Occupational Medicine Advance Access originally published online on December 21, 2007
Occupational Medicine 2008 58(2):129-137; doi:10.1093/occmed/kqm149
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Fatal work-related accidents in UK merchant shipping from 1919 to 2005
School of Medicine, Swansea University, Singleton Park, Swansea SA2 8PP, UK
Correspondence to: Stephen E. Roberts, School of Medicine, Swansea University, Singleton Park, Swansea SA2 8PP, UK. Tel: +44 1792 513433; fax: +44 1792 513423; e-mail: stephen.e.roberts{at}swansea.ac.uk
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Abstract |
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Background Historically, merchant seafaring was the most hazardous occupation in Britain. However, fatal accident rates have fallen sharply in the last 30 years.
Aims To establish the causes of all fatal accidents and their trends among seafarers who were employed in UK merchant shipping from 1919 to 2005 and to compare with those in the general workforce and in other industries.
Methods A historical study, based on examinations of death inquiry files from 1976 to 2005 and official mortality returns from 1919 to 1975, with a total population of 11.90 million seafarer-years at risk.
Results From 1919 to 2005, there were 17 386 deaths from accidents in UK shipping, 6074 from shipping disasters and 11 312 from personal accidents. Over time, there were large reductions in mortality rates for all the main types of fatal accident, except accidents on deck. Major causes of mortality from shipping disasters were vessels foundering in typhoons, storms and severe gales, explosions in cargo holds and collisions in poor visibility. Fatal accident rates were higher among British seafarers than among Lascars. The relative risk of an accident in UK shipping—compared with the general British workforce—was similar in 2001 to that in 1961.
Conclusions There have been major improvements in health and safety that have led to substantial reductions in fatal accident rates in UK merchant shipping throughout most of the last 90 years. This mirrors comparable improvements in the fatal accident rate among the general workforce of Great Britain.
Keywords Fatal accidents; seafarers; UK merchant shipping; 1919–2005
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Introduction |
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Historically, merchant seafaring has been regarded as the most hazardous occupation in Britain. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, a Royal Commission was set up to investigate loss of life among seafarers who were serving in UK merchant ships. In 1885, it reported that over the 9-year period from 1875 to 1883, the fatal accident rate was 1367 per 100 000 seafarer-years at risk—or one in 73 deaths from accidents per year [1]. The fatal accident rate was even higher for those who had been employed in sail rather than steam ships—about one in 40 per year—and for ratings who were berthed forward rather than aft and were therefore at greater risks of death from shipping disasters.
At that time, the fatal accident rate in UK merchant shipping was about six times greater than that in coal mining, 10 times higher than for railway workers and 
150 times that for factory and shop operatives [1]. The major cause of the excess mortality among the seafarers—55% of 26 188 deaths—was disasters involving the ships rather than individual accidents affecting the seafarers.
Recent studies of mortality among seafarers crewing the UK and other European merchant fleets in the last 30 years have reported greatly reduced fatal accident rates of 15 to 100 per 100 000 seafarer-years [2–10]; although these are still very high when compared with shore-based industries [4,6,9]. While fatal accident rates in merchant shipping have fallen sharply over time, there is little reporting of long-term trends in fatal accident rates, the reasons for the declining fatal accident rates and how these reductions compare with those in general workforces.
The main aims of this study were to establish the causes of all fatal accidents among seafarers who were employed in UK merchant shipping from 1919 to 2005 and to investigate trends in fatal accident rates over the 87-year study period. Further aims were to compare fatal accident rates between British seafarers and Lascars (mainly Asian seafarers who were signed on Asiatic agreements in the UK fleet), to compare trends in fatal accident rates with those in the general British workforce and to establish the causes of major shipping disasters.
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Methods |
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Since 1894, deaths at sea in UK merchant ships have been registered at the Registry for Shipping and Seamen (RSS), previously known as the Registrar General for Shipping and Seamen, rather than with local registrars of deaths. Captains of UK ships are obliged to complete Return of Birth and Death forms for any fatalities that arise among the crew and send them to the RSS. Hence, work-related mortality among seafarers has not been administrated conventionally and has generally not been included in Office of Population Censuses and Surveys and Office for National Statistics occupational mortality publications and information sources.
