# The Doors of Death: The Herald of Free Enterprise

An episode of [Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1484511465), 24 Jul 2026, 38 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pdrl.fm/18db03/tracking.swap.fm/track/SxlTEPDY7xDg35RXkASs/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/c0ae8c6e-22f0-4e9b-ac1c-ae390037ac53/ff7ffcab-7b9e-497d-a542-b490013f1e6d/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=7f5a4714-6b10-4ccf-a424-ae390037ac70

The Herald of Free Enterprise is a new class of ferry that allows cars to drive directly into the ship. The doors must be closed before every departure, or the ship sails with a gaping hole at one end. One black night in 1987, on the freezing waters off Zebrugge, Belgium, a single crew member falls asleep at the worst possible time. For the sources, see the show notes at timharford.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:15] Speaker 1: Pushkin the port of Zebrugger, Belgium. Assistant Bosa and Mark
[0:28] Speaker 1: Stanley is helping to direct all the trucks, cars and
[0:31] Speaker 1: buses off the ferry after their four and a half
[0:34] Speaker 1: hour journey from Dover, England. Then he'll help to load
[0:38] Speaker 1: up all the trucks, cars and buses that are waiting
[0:41] Speaker 1: to board for the trip back to Dover. It's a
[0:43] Speaker 1: chilly Thursday evening in March nineteen eighty seven. The ferry
[0:50] Speaker 1: is the herald of free enterprise. It's so relatively new
[0:54] Speaker 1: design called row Row, roll on, roll off, as the
[0:59] Speaker 1: name suggests, this type of ferry is designed so vehicles
[1:02] Speaker 1: can simply drive on in one port and off in
[1:06] Speaker 1: the other. There are big doors at the front and
[1:09] Speaker 1: act that opens so a ramp can be lowered. The
[1:12] Speaker 1: vehicles park on a lower deck and their occupants head
[1:16] Speaker 1: upstairs to spend the journey on one of the passenger
[1:19] Speaker 1: decks above. Then, obviously those big doors must be closed
[1:24] Speaker 1: again before the ferry departs, otherwise you're going to see
[1:29] Speaker 1: with a hole in one end of your ship. It's
[1:33] Speaker 1: the job of the assistant Bosa and Mark Stanley to
[1:37] Speaker 1: close those doors. Four years earlier, on another row row
[1:43] Speaker 1: ferry owned by the same company. The person responsible didn't
[1:47] Speaker 1: close the doors he had fallen asleep. That could have
[1:52] Speaker 1: ended in disaster. Had the waves been too high, or
[1:58] Speaker 1: the open doors sitting too low in the water, the
[2:01] Speaker 1: sea would have rushed in. They got away with it
[2:04] Speaker 1: that time, but they were lucky on the Herald of
[2:10] Speaker 1: Free Enterprise. On that cold z a brugger evening, the
[2:14] Speaker 1: vehicles are almost finished loading for their journey back to Dover.
[2:19] Speaker 1: Mark Stanley's boss, the bo'sum, a kind of foreman, tells
[2:23] Speaker 1: Stanley to go back to his cabin and take a break.
[2:27] Speaker 1: It's been a long day. The ship's not yet ready
[2:30] Speaker 1: to depart. When it is, the captain will call over
[2:33] Speaker 1: the loud speakers, as always harbor stations. Hearing that will
[2:39] Speaker 1: be mark Stanley's queue to return to his post and
[2:43] Speaker 1: close the doors. Stanley goes back to his cabin and
[2:48] Speaker 1: makes a cup of tea to warm himself up. He
[2:51] Speaker 1: sits on his bunk, intending to read for a while.
[2:55] Speaker 1: He yawns and stretches. It really has been a long day.
[3:02] Speaker 1: His eyelids start to droop. I'm Tim Harford and you're
[3:08] Speaker 1: listening to cautionary tales. The first time I went on
[3:38] Speaker 1: a holiday outside the UK at the age of twelve,
[3:41] Speaker 1: we didn't fly. It was expensive, especially for a family
[3:45] Speaker 1: with four kids. Instead, we traveled on a brand new
[3:50] Speaker 1: row Row ferry. I still remember her name, Cunninghen Beatrix.
