their change of course, they’re hitting heavy weather. The swelling seas are already making it
hard to keep up their speed. Autopilot off. Let’s see if we can make some better headway.
Conditions continue to worsen. An unexpected shift in the storm’s
direction has put them directly in its
path. Through the night, wind speeds reach up to 80 kmh and wave heights soar to more than 7
m. Gentlemen, looks like we’ll have to tough this one out. Heave two, please.
Heaving two. Keep the wind light on the starboard bow. turning to port, keeping the wind light
on the starboard bow. What the captain wanted to do at the time was to adjust his heading and his
course such that he was taking the waves right on his starboard bow because that
will cause the ship to just rise and fall but along length but not roll and not
pitch. As the center of the typhoon closes in, winds have increased to 100
km hour and wave heights to more than 10 m.
These are conditions that few people have experienced at sea.
The wind is very loud. It’s roaring basically. The ship is
pitching, very little visibility, and generally an unpleasant situation to be in.
There’s little else to do but endure the violent motion of the ship.
It has a long-term effect over days of that on the crew. It’s exhausting. The fatigue sets in because nobody really
sleeps, particularly if you’re really battered in some heavy seas. Captain Underh Hill probably
didn’t leave when the weather really picked up because he has to be there. He has to see what’s going on. It’s just
continued vigilance all the time. A weary vigilance. Radio opposition to
Liverpool
as they enter their second night of the storm. The Darbisher radios her position to shore and checks in with a nearby
ship. This is the Darbisher. How are you enjoying the weather? Loving
it. Even better when we meet up in Toby. Seeing you there in a day or two.
William Mcronone was on a container ship heading to the same port in Japan. actually were talking with the darisher
on the VHF at the time and he made arrangements to meet the guys on board because there’s a there’s a nightclub in
Tokyo called Fufus in Rapongi. We’re all going to go up the road and have a night in Fufus, but uh unfortunately never
happened. 20° starboard. 20° to Starboard, Captain. Easy does it. By now, more than
2 days of unrelenting gale force winds have whipped the waves to monstrous heights.
Damn. We’re going to feel this one.
The scream of twisting steel can only mean one
thing. We’re losing her. We’re going to lose her. We’re on the ship. We’re
It would be only in the last few seconds they would have realized what was happening.
[Music]
5 days later, Typhoon Orchid has finally dissipated, but no one has heard from
the Darbisher, not even a Mayday call. Come daylight in the morning, the container terminal, you could hear
helicopters, and we looked around the Japanese Coast Guard were just coming over us, the helicopters, and they’re all heading away out to sea.
to go and do the start the search for the darasher. Their hope that in a vast
ocean, the lives of 44 people can still be
saved. 11 days after the last radio call from the MV Darbisher, an exhaustive
search by the Japanese Coast Guard has found no survivors.
An oil slick is cited 45 kilometers from the Darbisher’s last position, but no
sign of the largest British ship lost at sea. It was a fantastic mystery as to
how a ship of a thousand nearly 1,000 ft long could uh just uh uh disappear.
All 44 passengers and crew are presumed dead. Among them, 19-year-old deckhand
Peter Lambert. His family are devastated. You know, your mother, he was totally destroyed. And she kept on
asking, “Why? Why Peter? Why did the ship
sink? How did he die? Why?” The sinking is attributed to
Typhoon Orchid and written off as an act of God. But not everyone is convinced.
Why would a sensible, well-found ship suddenly disappear quickly without any distress signals.
[Music] I just said, “Mother, I promise you, I’ll find out how this ship sank, why it
sank, and why Peter lost his life on it. I promise you, I’ll do that.”
[Music] Wasting no time, a 28-year-old Paul
Lambert reaches out to the National Union of Seafarers. What I wanted to ask him what was actually Dasher. I think
you should take a look at this. Different ships have been going down.
Nothing was getting done about it. Dish was the same. All the same type of freighters.
