A LOW BLOW

Reflections

We did not deserve the final result, or perhaps we did, for not having defended it with the necessary tenacity and energy. Now everything is done and closed, but the wounds are still open as they continue to ooze disappointment and a degree of indignation. Nor did the Captain deserve a condemnatory sentence for the actions that a majority of nautical professionals would also have tried to carry out, and the rest would have rejected them out of cowardice in the face of the magnitude of the tragedy and the pressures of those who thought they knew better.

These circumstances lead me to expose what I believe has not been considered, dealt with and investigated in sufficient depth. I do not intend to present here a story as if it were the only reality, but to demonstrate a conviction that will no longer be discussed (few are interested in the subject), nor will it open up a new line of research that would have sufficient scope to be refuted, subject to honest scientific rigour, free of pressures and outside interests.

I am left with the frustration and disappointment of not having been able to defend the obvious, in the face of opposing criteria and campaigns smeared with arrogance on the part of some so-called technicians or researchers, even if they were devoid of apolitical rigour. However, the causes of the accident were not identified, nor were preventive measures put in place, even though many people were full of mouths to point the finger at those responsible or irresponsible, but only at those guilty of unproven fictions.

Preliminaries

I must not forget the two brief and informal meetings with Captain Mangouras, which helped me to appreciate his nobility as a person and professional of the sea. I heard first-hand about his long ordeal from the time of the accident until his release. I came to appreciate him without becoming friends with him, the short meetings were not enough.

The documentation that I received to cover all the related opinions and topics was extensive[2]. Most of them were contradictory, and most of them were focused from a partisan point of view, far from the purely technical one that would have been desirable for an objective investigation.

For my part, my official intervention in the case began when I was appointed as a judicial expert [1]. It happened in the Juzgado de Instrucción 32 of Barcelona, at 13:00 hours on 20 February 2007, when I accepted and took the oath of office as judicial expert by means of the procedure of Exhorto 28/2007-DT (coming from the Juzgado de Instrucción nº 1 of Corcubión, Previas 960/2002 ["PRESTIGE"]).

Justification of the obvious

However, the exhaustive reading of these documents allowed me to detect indications and circumstances to reach a conclusion that no one else had reached, the relevant ones for this account being those referring to studies[3] and communiques[4]. On 19 March 2012, at the start of my statement at the oral trial, the first question I was asked by the lawyer Mr. José Mª Ruiz Soroa was, "How is it that one of your conclusions, which refers to the determination of the fundamental cause of the accident, maintains that it was caused by the impact of logs on the hull, when the rest of the experts have not indicated this"?

The report was structured in three (3) main blocks of analysis:

- Conditions prior to and the instant of the accident.

- Conditions up to the sinking of the vessel.

- Conditions from the time of the accident until the "PRESTIGE" is abandoned by its Master.

My answer, and all those that followed in the two days that I was testifying under the questions of the prosecution, the State Attorney, lawyers for the parties, etc., were not enough to refute what for me was, and still is, obvious.

For its part, the oral hearing, once the favourable findings for ABS by the US courts on the structural conditions of the vessel were known, focused basically on the last two blocks. As a safety expert, I would have been more interested in the first block, in order to know the cause or causes that led to the accident.

This lack of interest, forced by the many partisan, political and sensationalist interests, frustrated any possibility of gaining knowledge of the cause.

Relevant aspects

Atmospheric conditions. Sea and wind.

Coinciding with the weather reports of that day, confirmed by the vessels that were in the vicinity of the PRESTIGE, there were winds from the W, between NW and WSW with intensities of over 40/45 knots and wave heights of 4 to 9 metres, depending on the observer.

For his exquisite treatment of the data and the positive contributions to the case, I would like to make special mention of the report by Prof. Albert R. Osborne[5].

The data measured by the meteorological buoy at the Silleiro location some 90 kilometres south of "PRESTIGE" at the time of the accident, reveal that the wind conditions in the hours before the incident produced a simultaneous rapid increase in the significant wave height, accompanied by a sudden decrease in the peak period.

This meteorological condition was the most important precursor event for the abrupt onset of a freak wave sea state, energetically dominated by large packet waves. During a freak wave sea state the sea state is characterised by significant large wave heights and short zero-crossing wave lengths, meaning that the mean waves were very steep. When individual giant wave packets rise, they are even steeper (up to three or four times) than this average definition, and individual waves can, for a moment, become vertical walls of water as they tilt forward and break with heights in excess of 12.5m.

At the time of the accident, the "PRESTIGE" was sailing in what can be classified as a very energetic sea state, known as a "rogue sea" (freak wave) in which there is a high possibility of rogue or extreme waves.

