Ship was poorly maintained, says surveyor

By ELLEN TIAMU
THE  mv Rabaul Queen ferry was found to be poorly maintained  when it was examined in 2006, a marine surveyor says.
However, deciding whether it was seaworthy or not was the responsibility of the National Maritime Safety Authority.
Arthur Muir, a marine surveyor with Nationwide Marine Surveyors, told the Commission of Inquiry into the sinking of the ferry in Lae last week that he surveyed the vessel on Nov 28, 2006, for the QBE insurance company.
Muir said his overall assessment of the vessel found it to be “below average due to lack of maintenance and missing life rafts”.
“I had gone out to the deck and saw that there were less than 14 life rafts as should have been,” he said.
The ferry sank last Feb 2 in heavy seas off the coast of Finschhafen, Morobe province, claiming more than 100 lives.
Muir said although average was an adjective to mean bad, the report in this case meant reasonable and that with age, routine and preventative maintenance should have been carried out on the passenger ferry.
He said for insurance purposes that meant below a reasonable state and did not mean unseaworthy.
He said the Rabaul Queen was built in 1983 in Japan and generally, Japanese boats “are well constructed and last up to 15 years after which they are sold as they then become expensive to maintain with parts becoming more difficult to access”.
Muir said normally, if shipping vessels were found to have defects, the insurer asked for the deficiencies to be fixed before it could be insured.
Nationwide Marine Surveyors carried out similar surveys on Rabaul Shipping’s other vessels, including Kokopo Queen, Kimbe Queen, Alotau Queen, Kavieng Queen, Morobe Queen, Kondor and Solomon Queen and found that many of these vessels had little value due to age and deterioration.
From experience, Muir said he usually found that the same defects existed when he re-visited the vessels after three years.
He said NMSA should increase the frequency of flag-state control inspection for sea-going vessels for the sake of safety at sea as was the case in New Zealand, Australia and other developed countries. 
There should be a higher level of training of officers and crew, he said.
He said in many instances while conducting surveys, stability books could not be produced by the ship masters.
“This is the master in charge of carrying many people.
“But they don’t consider the stability book to be important,” Muir said.
Stability books contain all information associated with the stability of a vessel, including its loading capacity.