Lambert learns a shocking number of bulk carriers have been sinking. On average,
one bul carrier sank every 6 to 7 weeks with total loss of life.
The era of the coffin ships. That’s how we casting.
Lambert is convinced the lives of other seafarers are in danger. But he can’t get anyone to act until another accident
6 years after the tragedy changes everything.
The turning point was in 1986 when the Darabia sisterhip, the
Cowan Bridge, got in difficulties in the Irish sea. There was major cracking, had
a bulkhead right in front of the deck house at frame 65.
The Darbisher is one of six sister ships designed with steel beams along the length of their hulls to add strength.
But during construction, the girders are joined at frame number 65, creating a
potential weak point. Now, three of the six ships have had something go badly wrong at
sea. For the Dervishar families and many people looking at the ship, seeing an
obvious structural flaw in a ship that disappeared made them think that probably what caused the Derbashar to
sink was a flaw. At frame 65, this began to look like the smoking gun.
The family’s fear that if a design flaw did cause the disaster, other lives could be at risk.
We’re losing her. Loser ship.
It’s not just what happened to Peter. Something had to be done.
Yes. Hello. It’s Paul Lambert again. Have you had time to review that information I sent you?
Lambert uses the suspicions about frame 65 to convince government officials to re-examine their
conclusions. But after 2 years of investigation and 9 years after the tragedy, they once again conclude
Typhoon Orchid is to blame for the loss of the Darbisher. The
findings were an act of God. It’s a verdict the families refuse to
accept. Dogs. Yes. Thanks waste. One in the South China Sea. Two, you see a
white wash. I want you to have a look at this. Lambert decides the only way they’ll get a proper investigation is if
the families of the victims take matters into their own hands. We’re not going to know the truth unless we find it
ourselves. Their first task is to find the wreck. They had to work out and
extrapolate where roughly they thought the vessel was based on where the oil slick had been discovered by the
Japanese Coast Guard. The search area encompasses some of the
deepest waters in the ocean, reaching depths of more than 5
km. In those days, there was very limited capabilities to really search
large areas of the of the seafloor. And uh for the most part, the wreck was thought to be unfindable.
Undaunted, Lambert and the other families of the crew do something that’s never been done
before. They raise enough money to launch a short 8-day search, and they
get lucky. 14 long years after the tragedy, on the fifth day of the expedition, they
confirm the location of the wreck.
[Music] We found a darish. It blows your mind. Honest to
God, we know where she is. We know where the graves are. 44
people. With news of the discovery, 42-year-old
Lambert demands the government reopen the investigation. We want these bull carriers locked up. We want them
surveyed properly. We want the ones that are unseaorthy taken out of commission and scrapped. We want men to go away to
sea knowing that the ship underneath them is safe, not worrying whether they come home again or not. In the face of
overwhelming public interest, the British government agrees to fund a full-scale
expedition. And this time they bring in the heavy guns.
[Music] They brought in Woods Hole, who was the
most advanced oceanographic and deep sea research group of their day and perhaps
to this day as well. The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, whose team discovered the
Titanic, will now explore the Darbisher over 4,000 m beneath the
sea. The Darbisher survey uh was really world’s sort of first very high quality
uh uh forensic investigation. 38-year-old robotics engineer Andy Bowen
is in command of the world’s most sophisticated submersible. Our job was
to actually go down and collect evidence for the possible scenarios uh that would
explain why the ship was lost. For example, had the propeller uh fallen off? Uh had the rudder uh failed? Uh was
there a fire in the engine room? A total of 13 possible causes for the
sinking are marked for investigation, including a possible catastrophic failure at frame
65. Damn it, looped again. Andy Bowen maneuvers his ROV to image as much of
the wreckage as possible. Up and away. He needs to give investigators enough
detail to analyze the damage. It was an incredible challenge to the
extent that uh we’re dangling these cameras at the end of literally a thread
3 miles down uh into debris field uh something like a large collapsed
skyscraper. Wow, it’s cold. It’s for the computers.