In this study, details of the causes and circumstances of all fatal work-related accidents among seafarers who were employed in UK registered ships 1976 to 2005 were collected from documents held in death inquiry files and death registers held at the RSS. For the earlier period from 1919 to 1975, details of the fatal accidents were obtained from annual death returns that were based largely on the files at the RSS. They were published variously by the Board of Trade, the Ministry of Transport and the Department of Trade and Industry [11–15]. Details of major shipping disasters were obtained through Lloyd's casualty information [16], Lloyd's casualty data, various reports and Internet searches.
The study included fatal work-related accidents that occurred among seafarers who were signed on the articles of agreement and employed on board UK merchant ships of 100 gross tonnes or more. From 1976 to 2005, the study included deaths that occurred at work or within 30 days of any discharge ashore as a result of an accident. Before 1976, the study included deaths from accidents that occurred at work or following discharge ashore to a hospital in a foreign country, but usually excluded deaths that occurred after discharge to a hospital in the UK.
The study excluded deaths that occurred among non-crew members such as passengers, stowaways, harbour pilots and cargo inspectors, as well as deaths among the crew of small merchant ships of under 100 gross tonnes and among the crew of fishing vessels and yachts. The study also excluded all deaths that arose as a direct result of warfare and military conflict. The study period was from 1 January 1919 to 31 December 2005.
The populations of seafarers annually employed in the UK merchant fleet from 1919 to 1938 and from 1947 to 2005 were obtained from annual government publications, variously produced by the Board of Trade, the Ministry of Transport, the Department of Trade and Industry, the Department of Trade, the Department of Transport, the Marine Accident Investigation Branch and the Maritime and Coastguard Agency [11–15,17–20]. Seafarers were conventionally counted as if they had been employed for the whole of each year, including those who were ashore on leave or sick, etc., but had not left seafaring, in order to allow for comparison with other industries. Crewing figures during the World War II period from 1939 to 1946 were estimated by linear interpolation.
The number of seafarers employed in UK shipping fell throughout most of the study period from a high of 278 593 seafarer-years in 1920 to 25 000 by 1994, although it has since increased to 33 872 seafarer-years in 2006. The aggregated population at risk from 1919 to 2005 was 11.90 million seafarer-years at risk. The numbers of Lascars employed in UK shipping were provided annually and separately from the numbers of other (mainly British) seafarers from 1924 to 1972. The last censuses of seamen for the UK fleet in 1961 and in 1971 showed that, respectively, 86 and 92% of the non-Lascars who were at sea on the census dates were British seafarers [21].
Fatal accidents among seafarers were compared with those among the general population of Great Britain, using information published by the Health & Safety Executive [22,23]. Statistical methods used include cause-specific mortality rates, relative risks and regression.
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Results |
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From 1919 to 2005, there were a total of 17 386 deaths from accidents in the UK merchant fleet. Of these, 6074 were from shipping disasters and 11 312 were from personal accidents. Table 1 shows the numbers of deaths and fatal accident rates for the main causes of these accidents. Foundering, capsize and missing vessels accounted for >40% of deaths from shipping disasters, while drowning in docks was the most frequent cause of fatal personal accidents (Table 1).
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Table 1 also shows that there have been substantial reductions over time in fatal accident rates for all the main types of accident, except accidents on deck. The largest reductions in accident rates over time were for ships that grounded, for seafarers who fell down hatchways or were washed overboard by heavy seas.
The overall fatal accident rate in the UK fleet fell sharply from the early 1920s to the 1930s but then increased during World War II (Figure 1). Subsequently, it fell throughout much of the late 1940s and the 1950s, levelled off until the late 1970s, but has fallen since. While personal accidents caused most fatal accidents from 1919 to 2005, major shipping disasters often led to particularly high fatal accident rates in certain years (Figures 1 and 2). In the last 35 years, several visible peaks in the fatal accident rate were caused largely by disasters involving the Herald of Free Enterprise (38 seafarers lost, 1987), the Derbyshire (42 deaths, 1980) and the Royston Grange (64 deaths, 1972). Since 1988, there has been no major shipping disaster in the UK fleet with more than two lives lost.
