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144. The Marchioness Disaster · Who Did What Now With Katie Charlwood

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hello, delicious friends, and welcome to Who Did What Now?
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: The history podcast That's not Your History Class with me
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: your host Katie Charlwood, history harlot and reader of books.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: So I managed to annoy so many millennials this weekend
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: because I made a video. I made a wee video
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: about how basically there comes a point as a millennial
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: that you have to realize that you're either going to
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: start looking your age or you're going to start looking weeld. So, like,
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: I think the phrase I used was a rejected discout
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: Barbie doll that feeled the quality control requirements for the
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Dollar Store. So, like all of the extra like fillers
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: and implants and all the stuff you do to your
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: face to make yourself like younger or prettier or whatever,
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: or you're going to look your age. And some people
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: were super mad about it. They got really really precious
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: about this, and I was like, okay, Like one of
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: the things they brought up was they looked good. And
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: I don't know why, because everyone said that you don't
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: look good if you look your age, Like if you
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: don't think people your age look, I feel like that's
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: a your problem, you know, And I realized actually that
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: one of my friends got much hotter after, like they
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: got a little bit older and their voice got a
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: little bit deeper, and I was like, oh, yeah, that's
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: the stuff. So like I posted that video anyway, and
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: then I got a DM from someone being like, do
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: you ever have a crush on a content creator that
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: you know is outier league or isn't going to go
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: anywhere like one of those? And I was like, yeah, yeah,
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: of course I do. Like yeah, like I'm a person too, Yeah,
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: there are there are people out there that I'm like
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: that person is yeah, great, hot, amazing, and yeah, I'm
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: I'm never gonna make the move right because I am
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: chick and shit okay, which is part one in part
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: two is because I have learned that in any situation
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: when it comes to dating, if I make the fust move,
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: then the other person has always just been along for
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: the ride. Like it wasn't because they were you know,
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: driving the car, you know what I mean. They weren't
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: leading this anywhere. They were like, oh, let's see where
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: it goes. There was no intent. And you can think
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: what you want in life about the world and the
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: universe and how we're all meet suits and we're all
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: going to die, right, It's fine, it's a rule. All
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: the die, right, it is. But we give meaning to
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: things because that's just what we do as humans, as society,
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: as cultures. And something that's so important is intent, Like
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: what do you want? Where do you want something to go?
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: What are you aiming for? Because otherwise you're just floating
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: through life aimless, like a jellyfish, just stinging everybody who
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: comes into a path. You know, that's a good analogy.
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: I'm going to keep that anyway. I've been talking for
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: three and a half minutes, so I know what you're thinking, Kerriie.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: Quit your jibber jabber in fact me, in fact ju
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: I will. But first we've got to get our source on.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: Our sources are the Report of the investigation into the
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: collision between the Passenger Launch Marchioness and Envy Bowbill, The
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: Loss of Life on the River Thames on the twentieth
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: of August nineteen eighty nine by the Marine Accident Investigation Branch,
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: also known as the MAIB Report nineteen eighty nine, The
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: Marchioness by Michael Foley, Thames Safety Inquiry, Federal Report by
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: Lord Justice Clark, Marcioness Bowbill, formal investigation under the Merchant
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: Shipping Act nineteen ninety five by Lord Justice Clerk. A
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: Party on the River, the nineteen eighty nine Marchionessts disaster,
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: Regulation of Safety on the River Thames and the political
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: Economy of risk by Hazel J. Hartley. Thames Pleasure Boat
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: Disaster by Russell Plummer. Contextual challenges for Chris's support in
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: the immediate aftermath of major incidents in the UK by
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: Howard Davis. Exploring Sport and leisure disasters, A social legal
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: perspective by Hazel J. Hartley. Shipping Safety on the River
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: Thames and the Martianists Disaster by Louise Butcher. And we
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: also have articles from The Times, The Independent and The Guardian.
