Claim of deception on the part of the ship's crew
- According to the plaintiffs, the crew members misled the person in charge of the loading, when they presented a representation according to which the winches were supposed to hold the load applied by winds up to 35 knots, when in fact it turned out otherwise.
The argument is based on what is stated in section 48 of the check list, and on the ship's documents according to which the winches were supposed to withstand forces of up to 30 tons, when in any case the force exerted in the case at hand did not exceed that.
- I did not find any substance in this argument either.
- We have already noted above that the wind speed data in section 48 of the checklist do not necessarily constitute an indication of the maximum load that the winches can withstand, when in any case these figures were dictated, in practice, according to IEC's own procedure.
In any event, and as clarified above, the data regarding wind speed is one of many when it comes to assessing the durability of winches under various loads, including the direction of the wind, the angle at which it meets the ship in its special shape, and the duration of exposure, when as part of the responsibility of the person in charge of loading, he must examine all of the aforementioned data, along with dynamic changes in the situation.
In such circumstances, it cannot be said that the signature of the ship's crew on the checklist constitutes a declaration regarding the forces at which the winches are capable of standing, or that it is a representation on which the loading officer was entitled to rely.
- Even if we assume that the person in charge of charging relied on the checklist, in view of the occurrence at 17:00, when a cable was released at a wind speed of 25 knots, he was not allowed to continue to rely - insofar as he did - on the checklist as an indication of the durability of the winches, and he should have made the decisions required from his own working assumption.
The fact that the person in charge of the loading, as well as the rest of the IEC crew on board the ship at the time, did not see a problem with the release of cable No. 1 with a power of 25 knots, indicates that they did not see the check list as a representation on which they relied in this matter.
- Further to this last point, we should note that IEC did not rely at all on the data on the loads at which the winches on the ship could stand, for the simple reason that it did not even bother to check them in advance.
In paragraph 7 of the conclusions chapter of the Respan investigation, it is stated as follows: "The receipt of the tanker with its facilities, accessories and integrity is based on the questionnaire sent to the tanker only, without any additional monitoring mechanism (obtaining the history of the vessel from various authorized sources, PSC, EQUSIS), etc. In this case, the questionnaire did not include questions relating to the correctness of the means of containment (at the end of another order a few years ago, the captain of the port physically inspected the ships and checked central systems before approving the ship's entry into the link."