1987 жылғы Зебрюггедегі трагедия: «Herald of Free Enterprise» қайығының апатқа ұшуы

Ferry sunk at Zeebrugge, Belgium in 1987

MS Herald of Free Enterprise was a roll on/roll off (RORO) ferry which capsized moments after leaving the Belgian port of Zeebrugge on the night of 6 March 1987, killing 193 passengers and crew. The eight deck car and passenger ferry was owned by Townsend Thoresen, designed for rapid loading and unloading on the competitive cross channel route between Dover and Calais. As was common at the time, it was built with no watertight compartments. The ship left harbour with her bow door open, and the sea immediately flooded the decks; within minutes, she was lying on her side in shallow water. The immediate cause of the capsizing was found to be negligence by the assistant boatswain, who was asleep in his cabin when he should have been closing the bow door. However, the official inquiry placed more blame on his supervisors and a general culture of poor communication in Townsend Thoresen. The vessel was salvaged, put up for sale, and sold to Naviera SA Kingstown on 30 September 1987, renamed Flushing Range. It was taken to Taiwan on 22 March 1988 to be scrapped. Since the disaster, improvements have been made to the design of RORO vessels, with watertight ramps, indicators showing the position of the bow doors, and banning of undivided decks.

On the day the ferry capsized, Herald of Free Enterprise was working the route between Dover and the Belgian port of Zeebrugge. This was not her normal route and the linkspan at Zeebrugge had not been designed specifically for the Spirit class vessels: it used a single deck, preventing the simultaneous loading of both E and G decks, and the ramp could not be raised high enough to reach E deck. It was normal practice for the assistant boatswain to close the doors before moorings were dropped. However, the assistant boatswain, Mark Stanley, had returned to his cabin for a short break after cleaning the car deck upon arrival, and was still asleep when the harbour stations call sounded and the ship dropped her moorings. The first officer, Leslie Sabel, was required to stay on deck to make sure the doors were closed. Sabel said he thought he saw Stanley approaching. He was seriously injured in the disaster and the court concluded that his evidence was inaccurate. It is believed that, under pressure to get to his harbour station on the bridge, he had left G deck with the bow doors open in the expectation that Stanley would arrive shortly. The court also described the attitude of boatswain Terence Ayling, believed to have been the last person on G deck. Asked why he did not close the doors given there was no one else there to do it, he said it was not his duty. The court nevertheless praised his work in the rescue. Captain David Lewry assumed that the doors had been closed since he could not see them from the wheelhouse owing to the ship's design, and had no indicator lights in the wheelhouse. The ship briefly righted herself before listing to port once more, this time capsizing. The water quickly reached the ship's electrical systems, destroying both main and emergency power and leaving the ship in darkness. The ship ended up on her side half submerged in shallow water from the shore. Only a fortuitous turn to starboard in her last moments, and then capsizing on a sandbar, prevented the ship from sinking entirely in much deeper water. The alarm was raised at 18:37 (GMT). Rescue helicopters were quickly dispatched, shortly followed by assistance from the Belgian Navy, which was undertaking an exercise in the area. Wolfgang Schröder (sea captain), the German captain of a nearby ferry (M/V Gabriele Wehr), was commended by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and received a medal from King Baudouin of Belgium for his heroic efforts in rescuing passengers. The disaster resulted in the deaths of 193 people. Many of those on board had taken advantage of a promotion in The Sun newspaper offering cheap trips to the continent. Most of the victims were trapped inside the ship and succumbed to hypothermia because of the frigid water. The rescue efforts of the Belgian Navy and Royal Navy divers limited the death toll. Recoverable bodies were removed in the days following the accident. During the rescue the tide started to rise and the rescue team was forced to stop all efforts until morning. The last of the people left on board died of hypothermia.

