Falado of Rhodes: Investigation report published

On 9 August 2013, the brigantine "Falado of Rhodes" sank on the south-west coast of Iceland (you can download the report from YACHT as a PDF free of charge here). It was only by luck that none of the crew members - including children and young people - lost their lives. This is the clear wording of the summary of the investigation report 265/13 of the Federal Bureau of Maritime Casualty Investigation on page 36.

Reading the operators

The press release from the non-profit operating association:

"The investigation report from the Federal Bureau of Maritime Casualty Investigation (BSU) is now available. It summarises that all relevant regulations were complied with and that a clear cause of the accident cannot be determined."

Wording of the report

In fact, the authors of the BSU have gone to great lengths to leave no questions unanswered:

"At the time of the accident, the ship was no longer seaworthy and at the end of its service life. It can be assumed that water ingress occurred in all areas of the hull and that this amount of water could no longer be pumped outboard."

According to the experts, the causes are not mysterious, but can be identified quite specifically even after the sinking. This is because the investigators had an expert report from 1999 in which the expert Uwe Baykowski on behalf of the brigantine's operators, found that the ship's bracing was undersized and recommended extensive boatbuilding measures. Without these, he concluded 15 years ago, the ship could only be sailed with the utmost caution. "The ship should not be subjected to sustained major loads," said the master boatbuilder and builder of the Kiel Hanseatic cog at the time.

Avoidable downfall

Since then, hundreds of youth groups have travelled the high seas on the red character ship. According to the BSU, the accident could have been avoided, "if the warning letter from the Stapelfeldt shipyard and critical voices of experts within the operating association would have been heeded and the expert's report would have been consistently implemented in all points."

Continue as before

The operating association, which wants to enable organised youth groups to sail as a team on a traditional ship, has already found a successor for the "Falado von Rhodos":

"After a long and intensive search, the association has now found a new ship, the 'Whydah of Bristol'. She is a gaff schooner built in England in 2000 with a steel hull, wooden deck and two wooden masts. A ship that - even lying in the harbour - has charm and an adventurous character and immediately awakens a longing for wind and waves."

Finally, it was announced that lessons would be learnt from the disaster in the future.