A crewmember of the Danish training ship Danmark die on January 16, due to an accident during a shipyard period at the port of Assens.
The victim fell while working aloft on a mast, and was taken to the nearby Odense University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
The accident is under investigation by Danish authorities, including Denmark’s labor safety regulator and the Danish Maritime Authority.
The Danmark is a three-masted, full-rigged school ship homeported in Copenhagen. It is owned by the Danish government and used by a maritime academy for use in training ordinary seamen.
Falls are a periodic hazard aboard tall ships, and the accident aboard the Danmark is the second of its kind this month. In fact, during February, a volunteer aboard the tall ship Elissa was killed in a 60-foot fall from the rigging while the vessel was berthed at Galveston, Texas. The victim was reportedly wearing a harness at the time of the casualty.
A year ago, a 19-year-old student was killed after falling from the rigging of the Polish tall ship Dar Mlodziezy during a brief training-day sail from the port of Gydnia. The operator described the fatality as a suicide.