PhD student Alex Gus joins Professor Douglas Faulner to analyze the
[Music]
images. You had a visibility up to maximum 10 m. That’s all you could see.
The debris is scattered over more than a kilometer of the sea floor.
All right. Let’s move in for a closer
look. When I saw the name of the ship, preserved in an excellent
condition at 4,200 m, definitely that was uh one a moment
that I will never forget. [Music] 17 years after the tragic loss of the
ship and her 44 passengers and crew, the answers may finally be within
reach. Investigators guide a remote camera vehicle 4 km below the surface of
the Pacific Ocean. They need to know why the largest British ship ever lost at sea went down.
Really torn apart. Look at that. The giant ship has been shattered into
over 2,000 pieces of twisted metal and debris.
I was wondering why the ship is fragmented, why the ship is not in two,
three pieces like the Titanic, for example. Andy Bowen has examined many shipwrecks,
but he’s never seen anything like this before. I think everyone was staggered by the
fact that it covered such a large area. The bow and the stern of the ship were
in two separate places, separated by a significant distance, and everything
else in between, all of the ship structure was for the most part turned
into what I I I would almost call confetti. The twisted metal fragments are a
telltale sign of a violent phenomenon that can tear a ship apart.
When the Darbisher sank, because of its unique construction of a double hull,
uh, it actually did something which is to implode and then explode.
As the Darbisher sank below the waves, increased water pressure drove her watertight double hulls inward. At that
point, the trapped air became so highly compressed, it exploded.
it it explodes back out in a shock wave. And that energy release was probably
equivalent to many tons of TNT. And so the wreckage on the seafloor was uh just
huge pieces of ship twisted by uh energy that just is almost impossible to
imagine. In other words, the explosions were the result of the catastrophe, not
the cause. Investigators still have no idea what set off the
disaster. The ROV has captured thousands of highde photographs. Investigators scrutinize
them, searching for any sign of a fracture that occurred before the ship sank, in particular around the known
structural flaw at frame 65. We definitely had to fight evidence
whether the rupturing of all the metal parts around Balhead 65 was brittle or
ductile. Ductile means that it took place slowly. Brittle means that the fragmentation took place rapidly,
but it’s a dead end. Frame 65 shows unmistakable signs of the same explosive
phenomenon. It wasn’t frame 65.
This happened when she was already going down. The cause they had hoped to prove
a weakness in her construction is not the reason the Darbisher sank. We
evidence that all these empty compartments after of the bulkhead 65
had been imploded exploded when the ship was sinking. So
that means that there was no cracking on bulkit 65.
If it wasn’t frame 65, something else must have triggered the disaster.
We’re losing her. We’re going to lose her. Abandoned ship. Abandoned
ship. Abandoned ship.
[Music]
If the ship’s structure didn’t fail, investigators wonder, is her cargo
responsible for her sinking? Darbisher was carrying this iron ore. The snowstorm of this uh fine
material. It was scattered everywhere. Or carriers are very dangerous ships
because they have such heavy, dense cargos that as soon as the ship starts flooding and loses buoyancy, the ship
goes straight to the bottom. An or ship sinks literally like a stone. On this voyage, the Darbisher was
loaded with 157,000 tons of iron ore. A cargo so heavy only seven of her nine
holes could be partially filled. You need to ensure that your center of
gravity and center of buoyancy that what’s called the GM is moderate. Otherwise, you get what’s called a dead
ship. It doesn’t have that buoyancy and it whips from side to side.
Is it possible the crew made an error when they loaded the ship? Are we good to go? The dead ship is one that you
start to get worried about. Cheers, mate. They review the records from the Darbisher’s port of departure, but
there’s no sign of any problem that would explain the disaster. Investigators are forced back
to what they’ve always known. The sea conditions on the night the Darbisher went down were unusually extreme. One
ship in the same typhoon reported seeing waves that were between 60 and 90 ft
tall. This is the Darisher. How are you enjoying the weather?