Knowledge and consequences of a loss of cover

On 13 November 2002 at 1000 hours UTC through the Local Rescue Coordination Centre in Vigo, information was received that the vessel "VARNADIEP" reported the loss of 200 logs the previous day at 0730 hours UTC in position 43º00' North and 010º 40' West.

The situation of the vessel "VARNADIEP", when reporting the loss of the log deck, is only about 28 miles away from the PRESTIGE accident site.

Taking into account the combined wind, current and swell drift of the vessel and the time elapsed from the lossing logs to the time of the accident of about 31 hours, there could be a coincidence of the time and place of the logs with the PRESTIGE. Some (the logs) hit and damage, while the successive blows of the sea and the corresponding heavy swell progressively destroy the hull structures.

The basic fact, fundamental for the demonstration of my thesis on the cause of the accident, comes from a notice from the Vigo Traffic Centre, issued on 18.11.2002 at 08:57:

E7S Salvamar Atlántico reports to abandon the search for the logs and proceed to combat a tongue of pollution entering the Ría de Muros y Noia. Informs that it will leave the collected logs in Porto de Son and will proceed immediately to the area.

This instruction went unnoticed by all the experts involved in the case. They were unable to relate the known facts (point of emission of the logs and their landfall on the coast) to the situation of the "PRESTIGE", and the consequences derived from it.

The 28 miles travelled by the logs in the 22 hour interval gives a drift speed of 1.27 knots, which is acceptable given the variables of wind intensity and direction and the translation of the water masses.

The distance of the "VARNADIEP" to the grounding of the logs in Porto do Son was 84 miles, and the doubtful interval of about 100 hours (from 12.11.02 at 07:30 to 18.11.02 at 09:00) without knowing when they beached and when it was decided to remove them from the coast, gives a drift speed of 0.84 knots, perfectly acceptable given that the weather conditions improved in that last interval, and the average drift speed decreased with that improvement.

The "PRESTIGE" was about 4 miles from the direct drift path of the log drift and within any assessment of the spreading plume.

Log characteristics

The presence of logs at the casualty site might not be of relevance in the event, if we were to ignore the dimensions and mass that each individual log may have.  Only a fraction of the 200 would be involved.

The reference is taken from a press clipping(6), which mentions the length of the logs (l > 20 m), experience shows that they have an appreciable diameter ( ≥ 1 m) and high density, but less than 1, with an approximate value of (0.85 > δ < 0.95).

These data give an idea of what the impact of a single trunk, related to the influence of the giant waves, represented by a mass of about 15 tonnes.

Crew's perceptions

There are no significant discrepancies in the statements made by all the crew members when expressing their experiences from that moment onwards, nor in the reception and response to them. They all agree that they detected a loud noise as a reference point to identify the start of the accident.

"At 15:10 they heard a loud noise and the ship began to heel dangerously, after five minutes they raised the alert and in ten minutes the ship was already heeling at an estimated 25 to 30º, they sent their first officer to find out the exact heeling and he told me that it was more or less 30º and more, under the influence of the waves, in 10 minutes 10.000 tons of water had entered the two right ballast tanks".

"Álvaro Escabusa (3rd engineer), who at around three o'clock heard a strange sound, like a bang, and the ship began to heel and the alarms were activated".

Most people associate this noise with the actual breakage of the outer skin sheets, but also with the drumming effect of an object against an empty space and subsequent breakage.

Contradictory study

The study carried out by CEHIPAR[7] for the analysis of trials and hypotheses of the causes of the damage, concludes:

“Impact with floating objects in the affected area of the hull, the observed behaviour of floating objects (containers or logs) in the vicinity of the vessel indicates that it is unlikely that they could impact against its side in the estimated area of the damage”.

The low probability does not indicate the impossibility of this happening, since in a very rough sea and the free movements of the vessel (roll, heave, yaw, etc.) in such a swell, numerous circumstances are created for encounters with nearby swept areas, and therefore, anything is possible, even if initially a small percentage of possibility is given.

The Director General of the Merchant Navy, in his statement at the trial, has misconceptions about waves:

“He believes that an object riding a wave moves vertically and therefore it is very difficult for an impact to occur that would produce such a large gap if the hull is good, another thing if the hull is bad”.

Waves move, masses of water move slightly, while particles of water move with the characteristic orbital motion, which does push objects deposited on the surface with force.

From this study, it is worth highlighting the assessments that are debatable because they deviate completely from logic and reality.

The simulations were carried out on the basis of assumptions far removed from reality:

"A total of 9 containers were reproduced with the standard dimensions of a 40' container. The weights were 1900 kg for three of them, 2300 kg for three others and 2700 kg for the remaining three. The 1900 kg corresponds to the maximum load of a container of this type, for the rest it was assumed that the containers could be partially flooded".

This approach is totally false, as the loading characteristics for 40' containers are:

40': Gross weight: 30,480Kg; Tare: 3,800Kg; Payload: 26,680Kg.