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: I use it in coomfortably good. Then began, this is
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: one of those disasters in history which often flies under
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: the radar, and I was only reminded of it recently.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: I think it was just before I'd gone to the US.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: I was talking about how when the FBI had initially
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: started their fingerprinting process, the way that they had rolled
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: it out across the States, and I was chatting about that,
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: and it led people to talk about this specific incident
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: and this is when a group of partygoers just out
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: having fun lost their lives, with their deaths being named
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: as unlawful killings, not murders, not manslaughter, unlawful killings. And
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: so no one really has been held accountable for this,
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: and I do mean no accountability. Nobody served a prison sentence,
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: nobody did community service, nobody paid a fine, none of it.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: And okay, so the deaths were named as unlawful killings,
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: which puts it in such a legal gray area. It
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: meant that for the families and the survivors, that's not
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: really good enough, you know. And now I may not
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: possess that they go prowess to do anything else about it,
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: But what I can do is talk about it and
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: share their story and ask you to share it too,
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: so that this isn't forgotten, because these people, they don't
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: deserve to be forgotten. But let's get into it. The
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: Martianists disaster was a collision between two vessels on the
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: River Thames. To get down to brass tacks, the Martianists
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: disaster was when two vessels collided on the River Thames. Now,
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: for those of you who are not geographically incline, the
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: River Thames t H A M. E. S. It is
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: the big river that goes through London. If you've seen
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: anything that's meant to be based in London, often you'll
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: see Tower Bridge that people often misconstrue is London Bridge.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: It's not. It's Tower Bridge when you see that, that's
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: what look the London eye is. It's on the Thames right.
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: It's the major river route into London. It's still used.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: It's still in use actually for a variety of things.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: But yes, it is the the big river in London.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: If you've seen the opening or the closing of EastEnders,
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: that's the big blue bit in it. That's the river
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: to That's that's it. So that's the River Thames. And
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: you had two boats on it. And here's the thing.
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: It's a relatively high traffic area because it's a river,
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: a pretty decent sized river in.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: The center of the capital city of England. And two
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: vessels on this river they collided. You had the larger vessel,
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: the Bowbell was a dredger, so it dredged the river bed.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: So basically it removed things like debris sediment to ensure
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: that the bottom of the river doesn't get like too
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: high to ensure that boats can continue to travel along
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: it without their keels getting stuck into stuff. Yeah, so
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: it's basically just sort of cleaning the river bed effectively.
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: So it is like a big study boat. And then
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: you have the Martianess, which was a party boat, which
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: when it collided with the Bowbell like it didn't stand
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: a chance. It didn't, because within thirty seconds the Martianess
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: had sunk to the bottom of the river bed, with
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: people trapped inside the vessel who only moments before had
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: been partying and celebrating the birthday of their friend. It
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: was Antonio Davas Gonzalez's twenty sixth birthday, and he wanted
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: to do something different, something fun, something a wee bit
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: out there. In fairness, it's London in nineteen eighty nine.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: He'd probably been to all the wine balls, like wall
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: to wallwy uppies, and he wanted something just a little
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: bit off kilter, and so he and his friend in
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: business partner, Jonathan Pang, decided they were gonna they were
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: gonna figure something out, and so they went all over
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: London looking for something that was just gonna fit for
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: Antonio's birthday, and somehow the idea came to them to
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: have a party boat on the River Thames. When they
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: say the idea came to them, I can only assume
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: they were like walking down the South Bank and we're like, Ah,
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: that's a boat, people are having a party on it.
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: Let's do that. And Jonathan he would go on to
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: say that it was Antonio who was really pushing this
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: party boat idea because he was less than impressed when
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: they went to view the Marchioness because he said it
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: basically looked and smelled like a floating pub. Now. I
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: don't know if you were ever in a tavern establishment
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: in the nineteen eighties, but they they neither looked nor
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: smelled very good. This was back when you could smoke
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: in pubs as well, So everything just kind of had
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: that stale nicotine and tobacco smell mixed with spilled drinks
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: and had sticky carpets. It wasn't it wasn't exactly tip top,
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: you know. So the boat it's basically a pub on water,
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: which is issue number one. Issue number two is what
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: if you're done with the party, Like you can't exactly
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: leave because you're on the boat. So like two issues
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: these were brought up, but Antonio really wanted his party boat,
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: and so it was his birthday. He granted his wish
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: and so they booked the party for the night of
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: the nineteenth into the twentieth of August, and Jonathan paid
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: six hundred and ninety five pounds, and so that meant,
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: I say, the nineteenth to the twentieth, it's basically the twentieth, right,
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: because it's booked from one am to six am, that's
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: the twentieth. So he paid to rent the vote and
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: then he also paid extra money for like food and drinks.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: I'm assuming canopies, like I feel like canopies were involved
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: in this. And there's also a disco, because of course
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: there was so the birthday evening itself. It did not
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: start on the marchioness. No, no, no no. It started
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: with a dinner party. So Antonio and Jonathan they had
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: a dinner party with friends on the nineteenth and then
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: they met up with more friends and then they all
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: headed towards the party boat. So these guys, like they
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: had a lot of friends. They were very very popular.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: They had a photography agency, right, so they were business partners.