[3:56] Speaker 1: We loaded up the car at home, drove a few
[3:59] Speaker 1: hours to the port, then onto the ferry. You could
[4:03] Speaker 1: stand outside on an upper deck, feel the sea breeze
[4:07] Speaker 1: on your face, to the seagulls and the chug of
[4:11] Speaker 1: the diesel engines, and watch the shoreline receed into the distance,
[4:16] Speaker 1: or go inside, where there was a cafeteria, slot machines,
[4:21] Speaker 1: and a TV room showing cartoons. We enjoyed that journey
[4:29] Speaker 1: I expect we'd have enjoyed it less if we've been
[4:32] Speaker 1: aware of the memos circulating inside Townsend torreson the company
[4:38] Speaker 1: that owned the Herald and several other row Row ferries.
[4:44] Speaker 1: Not long after that near miss on the Herald's sister
[4:48] Speaker 1: ship when the doors weren't closed, the same ship had
[4:52] Speaker 1: another near miss. The captain wrote a memo to the crew.
[4:58] Speaker 1: Twice this ship has sailed with the stern or bow
[5:01] Speaker 1: doors open. All the named persons must see that the
[5:05] Speaker 1: system is worked to make sure this dangerous situation does
[5:09] Speaker 1: not occur. Give it your utmost attention. The captain of
[5:15] Speaker 1: the sister Ship was a thoughtful man. He understood that
[5:19] Speaker 1: people are human. Utmost attention or not, things sometimes go wrong.
[5:25] Speaker 1: It's good to have a backup. He worried that from
[5:29] Speaker 1: the captain's position on the bridge, he couldn't see the doors,
[5:33] Speaker 1: so he couldn't check himself that they'd been closed before
[5:36] Speaker 1: setting off. He wrote a memo to a company director.
[5:41] Speaker 1: There was no indication on the bridge. He explained as
[5:45] Speaker 1: to whether the doors are closed or not. The memo
[5:49] Speaker 1: pointed out that a worker might be delayed in closing
[5:52] Speaker 1: the doors, or there might be a mechanical problem the
[5:55] Speaker 1: captain wouldn't know. He proposed a solution. Indicator lights could
[6:02] Speaker 1: enable the bridge team to monitor the situation in such circumstances,
[6:08] Speaker 1: a sensible lights on the bridge to show if the
[6:12] Speaker 1: doors were open or closed. It would have been a
[6:15] Speaker 1: bit of hassle and expense to implement, but not that much.
[6:21] Speaker 1: But when the director got the captain's memo, he was
[6:24] Speaker 1: far from convinced that it was worth the bother. He
[6:27] Speaker 1: circulated the memo to his company colleagues and asked for
[6:31] Speaker 1: their opinions on the idea. Nice, said one, but don't
[6:37] Speaker 1: we already pay someone? Another shrugged, Assume the guy who
[6:43] Speaker 1: shuts the doors tells the bridge if there's a problem,
[6:47] Speaker 1: well he should, but he won't if the problem is
[6:51] Speaker 1: that he's asleep. The Captain's sensible, easy to implement solution
[6:58] Speaker 1: went nowhere, and so two years later, as Mark Stanley
[7:05] Speaker 1: dozed in his bunk on the Herald of Free Enterprise,
[7:09] Speaker 1: there was no indication on the bridge that the ferry's
[7:13] Speaker 1: doors were still wide open. As darkness fell and Zebrugger,
[7:21] Speaker 1: the Herald left the calm of the harbor for the
[7:24] Speaker 1: open sea, carrying four hundred and fifty nine passengers and
[7:30] Speaker 1: eighty crew. Ian Yardley's book Ninety Seconds at Zebrugger brings
[7:36] Speaker 1: together accounts of what happened next. It started with the
[7:40] Speaker 1: plates and the cafeteria sliding slowly across the tables. Everyone
[7:46] Speaker 1: began to joke about it, recalled one passenger. Then there
[7:51] Speaker 1: was a crash from the kitchen, the sound of smashing crockery.
