Results: What we found

After the completion of the mission and the assessors' analysis of the data, we found data that supported a combination of two scenarios.

Ventilators in the bow section, as well as a watertight door, had been left unsecured.
The cargo hatch covers had been crushed from above.

Apparently, the open doors allowed the bow section to flood with water from the heavy seas. This made the ship nose heavy and unable to ride over the waves, which in turn exposed the hatch covers to so much pounding from the seas that they buckled, flooding the holds and sinking the ship.

In particular, we did not find any evidence which would have supported the scenario of structural failure at Frame 65. See the assessors' report for more details about the findings and their interpretation.

Although part of the reason for the loss of the Derbyshire seems to be crew error, this mission has identified the hatch covers as a weak spot in the design of ships of this type. Marine engineers and naval architects will use this information to design new ships to be more robust against this kind of danger, and hopefully save both ships and crews from being lost in this kind of tragedy.

This page maintained by Wil Howitt
Last updated 30 March 98