Monthly Safety Scenario: Poor stability causes man overboard

In its monthly safety scenario for December, the Swedish Club describes a case of a cargo ship listing due to overloading, as well as early deballast, that caused an AB to fall overboard and go missing until today.

The incident

It was late autumn and the vessel had loaded a large portion of timber logs. The Chief Officer had overseen the loading and the crew had secured the cargo. The vessel was fully loaded and didn’t have much ballast onboard. During the voyage to the destination port, the crew checked and secured the cargo as required. The weather during the voyage was favourable at about 4 on the Beaufort scale, so there were no strong winds or difficult sea.

When the vessel got closer to land, the Chief Officer pumped out even more ballast so the vessel had a lesser draft. The Chief Officer thought the vessel was just around the permissible draught at departure, so he wanted to have a lesser draught when berthing.

As the vessel was approaching the port, one of the ABs went forward to prepare for arrival. At the same time as the vessel altered course, a heavy gust of wind hit the side of it and caused the vessel to list almost 20° which caused the deck cargo to shift. Because the cargo shifted the vessel started to list almost 40°. This had a spiralling effect and the lashings started to break and logs fell into the sea.

At the same time, the AB on the bow fell into the water because of the excessive list. He wasn’t wearing a life jacket. The AB could be seen holding on to some logs. The Master on the bridge lost sight of him for a while during the tumultuous event and when he looked for the AB again he couldn’t see him. The Chief Officer, who was also on the bridge, had released the MOB light from the bridge wing and also thrown another lifebuoy towards the AB.

The master called the VTS on the radio and informed them that they had a man overboard and that they had lost sight of him and needed assistance.
Because of all the timber that had fallen overboard, the vessel started to right itself. The vessel still had a list of about 10°. The master also ordered the anchor to be dropped and launched the MOB boat to search for the AB. The AB was never found.

The Club cites a number of questions that operators should take into consideration regarding this case:

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1. What were the immediate causes of this accident?
2. Is there a risk that this kind of accident could happen on our vessel?
3. How could this accident have been prevented?
4. Is it required to wear a life jacket when working on deck?
5. How do we ensure that we maintain proper stability during the entire voyage?
6. Do we recalculate stability during a ballast operation?
7. How often do we inspect the cargo-securing equipment?
8. Do we have certificates for the required cargo-securing equipment?
9. If we have straps how often are they inspected?
10. If straps are found cut are they immediately replaced?
11. What sections of our SMS would have been breached if any?
12. Does our SMS address these risks?
13. How could we improve our SMS to address these issues?
14. What do you think was the root cause of this accident?
15. Is there any kind of training that we could do that addresses these issues?