[7:55] Speaker 1: In British culture, there's a reflex response to the smash
[7:59] Speaker 1: of dropped crockery in a cafe or pub gray. A
[8:04] Speaker 1: big cheer went up, said one passenger. Some people clapped,
[8:09] Speaker 1: added another. The ship righted itself. Presumably it had just
[8:14] Speaker 1: been hit by a wave. No need to worry. But
[8:18] Speaker 1: it continued to roll to the other side, slowly at first,
[8:23] Speaker 1: the passenger recalls. Then it suddenly accelerated like a wire
[8:28] Speaker 1: had been cut. No one had a chance. Another added,
[8:33] Speaker 1: the ship literally tipped over, as if you were knocking
[8:36] Speaker 1: over a glass of water. It seemed that quick. One
[8:40] Speaker 1: young man was drinking at the bar when he saw
[8:43] Speaker 1: a baby hurtling through the air like a javelin. Instinctively,
[8:50] Speaker 1: he dropped the drink and launched himself towards the baby,
[8:53] Speaker 1: but missed and grabbed onto a chair. I've never sobered
[8:58] Speaker 1: up so fast in my life, another man recalled. I
[9:03] Speaker 1: wedged myself up against a chair and table. People were
[9:06] Speaker 1: flying past me like bullets. The furniture, at least was
[9:11] Speaker 1: all bolted to the deck. One young woman recalled that
[9:15] Speaker 1: holding on to a table took every ounce of strength
[9:19] Speaker 1: and more. Another near the duty three had to hold
[9:24] Speaker 1: on while being clattered by the falling bottles of whiskey
[9:27] Speaker 1: and vodkast. One man was dangling from a table, trying
[9:33] Speaker 1: to keep hold of his seven year old son, when
[9:36] Speaker 1: a girl flew by and made a desperate grab for
[9:39] Speaker 1: the man's legs. It was too much, his partner recalls,
[9:45] Speaker 1: he lost his grip. That was the last I saw
[9:50] Speaker 1: of them. Then the lights went out. For one crew member,
[9:59] Speaker 1: that was actually a relief. He had been clinging to
[10:04] Speaker 1: a partition wall, watching with helpless despair. People were thrown
[10:10] Speaker 1: like rag dolls thirty forty feet through the air. It
[10:15] Speaker 1: will be embedded in my mind for the rest of
[10:18] Speaker 1: my life. It took just a minute and a half
[10:23] Speaker 1: for the ship to settle on its side. It was
[10:26] Speaker 1: only by chance that it wedged on a sand bank
[10:29] Speaker 1: instead of sinking completely. The sea rushed in. Those inside
[10:34] Speaker 1: the ship who survived the fall now found themselves struggling
[10:38] Speaker 1: to stay afloat in bitterly cold water in pitch darkness.
[10:45] Speaker 1: Then objects began to rain down on them, making it
[10:48] Speaker 1: hard to find space. Ironically, they were life jackets. A
[10:54] Speaker 1: locker on the wall now above them had burst open.
[10:59] Speaker 1: There were so many life jackets, said one passenger. Everyone
[11:03] Speaker 1: was tangled up in the straps. Assistant bosun Marks meanwhile,
[11:10] Speaker 1: had found his boss Bows and Terry ailing the doors. Terry,
[11:16] Speaker 1: don't worry about that now, said Ailing. We've got this
[11:20] Speaker 1: to sort out. Cautionary tales will be back after the break.
[11:38] Speaker 1: I was thirteen years old when the Herald of Free
[11:41] Speaker 1: Enterprise capsized in Zebruger. It's the first news story I
[11:46] Speaker 1: remember finding personally shocking. The pictures on the television showed
[11:52] Speaker 1: the faerry lying on its side, so agonizingly close to
[11:57] Speaker 1: the safety of the harbor walls. I've been on holiday
[12:01] Speaker 1: last year on a ship like that. It had sailed
[12:05] Speaker 1: with the doors open. How on earth could that happened?
[12:12] Speaker 1: A senior judge, the Honorable Mister Justice Sheen, was put
[12:17] Speaker 1: in charge of answering that question at an official inquiry.
[12:22] Speaker 1: The immediate cause was easy enough to identify. Mark Stanley
[12:27] Speaker 1: was supposed to close the doors and didn't. Stanley told
[12:32] Speaker 1: the inquiry, I thought I was dreaming. I never fell
[12:36] Speaker 1: off my bunk. I leapt because I knew something was
[12:39] Speaker 1: not right. I thought, then was the doors. The doors.
[12:44] Speaker 1: The doors had not been shut. I knew I hadn't
[12:49] Speaker 1: checked them. I was just hoping someone else had done it.
[12:55] Speaker 1: Mister Justice Sheen clearly had some sympathy for the assistant Bosum.
[13:01] Speaker 1: Mister Stanley has frankly recognized his failure to turn up
[13:05] Speaker 1: for duty, and he will no doubt suffer remorse for
[13:08] Speaker 1: a lot long time to come. But it was clear
[13:14] Speaker 1: to mister Justice Sheen that the safety of a ship
[13:17] Speaker 1: really shouldn't depend on whether or not one man nods
[13:21] Speaker 1: off on his tee break townshend Torrison must have had
[13:25] Speaker 1: backup systems, mustn't they? She wanted to know what they were.
