=== MAIN HEAD Queensland´s passenger ships DECK Ed Haughton-Ward, who lost a 28 year old son in a maritime incident off Queensland´s Great Barrier Reef, would like to draw the industry´s attention to what he feels is a poor lack of concern to safety being shown by local ship operators with vessels crossing major merchant shipping lanes. BODY My son suffocated while entering an enclosed space filled with nitrogen, on a pontoon used as a diving platform, moored 49 nautical miles at sea off Townsville on November 10, 2000 at Kelso Reef, off Queensland, Australia, in a major tanker shipping lane. The pontoon, 'Captain Tom', is 30m long and weighs 100 tonnes, one of 70 pontoons moored in the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of the Great Barrier Reef. This is a major sea route to the northern hemisphere and recognised as being of outstanding international heritage interest. Regularly international tankers ply the inner route of the Great Barrier Reef. The pontoon was not the only unseaworthy vessel involved - the same could be said for the 200 passenger high speed catamaran which brought passengers and crew to the pontoon. The catamaran´s defects included cracked hull, defective engine exhausts, defective electrical wiring, defective steering, no navigation system, no EPIRB (emergency position indicating radio beacons), no VHF radio (very high frequency, long range) UHF radios (ultra short frequency and short range within line of vision) not working, hence no internationally required emergency frequency response monitoring, no crew training in radio protocol, no vessel logbook (actually there was an outdated office diary used as a log), defective generator, no back-up generator, compass over 90 degrees out of true north. Apart from the last defect (which I was told about by a fellow crewmember at the wake), all these were recorded in the coronial hearing. SUBHEAD Background The pontoon started life as a fuel barge. Sometime in the 1970's it was converted into a helicopter landing platform. For this a 300mm thick concrete slab was poured over its superstructure. This meant that the vents which allowed the gases to escape were cut off. The void was filled with inert nitrogen to allow welding to proceed without explosion. On November 10 2000, the high-speed catamaran arrived at the pontoon with 64 passengers and 9 crew with two tasks, to entertain the passengers, and to inspect six voids, or compartments, in the pontoon. The captain that took Barnaby out to the reef 2 days previously on 8 Nov 2000 resigned on his return to port because 'he could see something was going to happen'. The manhole providing access was very narrow, and the engineer, who should have been in charge of the inspection was too large, so he left the 'Captain Tom' to work on repairing the generator of 'Wave Piercer 2001'. The hold (one of 2 covered with concrete slabs) was 98% nitrogen; all oxygen had reacted with the steel to form rust. The stair into the hold was at about 45 degrees, which meant entering the tiny manhole with air-tanks was not possible. No confined space entry breathing apparatus was available, the voids were not vented, and there was no allowance made for time to ventilate the voids. The captain of the catamaran entered one of the voids in the pontoon, but as it was filled with nitrogen he died. The captain was leaving on the return trip to get married on the following Saturday. My son Barnaby, a new deckhand, three hours into his new job thinking the captain had slipped off the ladder, jumped the 3 metres down into the hold and also died. Normally he would never enter a confined space without testing, but he was in awe of the captain, and it was his first day on the job. The engineer refused to allow an emergency radio 'Mayday' call to go out on the borrowed hand held walkie-talkie. This confusion delayed assistance and oxygen breathing apparatus from a nearby survey vessel by ten minutes. Young and inexperienced crew, with responsibility far in excess of their training and experience are more easily manipulated to exceed even their own inflated perception of their abilities or more correctly the young males response to a challenge will lead him into situations likely to endanger his own life and also those of others. SUBHEAD Not a marine incident The Australia Minister of Transport made a decision not to hold a marine inquiry based on his decision not to term this a 'marine incident'. The Queensland Marine Safety Department claimed that the two men were only two workers doing maintenance, and that since maintenance is not part of a ship's operations, this is not a marine incident, but one for WorkCover Health and Safety, who should have been supervising. Death caused during maintenance of a vessel, it was said, is the responsibility of the department of Workcover Health and Safety. On the eighth and final day of Barnaby's inquest it was revealed during the brief and last-minute appearance of a representative from the department that there not be a 'marine inquiry'. Furthermore it was requested of the magistrate that since there were only two 'shipping inspectors' for over 700 large commercial vessels on this stretch of the coast, that leniency be shown towards them in his conclusions. The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) said the whole maritime operation was 'ramshackle', and therefore, nobody was to blame, and that the magistrate would have been aware that he, the DPP, would dismiss the two charges of manslaughter brought against the Operations Manager. Queensland is nominating itself as being the authority to oversee marine traffic over the Great Barrier Reef. Queensland has 348 staff in the Marine Safety Department but only two shipping inspectors on the coast of Townsville-Cairns, responsible for more than 25,000 vessels. Queensland, soon to be followed bay all states and territories, has self-assessment as a central tenet of its maritime law, and other Australian states are poised to follow suit. Under self-assessment, seaworthiness is the responsibility of owners and operators, and is not and cannot be enforced by the government. The owner can decide the balance between cost and safety. Vessels are not required by the state to undergo seaworthiness inspections, because that would defeat the object of the act and throw responsibility back onto the state government. The Queensland Marine Safety Director told my wife and I at a meeting in his office in November 2002 that less than 30% of ship owners voluntarily have annual surveys. Queensland applies its own Transport Operations (Marine Safety) Act 1994 to vessels which start and finish their voyages within Queensland. The (Commonwealth) Uniform Shipping Laws Code, which covers seaworthiness and crew training requirements, has not been adopted by Queensland. SUBHEAD Editors Note In June 2002, the employer of the two men who died was ordered by the Townsville Industrial Magistrates Court to stand trial for manslaughter, but the case was dismissed in August 2002 on the basis of insufficient evidence. However the deaths prompted a statewide audit of confined workplaces after it was found that they had not checked the atmospheric conditions inside the hull before entering. However the employer was found guilty of breaching the Queensland Workplace Health and Safety Act and reportedly fined $125,000 plus $24,082 COSTS. A Townsville cruise company has received a record fine after it was found guilty of breaching the Qld WHS Act.