You stand on the bridge and all you see ahead of you is just a wall of water. She got to go over it or go
through it. Professor Faulner proposes a theory which at the time is still
controversial. Perhaps the Darbisher was overcome by a rogue wave. And I think
it’s been happening since the dawn of time.
For centuries, mariners have told stories about vast waves that seem to come out of nowhere.
Rogue waves are often described as as being a single solitary wave that’s much
taller than the rest of the seas. Usually two to three times taller, often coming from a different direction from
most of the other waves. Uh the wave is breaking. It’s unstable and when it hits a ship, it can have incredible impact.
Nobody knows how they form. Uh they literally form out of nowhere and they
will hit a ship. Did a rogue wave send the Darbisher and
44 people to the bottom of the sea? It’s terrible. It’s terrible if you could see
it and just as terrible if you couldn’t.
Investigators believe the hull of the Darbisher was nearly intact when she sank. Was she overcome by a rogue
wave? Or was it something else? They analyze photographs of the wreckage
hoping to find out. We’re talking about 135,000 steel images. So, we had
to link all the put all these photographs together. Uh like putting my puzzle back together.
Each image was taken individually and carefully placed in context to its
neighbor so that you could get this large area view which is impossible to get in any other way.
They literally put together an enormous mosaic of what the wreck looked like. Most of the ship has been
shattered, but the bow of the ship is different. Amazing.
The bow was for the most part intact. And that indicated that the bow was
generally flooded and full of water and therefore did not fracture, did not compress or explode underwater
pressure, which says a lot about the possibilities to why the ship
sank. If the bow was full of water, is this what caused the sinking? That was a
question to be answered. Thank you. How the water went came inside and why there
was water inside. As investigators search for the source of the flooding, they find a troubling image. We had
closeup high definition photographs from the bow and we saw the uh the open hats.
The lid was lost. The butterfly screws were at a full extent which meant that
they could not have been uh locked. So there is a scenario starting
forming there that hatch had been left open. The open hatch they’ve discovered
is the Bzan’s hatch leading to a storage compartment below the forward deck.
Let’s make sure the ship is secure. Yeah. Yes, sir.
Is it possible the wing nuts on the Bzan’s hatch were not properly secured by the crew?
Make sure you do it nice and tight. If the hatch opened during the storm, tons
of seawater could have entered the storage space below and loaded down the front of the
ship. The bowel is lowering as the water is filling up these spaces. And there
comes a point where the bow is not rising now like it should. With the flooded bow sinking low in the
water, waves would begin washing further and further up the deck, loading tons of
seawater onto the enormous main cargo hatches. Those hatches are strong,
they’re wellmade, but they’re not designed for that type of loading. And by now, we may be in the worst part of
the weather with waves maybe upwards of 40 ft. So each one of those falls down
onto that number one hatch. Hundreds of tons falling down on the hatch. A 12 m
wave can smash down with a force of 400 tons, far exceeding the design limit of
the hatch covers. It would only be a matter of time before they gave
way. Look at that. Once the first cargo hatch collapsed,
the nearly empty hold would fill quickly, pulling the bow even deeper into oncoming
waves. The covers failed on hatch number one. Hatch number two is empty. Hatch
number two fills with water and begins pulling the ship down even further. By the time she reaches hatch number three,
and and that is filling, the ship is well on her way to the bottom.
Investigators believe the evidence proves their theory. The disaster and the deaths of everyone on board could
have been prevented if only the crew had properly secured the small Bzen’s hatch.
Families aren’t going to like this. As a courtesy, the families are told the
news before it’s released to the press. When we deliver the presentation to the families, there was an astonishment in
their face. I’m sorry, but the pictures indicate the hatch wasn’t secured.