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Table 2 provides summary details of the causes of major shipping disasters that have involved the loss of eight or more seafarers in UK shipping from 1947 to 2005. The 38 disasters detailed here led to the aggregated loss of 938 seafarers—>60% of all deaths from shipping disasters since 1947—as well as >500 passengers and other non-crew. Of vessels that foundered or disappeared, most occurred during extreme weather conditions including typhoons, storms or gales, including five smaller ships (all <3000 gross tonnage) that capsized after cargoes shifted in heavy seas. The ships often foundered in locations associated with notoriously adverse sea states, including the North West Pacific, the Bay of Biscay, the Bermuda Triangle and the Irish and North Seas.
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Two major shipping disasters that led to the combined loss of 84 seafarers involved ships that disappeared during typhoons, when carrying cargoes of iron ore to Japan in 1967 and in 1980. Both occurred in the North West Pacific—the region of the world that experiences the most severe and the most frequent typhoons—while iron ore is among the most dense of cargoes which can place great stress on the hulls of ships.
One hundred and forty-six seafarers were lost when four ships grounded in severe weather conditions. The ships that suffered fires and explosions in cargo holds were usually carrying explosives—that almost certainly combusted spontaneously—in the prevailing hot weather of tropical regions. Three of the five collisions arose in extremely poor visibility, caused by dense fog or snow storms, although there were other important causal factors, while the other two collisions were attributed mainly to navigational error and alcohol consumption.
During the 1920s and 1930s, the fatal accident rate was about twice as high among British seafarers than among Lascars (Figure 3). During World War II, it increased over time for the British seafarers, but remained largely unchanged for the Lascars. From the late 1940s, it fell among the British seafarers until it was comparable with that among the Lascars from the 1960s onwards.
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Based on a breakdown of crewing figures at the time of the last census of seamen in 1971 [21], fatal accident rates—for the years from 1976 to 1980 when the UK fleet was of a similar size and composition—also varied substantially according to the rank of the seafarer. Estimated fatal accident rates were, respectively, 55 per 100 000 seafarer-years for captains and deck officers, 96 per 100 000 for cadets, 33 for engineering officers, 211 for deck ratings, 188 for engine room ratings and 116 for catering ratings.
Table 3 shows trends in fatal accident rates among seafarers in UK shipping and among the general workforce of Great Britain. The fatal accident rates for the general workforce are available only from 1961 onwards, and for 1961 and 1971 they include employees but not employers. Employees typically have a higher fatal accident rate than the relatively small number of employers, which would increase the fatal accident rates slightly for the general workforce in 1961 and 1971. Since 1961, there has been a comparable reduction in the fatal accident rate in UK shipping with that in the general workforce. Hence, the relative risk of a fatal accident in UK shipping, compared with the general workforce, is similar in 1996–2005 (12.0) to that in 1961 (12.4).
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Discussion |
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This study found sharp reductions over time in fatal accident rates in the UK merchant fleet throughout most of the 87-year study period from 1919 to 2005. These reductions were widespread across almost all the main types of accident among seafarers and reflect major improvements in maritime health and safety in British merchant shipping throughout the 20th century. Major strengths of this study are that it is very large, covering >17 000 deaths in a defined occupational population of almost 12 million worker-years and it refers to a unique and traditionally hazardous occupation. It also uses standardized definitions of different accident types over a long 87-year study period, and it is based on information sources that are not available routinely.
There are several limitations of this study that should be acknowledged. First, there have been minor changes in the study inclusion criteria over the 87-year study period; in particular, regarding fatal accidents that occurred following discharge ashore to a hospital in the UK. Second, the populations of seafarers crewing the UK merchant fleet annually throughout the study period were usually estimated by various government departments, with some degree of error in the estimation which may have fluctuated over time. However, these limitations are insufficient to substantially affect the long-term trends in fatal accident rates presented in this paper. As crewing figures were not collected by government departments during the period around World War II from 1939 to 1947, they were estimated using linear interpolation. This was deemed reasonable since a specialized study of the UK fleet during World War II reported that a slight reduction in the number of active seafarers, because of an increase in ships out of service and under repair, would have been offset by an increase in the manning levels used during the war years. Hence, the study concluded that there was no overall net reduction or increase in the population of seafarers employed during World War II [24]. Over time it is likely, though, that increases in shore leave and reductions in shift hours would have lowered the seafarers’ exposure time and would therefore have contributed to the sharp reductions over time in fatal accident rates.
