Manslaughter Trial in ’87 British Ferry Disaster Collapses

The manslaughter trial of a British shipping firm, its officials and crew members over a 1987 Channel ferry disaster in which 192 people died collapsed today for lack of evidence.

The judge, Sir Michael Turner, told the jury that there was not enough evidence to convict the ship’s owners, P & O European Ferries Ltd., or five of seven individuals who were being tried, including the ship’s captain, David Lewry.

The state then dropped charges against the remaining two--the chief officer and an assistant bosun--and the judge told the jury to find them not guilty.

The surprise rulings ended the second case in British legal history in which a company faced manslaughter charges.

The court had heard that the Herald of Free Enterprise ferry sailed from the Belgian port of Zeebrugge on the night of March 6, 1987, with its bow doors open.

It flooded and capsized in two minutes when water flooded into the ship in the worst disaster in the English Channel since World War II. Almost all the dead were British.

A single word led to the collapse of the trial at London’s Old Bailey criminal court after 27 days.

The charges alleged there was an “obvious” risk that the ferry would sail with its bow doors open and would capsize and cause death.

But the judge said: “It was not obvious to any of these people until it happened to them. That is my intellectual difficulty.”

The seven individuals who faced trial and were acquitted included former senior officials of P & O Ferries, Lewry, the chief officer and the assistant bosun, who told an earlier inquiry that it was his job to close the bow doors but that he was asleep in his cabin at the time.

An earlier inquiry criticized company procedures and an inquest returned a verdict that the victims were unlawfully killed.

After the collapse of the trial, Lewry’s lawyer read a statement saying his client had relied on procedures for seeing that the ship’s doors were closed that had proved safe on 60,000 Channel crossings.

“The memory of that night will be with him as long as he lives,” the statement said.