While for the consideration of the logs:

"The logs were made from high density timber with dimensions similar to those that appeared on the nearby coast (20m long and 0.5m in diameter)".

They do not indicate the mass that was applied in the calculations and tests, and it is significant that the existence of the logs was known.

"In these tests, various objects simulating partially flooded containers with different draughts and wooden logs of similar dimensions to those found in the area at the time of the accident were used".

This appears to be unrealistic in terms of the quantification of the variable "mass". Neither for the containers in terms of weights, nor for the logs due to the absence of sample data.

"Preliminary tests were carried out to determine the behaviour of these objects in the waves studied. It was observed that the containers and logs tend to lie perpendicular to the wave crests and drift very slowly”.

The result of the tests was a direct consequence of the characteristics of the applied wave, but the perpendicular to the wave crest is very significant because of the battering ram effect[8] and the surfing displacement.

As for the very slow drift, it will also depend on the non-submerged aerial part of the log.

"In view of the slow drift it was assumed that, as the ship was moving at 6 knots, the objects would be found by the bow, so that in the trials, the various objects were released near the bow of the ship in random positions".

Several erroneous assumptions, assuming that they were at the bow and that the existence of large waves did not cause a surfing effect[9], with high velocities caused by the kinetic and potential energies in the sinus to the wave crests and vice versa.

"This behaviour is probably due to the fact that the side of the ship reflects the incident wave locally producing a standing wave so that the movement of the water is vertical and does not produce an appreciable advance of the containers against the side”.

Given the distances and circumstances of each case, I do not really understand the "TITANIC" accident.

"In summary, although it is a complicated issue, it can be said that the inherently unlikely fact of encountering a drifting floating object is unlikely to lead to an impact against the side of the ship in the area where the initial damage occurred".

They conclude that it is a complicated issue but do not leave the door open to a serious and rigorous study, rather than accepting the low probability, as they do not determine it either.

Finally, in the conclusions section, they state:

"Conclusion No. 7: The observed behaviour of floating objects (containers or logs) in the vicinity of the ship indicates that it is unlikely that they could impact against its side in the estimated damage area".

They should have specified the test conditions to determine the behaviour of floating objects, and without excuses, to determine the probability of the event.

My final Conclusions

1. The possibility that the original cause, in whole or in part, was the impact of the vessel with the trunks of the "VARNADIEP" should never have been ruled out.

2. The line connecting the origin and the grounding on the coast was 4 miles from the starting point of the emergence of the "PRESTIGE", and of course within the plume of influence of the drift and displacement of the logs under the influence of wind and waves.

3. The official reports never seriously considered the involvement of the logs as the initial cause of the accident. It reminds me of the case of the Concorde crash, when a piece of metal on the runway, due to the turbulent currents of the turbines, impacted with the fuselage, causing the plane to crash. Something so simple and so tragic at the same time.

4. Perhaps, given the magnitude of the consequences of the accident in terms of environmental damage, they considered it preferable to identify an accessible culprit, rather than attribute it to the gods (Neptune, Poseidon, Sedna of the Inuit, etc.) from whom compensation cannot be expected to be recovered.

5.But such a closed and self-interested attitude always harms someone, in this case the crew of the "PRESTIGE", especially its captain who put his life in danger without being held responsible, as long as it was admitted that the logs were the cause of the accident.

6. The trial was conducted in an effort to find the culprits rather than the causes. What had been done wrong and who had done it was highlighted, but not why.

7. As the cause has not been identified, it has not been possible to establish preventive measures. In this case, and for future situations, to implement an exhaustive monitoring of any swell at sea, with prediction of the drift paths and the maritime communications of "Notices to Mariners" for the general knowledge of all vessels sailing in the area of influence.

8. I do not know if I have succeeded in explaining my theory, expressed in simple terms to make myself understood for general knowledge. If, however, any scholar continues with the research and can refute what I have said, I hope he will pass it on through the appropriate channels, and if so, I apologise.

References

1] Annex I Acceptance of expert witness position

2] My report was based on 64 documentary references (several thousand pages).

3] CEHIPAR report (Canal de experiencias hidrodinámicas del Pardo). Annex III

4] Statements of crew members before the Capitanía Marítima de A Coruña, 16.11.2002.

5] Prof. Alfred R. Osborne, Nonlinear Wave Research Corporation, Arlington, Virginia, "The sea state in the "Prestige" incident. July 2012

6] Press clipping on the dimensions of the logs (Annex II).

7] Annex III

8] A battering ram is a siege weapon originating from ancient times, used to break down gates or fortified walls. In its simplest form, a battering ram is just a large, heavy log, carried by several people and driven hard against an obstacle.

[9] https://www.artsurfcamp.com/blog/la-velocidad-clave-del-surfing/