The the hatch wasn’t secured. What does that mean? It seems like bad seammanship.
Bad seamanship. The Bosen hatch wasn’t secured. No, that’s wrong. No, you’re
wrong about that. Evidence that pointed towards maybe there was a human error. I I think really fuel the fire for these
people. They said, “No, these people were professional. There’s just no way that kind of a crew would do something
that would put themselves at peril. You’re wrong about this and I’m going to bloody prove it. I trusted the crew.
They wouldn’t put their lives in danger. You spent all these years not being able
to grieve properly. Leave. Thank you. Fighting,
campaigning, doing whatever you can, whatever you have to. and you come back and you say that see just look at the
pictures the hatch wasn’t left open we’ll prove it in the search for proof
the Darbisher’s former chief officer may already have the answer
I knew for sure that the conclusions that have been drawn so far were
wrong former chief officer Nigel Malpass doesn’t believe crew error caused the
Darbisher to sink. He was supposed to be aboard that final trip, but a lastminute
crew change saved him. Some people have said I’m the luckiest person alive, but in fact I should have been on the
Darbisha when she was lost. I’d been with most of that crew
the trip before. I knew all the crew very well.
Malpass is certain the investigators have it wrong. He doesn’t believe the crew would ever leave the forward hatch
unsecured. Anybody that knew the ship knew that you couldn’t have drawn that conclusion.
One of the things that convinced me when I saw the photograph of the Bowen store with the bits of heaving line hanging
off the dogs that she’d been well secured. When Malpass was chief officer on the
Darbisher, he made sure the crew knew how to secure the Bowzen’s hatch with a lashing known as a cat’s cradle. We put
a cat’s cradle on that bos. The whole essence of that being there was to stop those wing nuts
opening and I have no doubts that Darbisha went through that procedure.
The testimony of Nigel Malpass along with some strands of rope fastened to the Bzan’s hatch effectively throw the
investigator’s findings into doubt. Something else must have caused
the flooding in the bow that set off the disaster. For help, the High Court turns
to Marin, the Maritime Research Institute of the Netherlands. Here, they
can simulate the behavior of all kinds of ships in nearly any sea condition. In
fact, we were the only facility in the world that could replicate uh the wave condition that happened during the
accident. We could make any kind of waves, long crested waves, short crested waves, that means waves coming from
different directions. Um and this was a very very unique capability at that time.
The team at Marin are tasked to recreate the conditions of Typhoon Orchid and test its impact on the Darbisher.
They need to know if something other than crew error could have set off the disaster. It was very large expectation
from the families. We really felt the pressure that we really had to uh to perform.
We want the truth. If it is badmanship, fair enough. As long as they can prove without a shadow of a doubt, S made a
mistake, we’ll accept it. For the Darbisher test, the tank is
programmed with detailed meteorological information about Typhoon Orchid. A precise 4 and 1/2 m replica is
loaded with sensors to track the stresses the Typhoon put on the ship and its forward
hatches. It’s a scale model, but the geometry must be very very accurate. Um,
we also model the propulsion train because the the speed of the ship was of importance. the the loads would be
different if the ship was sailing at zero knots or two knots, four knots. One of the key ideas is to have an unbiased
impression of the behavior of the ship in storm
condition. In our basin, the models have everything that is relevant for the behavior and safety of a normal ship.
Hour after hour, the Darbasher replica is driven through the very worst of Typhoon Orchid.
Even with huge waves breaking over her bow, sensors detect no sign of failure
from the forward hatches. During the model test, we saw of course a lot of dramatic event like wave coming on the
forward deck and breaking on the hatch cover. Um, but the ship should not have sunk with these type of conditions. So,
it had to be something else. If neither the cargo hatches nor
the Bzan’s hatch failed at this point in the storm, where did the seawater that
filled up the bow come from? That was the big question. What was the opening in the ship that made it possible to
lower the bow of the vessel in a such way that you would expose the uh the forward part of the ship to the waves?