[13:31] Speaker 1: He talked to Mark Stanley's boss Bows and Terry Ailing.
[13:36] Speaker 1: Ailing could have closed the doors. Why didn't he? It
[13:40] Speaker 1: has never been part of my duties to close the doors,
[13:43] Speaker 1: said Ailing, or make sure anybody is there to close
[13:47] Speaker 1: the doors. The judge was unimpressed. He took a narrow
[13:54] Speaker 1: view of his duties, and it is most unfortunate that
[13:57] Speaker 1: that was his attitude. Still, we can hardly get outraged
[14:03] Speaker 1: about someone not doing something that isn't their job. But
[14:08] Speaker 1: hold on, Ailing said, it wasn't his duty to make
[14:12] Speaker 1: sure anybody's there to close the doors. Was there someone
[14:16] Speaker 1: else who did have this duty? Yes, she discovered the
[14:21] Speaker 1: ship's chief officer actually, in the company's written policy, his
[14:26] Speaker 1: duty was to ensure that the doors are secured, but
[14:31] Speaker 1: in practice, Townsend Torreson defined that as checking that the
[14:36] Speaker 1: person whose job it was to close the doors was
[14:39] Speaker 1: somewhere in the vicinity of the doors and therefore presumably
[14:43] Speaker 1: about to close them. Mister Justice Sheen shook his head.
[14:50] Speaker 1: That's a weird way to understand ensure that the doors
[14:54] Speaker 1: are secured. The chief officer told she that he thought
[14:59] Speaker 1: he saw Mark Stanley on the deck approaching the doors,
[15:02] Speaker 1: but must have been mistaken. Sheen interrogated the captain. It's
[15:08] Speaker 1: his ponsibility to make sure that his ship is seaworthy.
[15:13] Speaker 1: Why had he set off with a large hole in
[15:15] Speaker 1: one end of it? He explained to Sheen that nobody
[15:20] Speaker 1: had told him the doors hadn't been closed, so he
[15:23] Speaker 1: assumed they had. If that sounds crazy, remember it was
[15:29] Speaker 1: exactly what a senior company figure had shrugged in response
[15:34] Speaker 1: to the sensible idea of an indicator light. Assume the
[15:38] Speaker 1: guy who shuts the doors tells the bridge if there's
[15:41] Speaker 1: a problem. It was even written down in a company policy.
[15:45] Speaker 1: Kind of the policy said that others on the ship
[15:49] Speaker 1: had to report any deficiency which is likely to cause
[15:53] Speaker 1: them to be unready for sea, and in the absence
[15:58] Speaker 1: of any such report, the captain could assume that the
[16:02] Speaker 1: vessel is ready for sea. Once again, mister Justice Sheen
[16:08] Speaker 1: frowned at the drafting. Were open doors a deficiency? Unclear?
[16:15] Speaker 1: The company interpreted its own policy to mean that the
[16:19] Speaker 1: captain could simply assume the doors had been closed unless
[16:23] Speaker 1: told they hadn't. As mister Justice Sheen pointed out, that was,
[16:30] Speaker 1: of course a very dangerous assumption. The sea wasn't especially
[16:40] Speaker 1: rough in Zebruger, but the Herald was sitting low in
[16:44] Speaker 1: the water and lower at the front, which was the
[16:48] Speaker 1: end where the doors were open. As the ferry picked
[16:51] Speaker 1: up speed, that pushed the front end lower still, and
[16:56] Speaker 1: waves began to lap onto the vehicle deck. The deck
[17:00] Speaker 1: was a big open space. As water sloshed about, the
[17:04] Speaker 1: ship lost all stability, rapidly tipping onto its side. It
[17:10] Speaker 1: took just a minute and a half to plunge everyone
[17:13] Speaker 1: on board into a horrible, black, freezing nightmare. As eyes
[17:20] Speaker 1: slowly got used to the darkness, some passengers realized they
[17:24] Speaker 1: were trapped under toughened glass partitions down the middle of
[17:28] Speaker 1: the deck, just a couple of feet above where the
[17:30] Speaker 1: water had risen. One pummeled the glass above with such
[17:35] Speaker 1: force he dislocated all his fingers. Bosa and Terry ailing
[17:40] Speaker 1: found himself above those glass partitions and went to look
[17:44] Speaker 1: for something to smash them. I'll never forget having to
[17:47] Speaker 1: walk on the windows, he said. It was like a
[17:51] Speaker 1: scene out of a horror film. We were walking on
[17:54] Speaker 1: people's faces. Fists hammering at the windows to struggle for
[18:01] Speaker 1: survival brought out the best and worst of human nature.
