World’s shipping is in safe hands

The investigator and go-to authority on safety management systems at sea has been called as an expert witness in more than 150 cases around the world, many of them involving a major loss of life.

A master mariner who spent a decade at sea before deciding, as a newly-wed, to come ashore, his then unforeseen future career was eerily foreshadowed by a near miss.

“I’d been sounded out for a job on a ship called the Derbyshire ,” he said. “I didn’t take it, but on that next voyage the Derbyshire sank in the South China Sea with all hands on board – I lost a lot of friends that day.

“The ship broke in two. It had been built by Swan Hunter’s on Tyneside and a number of its ships in the ore-bulk-oil carrier class, had problems structurally.

“Basically, a ship should have a long, continuous girder that runs its length, but for some reason, the designers introduced a discontinuity of longitudinal strength in that they staggered the girder at the point of the accommodation.

“Following the sinking of the Derbyshire , another one, called the Kowloon Bridge , broke in two off southern Ireland.

“When they inspected sister ships, they found cracks around the accommodation where the discontinuity was.

“The Derbyshire was in a severe storm at the time and ships are built to flex, but if there’s a weakness there, it will give way.”

Phil worked his way up through the ranks with the Bibby cargo shipping line that has been operating out of Liverpool for the past 200 years.

When he got his class one master’s certificate, which in theory qualified him to command any ship of any size anywhere in the world, he was at a crossroads: continue at sea and get hooked on the huge captains’ salaries or settle on dry land, accept the drop in pay and start the family he and wife Val so wanted.

Long since settled in Acomb, last month the father and grandfather was honoured with a lifetime achievement award in London. It was presented by the Safety at Sea journal in recognition of the role he went on to play during that second career.

Joining the world of P&I clubs, the protection and indemnity insurance organisations that insure most of the globe’s shipping stock, he started out as a claims handler.

But then, at the North of England P&I, he really made his mark, pioneering a loss prevention programme to educate owners about the causes of shipping disasters and how to avoid them.

“Nobody else was doing that at the time, although they all do it now, and it became our unique selling point,” he said.

“This was during the 1980s, when there was a major recession and oil prices were rocketing and ship owners, to remain in business, had to cut costs somewhere.

“They were changing their crews from the traditional British/European seafarers and going to South-East Asia for less expensive officers and crew.

“Crew numbers were being slashed at the same time, and they were cutting back on ship maintenance. And by sailing under flags of convenience, the rules and regulations were less stringent.

“They were saving money in the short-term, but it was false economy. On the insurance side of things you could see the number of claims escalating exponentially, and I recall one year that the club had to call an additional premium – 200 per cent was not unusual.”

The claims were already out of hand by the time the Herald of Free Enterprise capsized in 1987. On that occasion, the assistant bosun was asleep in his cabin when he should have been closing the bow doors and the Dover-bound ferry didn’t make it far out of Zeebrugge harbour; 193 people died.

Another passenger ferry, the Dona Paz , went down in the Philippines later that year following a collision with an oil tanker. “There were 4,500 people who lost their lives in that disaster, but unlike the Herald , probably few people heard of it here,” said Phil.”

Today, he is still helping to investigate a case that dates back to 2006 in which more than 1000 people went down with the Al Salam Boccaccio as it crossed the Red Sea. The passengers were travelling from Saudi Arabia to Egypt, many returning from that year’s hajj (in Mecca).

While we’ll never know how many accidents Phil’s loss prevention programme averted, it was instrumental in turning the North of England P&I club into the globe’s second largest such enterprise.

“More than 90 per cent of all ship owners in the world have their liability insurance covered in one of 13 P&I clubs – eight of them in England,” he said.

“When I joined North of England, they were insuring just under 4m tonnes of shipping. By the time I left in 2004, that had risen to 100m tonnes. Now it stands at 180m tonnes. They were exciting times!”

He left to establish his own business, ConsultISM Ltd, which specialises in marine safety, operational risk management and the application of the International Safety Management (ISM) code of practice.

Regarded as one of the world’s leading authorities on the ISM code, the 150 or so actions he has been called to as an expert witness have included civil, criminal and commercial cases.

“There will be technical experts who will look at the machinery and so on, but safety management systems are what I’m known for,” he said.

“When an incident occurs, one of the parties will pay for me to be involved, but my report is to the court, and as such it must be unbiased, impartial and objective.”

The facts of a case tend to be pretty straightforward, but his remit is to try to work out why it happened. Human error is often the answer.

“Collisions between ships happen surprisingly often, for example, despite the increasing technology,” he said.

ConsultISM Ltd is not the only marine business in landlocked Tynedale. Such is the strength of the maritime community here that there’s a club that meets a couple of times a year for lunch and a chat. Around 30 people a time turn up.

They include an international firm of maritime solicitors based in Allendale, one of the world’s leading maritime arbiters in Corbridge, and three insurance and legal businesses located within the Shawwell Business Centre on Stagshaw Bank.