Weeks of tests turn up few clues until the team turns to a theory so unlikely
it hardly seemed worth considering. Air vents on the forward deck lead down
to open storage areas below. Wreckage photos reveal the caps
that keep water out of the vents were damaged by the heavy seas. Did the damaged air vents let in
enough seaater to cause flooding in the bow? People realized that four pig had
been flooded, but many people found it hard to believe that that would have an influence on the on the loads that were
experienced by the hash. But we thought, well, who knows? Who knows the rate of water coming in? Just
let’s test it and measure it. While the bulk carrier industry waits for answers with thousands of seafares
lives at risk, the final test begins.
Two decades of debate over what caused the Darbisher tragedy and the deaths of 44 people may finally be close to an
answer. Investigators are about to test an unconventional theory. Were leaky air
vents on the deck enough to trigger the disaster? We proposed to mimic those
open holes on the model, but the question was, are these openings big enough? Can we prove that that the time
frame over which the ship was exposed that that’s long enough that it fills
completely? The air vents are so small they only let in a trickle of water compared to the size of a
ship. But Typhoon Orchid lasted more than 2 days, long enough for that
trickle to become a flood. We were able to show that the ingress rate was more
than enough to explain that the entire four peak was full of water. Once flooded, the bow sinks deeper into
oncoming waves and the large cargo hatches are hammered with more and more water.
Within 5 to 6 hours, you would get waves uh that would create loading in excess
of what is admissible for its cover. It was a big surprise for everybody to realize that so tiny little holes could
produce this chain of event and this was really the breakthrough. The discovery is the
missing link investigators needed. They now know what caused the 20-year-old
tragedy. It began when the Darbisher’s captain and crew were enduring their second day of Typhoon Orchid. 20°
starboard. 20° to starboard. Captain, easy does it. They’re unaware of the
danger unfolding under the forward deck. The bent layer caps are gone.
There’s water now filling into the bosen’s locker and into the lower stores. And from the bridge, you can’t
see this. You’d be very lucky if you can see at all. Maybe we have the four mass light on. You may be able to just make
it out, but you can’t see that it’s slowing in its rise and its fall. It’s not as high now. The Darbisher has endured more than
two days of pounding seas. Now we have waves spilling over
the bow and making it down as far as the number
one hatch.
We’re going to feel this one.
One after the other, the nine enormous cargo hatches give way. We’re losing
her. We’re going to lose her. You wouldn’t quite believe what you’re
seeing. And while you’re thinking that, the ship’s going down. Ship.
Number two would have gone.
What’s going on? Followed by number three.
Number four, number five, number six. Abandoned ship
number seven, number eight, and number nine in rapid sequence.
By that time, it’s too late. [Music]
The fate of everyone on board is sealed. The ship sank so quickly that no one was
able to send a message. The investigation estimated within the span of a few
moments. On November 8th, 2000, the High Court inquiry in London concludes that
the Darbisher sank due to waves destroying air pipes in the bow, triggering uncontrollable flooding.
The one thing that we’ve lived with now for over 12 months is the fact the assessors blame the crew for the loss of
the ship and today they’ve been completely exonerated. The court delivers new safety
recommendations for bulk carriers. They include a requirement to install devices to control flooding in the forward
section and the construction of significantly stronger hatch covers.
The cover design almost doubled in strength was adopted by the international community and hatch covers
and bulk carriers around the world are much safer because of the derbashire. In 2004, Paul Lambert and
the Darbisher Family Association’s efforts to improve safety are recognized when they’re awarded the Marine
Society’s Thomas Gay Silver Medal. And I think that’s one of the more remarkable stories about this is their continued
persistence to get to the bottom of what happened. But I believe that ship tried
to keep them seafares safe. And in the end, it was just too
much. She was just too tired. She’d lost a trim. Her head was
constantly on the water. And we were just waiting for that hatch break and wave when it Mom, she