[18:05] Speaker 1: In one part of the ship, with a yawning space
[18:09] Speaker 1: above the fatally cold water, a rope was lowered. Two
[18:14] Speaker 1: men shoved others aside so they could be the first
[18:16] Speaker 1: to climb. Both lost their grip and fell to their deaths,
[18:24] Speaker 1: but others were heroic. One man with his wife and
[18:28] Speaker 1: daughter realized that their route to safety lay on the
[18:32] Speaker 1: other side of what used to be a corridor and
[18:36] Speaker 1: was now a vertical shaft filled with water and too
[18:40] Speaker 1: wide to jump. I spread myself in the water, he recalled.
[18:45] Speaker 1: I arched my back and held onto the railings on
[18:48] Speaker 1: the other side so people could use me as a
[18:50] Speaker 1: stepping stone. He told his daughter to walk across his back,
[18:55] Speaker 1: then his wife, then twenty total strangers the press dubbed
[19:02] Speaker 1: him the human Bridge. People looked after children. It didn't
[19:08] Speaker 1: matter who child. Babies were plucked from the water and
[19:12] Speaker 1: handed up to those above who could hug them to
[19:15] Speaker 1: keep them warm. A woman consoled a nine year old
[19:18] Speaker 1: who kept asking, why should I die? I've been such
[19:23] Speaker 1: a good girl. I've never told any lies. A middle
[19:27] Speaker 1: aged truck driver found himself in charge of another small child.
[19:31] Speaker 1: I mean all is panic and chaos, he recalled. She
[19:35] Speaker 1: just sat on my knee, smiling. I'll never forget her
[19:38] Speaker 1: for as long as I live. One woman recalled how
[19:42] Speaker 1: her husband made sure she was safe, then went back
[19:46] Speaker 1: into the bowels of the ship. He was not looking
[19:49] Speaker 1: for anybody in particular, just anybody he could help. She
[19:54] Speaker 1: had no idea where he was for the next day
[19:59] Speaker 1: and a half. It turned out he'd been helping people
[20:02] Speaker 1: for hours until he collapsed with hypothermia and had to
[20:07] Speaker 1: be taken off the ship by professional rescue us. He
[20:10] Speaker 1: had saved many lives and was traumatized. I obviously didn't
[20:16] Speaker 1: do enough. Assistant Bosa and Mark Stanley meanwhile spent two
[20:23] Speaker 1: hours pulling people up thro a smashed window before he
[20:27] Speaker 1: too collapsed, bleeding from a deep gash in his arm.
[20:33] Speaker 1: He kept repeating, it's my fault, It's my fault. One
[20:43] Speaker 1: hundred and ninety three people died on the Herald of
[20:47] Speaker 1: Free Enterprise. We've met four workers on the ship whose
[20:51] Speaker 1: actions combined to cause those deaths. One fell asleep, one
[20:58] Speaker 1: didn't do something that wasn't his job, one misidentified a colleague,
[21:04] Speaker 1: and one followed company policy. None of these things seemed
[21:09] Speaker 1: like hanging offenses. Regular listeners to cautionary tales will know
[21:14] Speaker 1: that this is typical of many disasters. There's no obvious
[21:19] Speaker 1: villain who deserves to be locked up, just a series
[21:23] Speaker 1: of innocuous, seeming things that happen or fail to happen.
[21:29] Speaker 1: The classic way to look at such disasters is the
[21:31] Speaker 1: famous Swiss cheese model, developed by the accident expert James Reason.
[21:38] Speaker 1: It imagines safety systems as being like layers of cheese,
[21:42] Speaker 1: each have holes in them, and the problem comes when
[21:46] Speaker 1: all the holes just happen to line up. The Herald
[21:50] Speaker 1: of Pre Enterprise was one of Reason's first case studies. Indeed,
[21:55] Speaker 1: the idea of the Swiss cheese model traces back to
[21:59] Speaker 1: nineteen eighty seven, the year of the Herald disaster. Reason
[22:04] Speaker 1: and a colleague doodled the layers on a paper napkin
[22:07] Speaker 1: in a pub. Often inquiries into disasters find that nobody
[22:13] Speaker 1: had ever foreseen how the holes might line up. The
[22:18] Speaker 1: inquiries inform new regulations that plug holes or add another layer.