The largest reductions in the fatal accident rate in UK shipping occurred from the late 1920s to the early 1930s, during the late 1940s and the 1950s and since 1980. The sharp decline during the last 25 years is largely because most UK cargo ships, which tend to carry higher risks of fatal accidents than passenger and other non-cargo ships [9,25], were re-registered with flags of convenience registries during the 1980s and the 1990s. For example, the number of cargo-carrying ships (tankers and gas carriers, bulk carriers, general cargo, container, offshore supply and roll-on roll-off vessels) fell from 1861 (69% of all ships in the UK fleet) in 1979 to 259 ships (27%) in 1999 [26].
Since 1999, coinciding with initiatives for UK-owned shipping to re-register in the national UK fleet, the number of cargo ships had increased to 453 (40% of all ships in the UK fleet) by 2005 [27]. This expansion of the cargo-carrying sectors has not led to any corresponding increase in the fatal accident rate, indicating that the initiatives to expand the UK fleet have not compromised health and safety standards. The continuing reduction in the fatal accident rate is also because an increased proportion of seafarers in the UK fleet (47% in 2006) are now employed in passenger ships: for example, large cruise ships such as the Oriana, Arcadia, QE II, Canberra and Sun Princess that typically sail with >500 crew each.
There were relatively low fatal accident rates in UK shipping during the 1930s, coinciding with an international economic depression that greatly affected shipping trade. There is also little evidence of a decline in fatal accident rates during the 1960s and 1970s. The reasons for this are not fully clear, although they are probably linked to a lack of change in the culture of health and safety at that time, which is consistent with another study that reported little or no reduction in fatal accident rates in the merchant fleets of Denmark, Italy, the USA and West Germany during the 1960s and 1970s [28].
There were sharp decreases over time in fatal accident rates for all the main types of accident except accidents on deck, which reflect widespread improvements over time in maritime health and safety. Fatal accidents on deck should be targeted for future prevention. The sharpest reductions were for ships that grounded, seafarers who fell down hatchways or who were washed overboard. Fatal falls down hatchways from 1976 to 2005 mostly occurred in larger cargo ships, so that the decline of the UK cargo and deep sea trading sectors in the 1980s and 1990s would explain some of this trend. Explanation for the reduction in mortality for seafarers who were washed overboard is less clear, while reductions for ships that grounded would at least partly reflect large improvements over time in navigation systems and rescue services.
Fatal accident rates were higher among British seafarers than among Lascars, throughout most of the period from 1924 and 1972, although the fatal accident rates became more similar from the 1960s onwards. The lower fatal accident rates among the Lascars are consistent with a study of British Cunard cargo shipping in 1977 that reported a repatriation rate from injury among Indian and Barbadian seafarers that was half that for UK nationals [29]. This is almost certainly linked to the more common employment of Lascars as catering ratings and stewards—that have naturally lower accident rates [9,25,30]—rather than as deck or engine room ratings.
Although the fatal accident rate in UK merchant shipping has fallen sharply over time, compared with the general workforce, seafaring is about as hazardous today as it was in 1961. With a relative risk of 12, it remains quite a hazardous occupation. This is consistent with findings from other studies. For example, a study of seafarers in Danish merchant shipping from 1986 to 1993 reported a relative risk of 11 for a fatal work-related accident compared with the male general population of Denmark [4].
Unlike the Royal Commission study from 1875 to 1883 [1], personal accidents rather than shipping disasters have caused most deaths in UK shipping since 1919; although major shipping disasters often caused heavy loss of life. Fortunately, these shipping disasters have become progressively less frequent occurrences over time. This reflects the effectiveness of the UK maritime authorities in promoting improvements in the safety and seaworthiness of UK ships. However, in world shipping more generally, there is less evidence of improvements over time in casualty rates [31–34], with most deaths from shipping casualties occurring from ships that are registered with flags of convenience and other non-Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries [33,34]. Ships in these fleets are typically subject to less stringent safety inspections and regulation than UK registered shipping and warrant closer international surveillance if fatal accident rates in world shipping are to be reduced in the future.
Key points
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Maritime and Coastguard Agency (Project RP578).
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Conflict of interest |
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None declared.
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Acknowledgements |
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The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of the funding body. The author is also grateful to the Registry of Shipping and Seamen for providing access to their death inquiry files, the Marine Accident Investigation Branch for provision of narrative and electronic accident investigation data and John Crilley of Lloyd's Register for advice and help with shipping classifications and legislation.
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