Tragedy on the Thames: The Marchioness disaster
How did 51 people come to die after a summer night’s pleasure boat ride? Learn about the combination of mistakes that led to this disaster.
Image: John Sturrock / Alamy Stock Photo
What could be more enjoyable than sailing down the Thames on a pleasure boat over a summer night? That was how the 131 people on board the Marchioness very early in the morning of 20th August 1989 should have remembered their trip. Instead, it ended abruptly when the Marchioness was struck by the dredger Bowbelle near Southwark Bridge in central London. 51 people lost their lives in the tragedy.
How did the two boats come to collide? Both mistakes and lax safety standards were to blame.
Sailing downstream
At 1:46am on 20th August, the Marchioness was heading downriver as it hosted a party for the 26th birthday of Antonio de Vasconcellos, a banker. Most attendees were also in their twenties. At the time it was unknown exactly how many people were on board.
Simultaneously, the Bowbelle was also sailing eastward with the intent of dredging aggregate in the Thames estuary. Its captain, Douglas Henderson, had drunk six pints of beer during the afternoon of the 19th. Whether he was sober or not by the time of the collision became a matter of intense debate.
Although the moon was full, it has been argued that inadequate lighting on the Thames and the boats’ own designs made them struggle to see one another. A more brightly lit pleasure vessel near the Marchioness also might have confused the Bowbelle’s view. But ultimately, both vessels were accused of failing to keep an adequate lookout. They were simply unaware of one another’s location.
The sinking
As with many disastrous sinkings, the exact circumstances of the collision are still debated. It is clear that the Bowbelle struck the Marchioness from behind, turning the smaller boat over and ultimately pushing it underneath the Bowbelle’s bow. Reportedly, the Marchioness sank in around 30 seconds, leaving many passengers, especially the ones below deck, no opportunity to escape.
Later, crew members on both boats said they had noticed the crash was about to happen and had shouted warnings, but the disco on board the Marchioness was so loud that no one heard their cries.
Recovery efforts
One person’s body was found in the Thames that Sunday morning. When the wreck of the Marchioness was raised in the afternoon, it contained 24 bodies.
A problem for the rescue efforts was that no one knew exactly how many people were on board and therefore how many were lost. It emerged that 25 or so more must be missing. Over the following week, these bodies were gradually recovered from the Thames. Eventually, the final death toll was determined to be 51.
The coroner’s decision
As the decomposition of bodies was hastened by their time in the Thames and the recovery process was slow, those found later were more difficult to identify. Their fingerprints needed to be taken by a special lab in Southwark – but this lab could not process bodies. Therefore, the coroner’s office had to remove hands from the bodies, send them to the lab for identification, and then reattach them.
Under the orders of the coroner, Paul Knapman, this was done to 25 of the bodies recovered after the Marchioness disaster. Although it was an ordinary procedure from the pathologists’ point of view, families were horrified to hear about it. Worse, the public later learned that some of the bodies’ hands were never reattached. As some families were not permitted to see their loved ones due to their advanced decomposition, they did not know that the hands were missing.
A search for answers
The Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB) began to investigate the collision very soon after it occurred. It actually staged a re-creation of the events to try to determine whether the boats’ failure to see one another was caused by human error or environmental problems.
The MAIB’s conclusion was that the Marchioness and the Bowbelle’s failure to keep proper lookouts was at fault. But this conclusion was criticised, partly because some felt the re-enactment of the disaster did not include all factors in question.
In 1991, Douglas Henderson, the captain of the Bowbelle, was brought to trial twice on the accusation of failing to keep a lookout. As both trials ended with hung juries, he was eventually acquitted.
The government refused to open a public inquiry until 2000, 11 years after the disaster. This inquiry, led by Lord Justice Clarke, again found fault with the failure to keep lookouts. It also criticised Henderson for not making a Mayday call and not rendering aid from the Bowbelle, and coroner Paul Knapman for removing the victims’ hands.
Additionally, the inquiry recommended 30 actions to improve safety on the river. These included the establishment of lifeboats, which was carried out in 2002.
Just two years before the sinking of the Marchioness, a similar disaster occurred in Zeebrugge, Belgium. Learn more about the Zeebrugge ferry disaster, or explore the most famous sinking of all, that of the Titanic.