In October 1987, a coroner's inquest jury into the capsizing returned 187 verdicts of unlawful killing. Seven people involved at the company were charged with gross negligence manslaughter, and the operating company, P&O European Ferries (Dover) Ltd, was charged with corporate manslaughter, but the case collapsed after Mr Justice Turner directed the jury to acquit the company and the five most senior individual defendants. This was because the various acts of negligence could not be attributed to any individual who was a so called "controlling mind". It did, however, set a precedent that corporate manslaughter is an offence known to the law of England and Wales. The disaster was one of a number that influenced thinking leading to the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998.

A salvage operation, conducted by Dutch company Smit Tak Towage and Salvage (part of Smit International), was embarked upon almost immediately to refloat the ship. The operation included parbuckling and was successfully concluded in late April 1987, allowing the remaining bodies trapped underwater to be removed. The ship was towed to Zeebrugge, and then across the Western Scheldt to the yard of De Schelde in Vlissingen (Flushing, Netherlands), where her fate was decided. It had originally been assumed that she could be repaired and continue sailing. However, no buyer was found; she was sold to Compania Naviera SA of Kingstown, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, for scrapping. She was renamed Flushing Range and the Townsend Thoresen branding painted over before her final sailing to a scrapyard at Kaohsiung, Taiwan. She began her final voyage on 5 October 1987, together with MV Gaelic, towed by the Dutch tug Markusturm. The voyage was interrupted for four days when the ships encountered the Great Storm of 1987 off Cape Finisterre, where Herald of Free Enterprise was cast adrift after its tow rope parted, resuming on 19 October 1987. The hull began to disintegrate while off the coast of South Africa on 27 December 1987, and had to be towed into Port Elizabeth on 2 January 1988 to undergo temporary repairs to allow her to continue her voyage. She finally arrived in Taiwan on 22 March 1988. The Townsend Thoresen brand name had inevitably been seen on television and in newspapers around the world. P&O, who had only just taken over TT before the disaster, quickly decided to re brand the company as P&O European Ferries, repaint the fleet's red hulls in navy blue and remove the TT logo from the funnels.

The capsizing of Herald of Free Enterprise caused the highest death count of any peacetime maritime disaster involving a British ship since the sinking of HMY Iolaire on 1 January 1919 near Stornoway, Isle of Lewis, when at least 205 perished of the 280 aboard. Since the accident, several improvements to the design of this type of vessel have been made. These include indicators on the bridge that display the state of the bow doors, watertight ramps being fitted to the bow sections of the front of the ship, and "freeing flaps" to allow water to escape from a vehicle deck in the event of flooding. The International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea regulations were changed in 1990 to require of freeboard (in the case of RORO vessels, defined as the height between the vehicle deck and the water line) for all new ROROs, instead of the previous
Both of Herald of Free Enterprises two sister ships have since been withdrawn from service. The former Spirit of Free Enterprise was extended to increase her cargo capacity during her time under the P&O flag in a stretch and total rebuild operation and scrapped in 2012. Pride of Free Enterprise remained more or less as built, being scrapped in 2015. In the UK, an ensemble group named Ferry Aid released a charity record of the song "Let It Be" by the Beatles. Nicholas Ridley, a government minister at the time, was criticised for alluding to the accident (while speaking on another subject) on 10 March 1987. He was quoted as saying that "although he is the pilot of the [parliamentary] Bill, he has not got his bow doors open". He apologised for the remark. The disaster was the subject of an episode from Series 2 of Seconds From Disaster. The disaster was also featured in an episode of Deadly Engineering (Season 1, Episode 5) on the Science Channel. On 1 July 2014, The History Press released a book called Ninety Seconds at Zeebrugge: The Herald of Free Enterprise Story , telling the story of the disaster and its aftermath. A second edition, updated to reflect the thirtieth anniversary, was released on 1 March 2018
St Mary's Church, Dover houses a permanent memorial to the disaster. In the village of St Margaret's at Cliffe, there is a stained glass window dedicated to Bob Crone, Bryan Eades and Graham Evans, three of the crewmen who died during the disaster.

Australian businessman Maurice de Rohan, who lost his daughter and son in law in the tragedy, founded Disaster Action, a charity which assists people affected by similar events.