[22:24] Speaker 1: But what if an inquiry finds that people had foreseen
[22:28] Speaker 1: exactly how those holes might line up and done nothing
[22:32] Speaker 1: about it. Then a good way to prevent future disasters
[22:37] Speaker 1: might be to identify who's to blame and hold them accountable.
[22:43] Speaker 1: Mister Justice Sheen could see exactly who to blame, but
[22:48] Speaker 1: could they be held to account? Cautionary tales will be
[22:54] Speaker 1: back after the break. Two years before the Herald disaster,
[23:05] Speaker 1: remember a sister ship had sailed with its doors open.
[23:11] Speaker 1: The captain made a sensible request for an indicator light
[23:15] Speaker 1: and got a dismissive reaction from the higher ups at
[23:18] Speaker 1: the company. Assume the guy who shuts the doors tells
[23:22] Speaker 1: the bridge if there's a problem. Another response was outright sarcastic.
[23:28] Speaker 1: Do they need an indicator to tell them whether the
[23:31] Speaker 1: deck storekeeper is awake and sober? My goodness, mister Justice
[23:37] Speaker 1: Sheen was scathing. It is hardly necessary to comment that
[23:43] Speaker 1: these replies display an absence of any proper sense of responsibility.
[23:51] Speaker 1: A year later, another captain sent another memo after another
[23:56] Speaker 1: near miss, to chase up the suggestion it is so
[24:00] Speaker 1: important to the safety of the ship that the doors
[24:04] Speaker 1: are closed, He pointed out, we should have bridge indication.
[24:09] Speaker 1: Is the issue still being considered? The reply said, simply,
[24:15] Speaker 1: if the doors are left open, then the person responsible
[24:19] Speaker 1: for closing them should be disciplined. The failure of imagination
[24:25] Speaker 1: is staggering. It should have been obvious that leaving the
[24:29] Speaker 1: doors open might sink the ship. If that happened, how
[24:34] Speaker 1: could anyone possibly think that disciplining the assistant Bosun would
[24:39] Speaker 1: solve anything. The assistant Boson, Mark Stanley, didn't need anyone
[24:45] Speaker 1: to tell him of The next morning in hospital, one
[24:50] Speaker 1: survivor recalls seeing him in a dreadful state, sobbing and repeating,
[24:57] Speaker 1: it's my fault. Mister Justice Sheen disagreed. A full investigation
[25:05] Speaker 1: leads inexorably to the conclusion that the underlying or cardinal
[25:11] Speaker 1: faults lay higher up in the company. The more she
[25:17] Speaker 1: learned about how Townsend Torreson was managed, the more appalled
[25:22] Speaker 1: he became. She wanted to know who was responsible for
[25:27] Speaker 1: those sloppy and ambiguous written orders. The company's lawyer replied, well,
[25:34] Speaker 1: in truth, nobody, though there ought to have been. Nobody
[25:40] Speaker 1: was responsible for safety either. Sheen found the board of
[25:45] Speaker 1: directors did not appreciate their responsibility for the safe management
[25:50] Speaker 1: of their ships. The Fairies regularly sailed with more passengers
[25:55] Speaker 1: than the legal limit because nobody had come up with
[25:59] Speaker 1: a system for counting them. That, observed Sheen should not
[26:04] Speaker 1: have been beyond the wit of the managers. When the
[26:09] Speaker 1: Herald sank townshend Torreson had no idea how many people
[26:13] Speaker 1: had been on it. Thet alone a list of their names.
[26:18] Speaker 1: What about keeping track of how low the ship sat
[26:21] Speaker 1: in the water at the front and the back. That
[26:25] Speaker 1: should be measured before each journey, And the Herald's log
[26:29] Speaker 1: book was full of numbers, But those numbers showed that
[26:33] Speaker 1: it always sailed on an even keel. That wasn't credible.
[26:40] Speaker 1: The captain admitted that instead of actually doing the measurements,
[26:45] Speaker 1: the crew had simply been making the numbers up. Nobody
[26:49] Speaker 1: ever checked. Mister Justice, Sheen delivered a clear and damning
[26:56] Speaker 1: answer to the question of how on earth a ferry
[27:00] Speaker 1: had set sail with its doors open? From top to bottom.
[27:05] Speaker 1: He said the body corporate was infected with the disease
[27:10] Speaker 1: of sloppiness. She made some specific practical recommendations for preventing
[27:19] Speaker 1: future disasters, such as install indicator lights. But if the
[27:26] Speaker 1: real cause of the accident was corporate sloppiness, the best
[27:30] Speaker 1: way to prevent a repeat might be to incentivize corporations
[27:35] Speaker 1: to be less sloppy. She couldn't do that. Though. He
[27:40] Speaker 1: might be a judge, but as chair of an inquiry,
[27:44] Speaker 1: his remit was limited to finding out what had happened.
[27:48] Speaker 1: He couldn't hand down punishment. In parallel to Sheen's inquiry,
[27:54] Speaker 1: another legal process was running its course, the coroner's inquest.
[28:00] Speaker 1: It too had a limited remit to decide what cause
[28:05] Speaker 1: of death to put on the victim's death certificates. The
[28:10] Speaker 1: inquest's jury decided that the deaths on the Herald of
[28:13] Speaker 1: Free Enterprise were unlawful killing, but they again had no
[28:20] Speaker 1: power to punish anyone. They couldn't even say who they
[28:24] Speaker 1: thought had acted unlawfully. So what would happen to Townsend Torreson?
[28:32] Speaker 1: Nothing much? It seemed. There'd be monetary costs, of course,
[28:37] Speaker 1: but they had insurance. The brand name had taken a
[28:41] Speaker 1: hit from all of those aerial shots of the capsized
[28:46] Speaker 1: Herald with Townsend Torreson emblazoned down its side. But not
[28:51] Speaker 1: to worry. They could and did simply change their name
[28:57] Speaker 1: and keep on doing business. That seemed very wrong to
[29:03] Speaker 1: a man named Peter Spooner. When Peter Spooner first heard
[29:13] Speaker 1: the news about the Herald of Free Enterprise, his heart lurched.
[29:19] Speaker 1: His son, Martin, had planned to take that ferry with
[29:22] Speaker 1: his friends. Coming home from a holiday in Bruges the
[29:27] Speaker 1: next day, Spooner tried and tried to get through to
[29:30] Speaker 1: an emergency hotline. He found a number for Townsend Torreson's
[29:35] Speaker 1: head office and rang it. He recalls, I was shewed
[29:40] Speaker 1: away by an unsympathetic executive. It was only when Martin's
[29:45] Speaker 1: friend turned up ashen faced on Spooner's doorstep that he
[29:51] Speaker 1: found out Martin hadn't made it. Peter Spooner went into
[29:58] Speaker 1: a period of shock. After six months, he snapped out
[30:03] Speaker 1: of it. The Inquiry had published its report. The Inquest
[30:07] Speaker 1: was drawing to a cloone. Spooner realized that Townsend Torreson
[30:13] Speaker 1: was going to face no meaningful consequences for their sloppy
[30:17] Speaker 1: corporate culture, so what was to deter other companies in
[30:23] Speaker 1: future from being similarly sloppy with matters of public safety.
[30:28] Speaker 1: Spooner helped to form a group, the Herald Families Association,
[30:34] Speaker 1: that would take Townsend torreson to court. It was a
[30:38] Speaker 1: case of seeking justice, said Spooner, not vengeance. The inquiry
[30:48] Speaker 1: and the inquest had both had narrow terms of reference.
[30:53] Speaker 1: A criminal trial they thought might focus minds in other
[30:57] Speaker 1: companies and help prevent other tragedies. But the families faced
[31:03] Speaker 1: a problem. Setting Saalle with the doors open didn't seem
[31:08] Speaker 1: to have broken any specific law. That might seem surprising.
[31:15] Speaker 1: But the rowrou ferry, remember, was a relatively new design
[31:18] Speaker 1: of ship. Maritime laws had been written long before they
[31:23] Speaker 1: were invented. Those laws said it's an offense to keep
[31:27] Speaker 1: a ship in port that's unfit to go to sea,
[31:31] Speaker 1: But a row row ferry in port with its doors
[31:34] Speaker 1: open isn't a problem. The law said nothing about going
[31:39] Speaker 1: to sea in an unseaworthy condition. Row Row ferries sailed
[31:45] Speaker 1: through a loophole that no one had ever imagined. The
[31:51] Speaker 1: rowrou ferry is an early example of what's since become
[31:55] Speaker 1: known as the pacing problem. Innovations create risks that laws
[32:00] Speaker 1: never envisaged, and regulators don't always notice until after something's
[32:06] Speaker 1: gone wrong. As Spooner put it, regulation and legislation can
[32:12] Speaker 1: only do so much. They follow in the wake of
[32:15] Speaker 1: disasters instead of anticipating them. Still, though the risk of
[32:22] Speaker 1: sailing with the doors open should have been obvious to
[32:25] Speaker 1: Townsend Toaurreson, the company's failure to manage that risk seemed
[32:30] Speaker 1: like it might fit the legal concept of gross negligence.
[32:35] Speaker 1: If a person causes death by gross negligence, they can
[32:39] Speaker 1: stand trial for manslaughter. How about a company. The Herald
[32:48] Speaker 1: became only the third trial for corporate manslaughter in English
[32:53] Speaker 1: legal history. Neither of the first two had succeeded. The
[32:58] Speaker 1: prosecution soon bumped up against an ironic problem. The offense
[33:04] Speaker 1: of corporate manslaughter was as sloppily worded as town Centarosson's
[33:09] Speaker 1: company policies. It required the identification of controlling mind behind
[33:15] Speaker 1: the company, but as mister Justice Sheen had made all
[33:19] Speaker 1: too clear, nobody was in control. The case against Townshend
[33:25] Speaker 1: Torreson collapsed. Paradoxically, the company's very failure to designate responsibilities
[33:32] Speaker 1: had let it off the hook. The problem wasn't with
[33:36] Speaker 1: one individual, but the cumulative effect of a rotten culture
[33:42] Speaker 1: a flippant memo here, some loosely interpreted phrasing there. The
[33:48] Speaker 1: sloppiness infected the whole body corporate, and the law simply
[33:53] Speaker 1: wasn't set up to deal with that. In two thousand
[33:58] Speaker 1: and seven, twenty years after the Herald disaster, the British
[34:03] Speaker 1: government introduced a new law on corporate manslaughter. It followed
[34:08] Speaker 1: a law campaign by the Herald Families Association and Peter Spooner,
[34:14] Speaker 1: But legal scholars say the new law isn't working as
[34:18] Speaker 1: well as they'd hoped. How to deter companies from being
[34:22] Speaker 1: sloppy with public safety seems to be a harder problem
[34:26] Speaker 1: to solve than we might hope. Five years later, on
[34:31] Speaker 1: the twenty fifth anniversary of the disaster, one retired director
[34:37] Speaker 1: of Townsend Torreson, saw fit to complain to a newspaper
[34:42] Speaker 1: that it was a monstrous injustice that the company had
[34:46] Speaker 1: ever been prosecuted. He sniffed, it was just one of
[34:50] Speaker 1: those tragic accidents. The assistant bosun Mark Stanley could never
[34:58] Speaker 1: shrug it off like that. It's not up to me
[35:02] Speaker 1: to blame anyone else he said, and I'm not going
[35:06] Speaker 1: to with his remorse as best he could, and died
[35:13] Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen. A grandfather and much loved coach at
[35:18] Speaker 1: his local football club. He once reflected, you thought, how
[35:24] Speaker 1: can I ever live with this? You can in the end,
[35:32] Speaker 1: but perhaps the final word should go to a nine
[35:35] Speaker 1: year old. I've been such a good girl. I've never
[35:39] Speaker 1: told any lies. We tend at age nine to think
[35:45] Speaker 1: that the world is just that actions always have consequences.
[35:52] Speaker 1: As we get older, we realize that's not true. But
[35:57] Speaker 1: even as adults it's a lesson we never stop having
[36:02] Speaker 1: to relearn. Key sources for this episode include Mister Justice
[36:18] Speaker 1: Sheen's nineteen eighty seven investigation report and Ian Yardley's book
[36:24] Speaker 1: ninety Seconds at Zibruger, The Herald of Free Enterprise Story.
[36:29] Speaker 1: For a full list of sources, see the show notes
[36:32] Speaker 1: at Timharford dot com. Cautionary Tales is presented by me
[36:41] Speaker 1: Tim Harford. It's produced by Georgia Mills and Marilyn Rust.
[36:45] Speaker 1: The sound design and original music are the work of
[36:48] Speaker 1: Pascal Wise. The show also wouldn't have been possible without
[36:52] Speaker 1: the work of Jacob Weisberg, Greta Cohne, Corn Gilliard, Fisher
[36:56] Speaker 1: benderdaf Haffrey, Eric Sandler, Christina Sullivan, Kira Posey, and Owen Miller.
[37:03] Speaker 1: Cautionary Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you
[37:07] Speaker 1: like the show, please remember to share, rate, and review.
[37:11] Speaker 1: It really does make a difference to us. And if
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[37:24] Speaker 1: Why not join the Cautionary Club. To sign up, head
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