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: They knew everybody. They knew journalists, people from the modeling industry,
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: there were students, there were people worked in the fashion industry,
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: like they knew all of these people. And this is
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: like a very young, fun, bustling industry, like in the
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: heart of London and being a rather young group in
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: nineteen eighties London. When you hear party boat, like, they
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: think they're in for such an exciting time because it's
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: like it's not something you do every day, and so
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: they were like one hundred percent, ten out of ten,
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: let's do it. And so there were a lot of
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: people there. And because the way the party was organized
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: at the time before like it was before a lot
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: of safety regulations came in and so they weren't exactly
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: creating a manifest for the ship. There wasn't a list
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: of names of people there. And initially people didn't know
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: how many were there because at one point they thought
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: there was up to one hundred and fifty people, like
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: now we know it was one hundred and thirty, but
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: back in nineteen eighty nine they didn't have that information.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: But we're gon we're going to go back to that later,
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: so keep that in your mind. The Marchioness was always
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: designed to be a pleasure boat, so It was originally
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: built in the Roaring twenties in nineteen twenty three by
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: the Salter brothers who became the Salter Steamers I think
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: after that. But yeah, it was built for Joseph Meres,
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: one of the co founders of Chelsea Football Club. So
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: he was a man of business, a businessman if you will,
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: and he wanted to start launching like pleasure cruises on
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: the Thames, which definitely seems like the kind of thing
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: like the bright young things would have been into like
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: in the era. The boat was eighty five and a
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: half feet long and fourteen and a half feet wide,
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: which is twenty six meters by four point four meters
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: the metric system, you'll welcome, and so the gross tonnage
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: was just over forty six gross tons, and so most
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: of her boating life was spent on the Thames and
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: during the Second World War the Marchioness was requisitioned by
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: the Thames Hospital Emergency Service, where she was stationed in
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: Dagenham up until nineteen forty when the Marchingess became one
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: of the little boats in the Dunkirk evacuation. So then
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: after the Second World War, the Marchioness was sold to
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: Thames Launches. Then in nineteen seventy eight, the Marchingess was
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: purchased by Tidal Crews Is Limited, and this is where
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: the rebuild happened. So when they got the boat, they
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: rebuilt it to include an upper saloon and a lower saloon,
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: so there was more space for passengers, and so it
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: was licensed to hold one hundred and fifty nine passengers
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: and two crew members. So again I'm not specially inclined,
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: and so I was trying to figure out the layout
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: of the boat. I thought, I'll look at a blueprint, right,
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: it'll be somewhere a floor plant something. No, no, that
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: is incorrect. I could not find it, and so I
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: just kind of had to try and figure it out
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: from survival accounts and photos of the ship. So, yeah,
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: you have like the upper saloon and the lower saloon,
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: and so to get into the lower salon you had
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: to go down some stairs and it wasn't spacious, shall
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: we say. Some people claimed it was very claustrophobic. And also,
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: like many small cramped spaces without windows, it got hot,
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: quite hot. And the upper salon it was a little
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: bit larger, like it wasn't much bigger, but it was
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: it was bigger, and so next to that you have
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: the wheelhouse where the captain and fro mate would sell
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: the boat. Now, the wheelhouse it didn't have like a
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: clear viewpoint really because its vision was obstructed because of
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: the saloon. The way that it was the upper saloon
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: was constructed, it caused a problem. And then as well
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: with this wheelhouse there are some like sliding perspects windows
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: which I mean are kind of supposed to be used
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: as emergency exits, but like there was a lack of
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: emergency exits on the ship, not surprising because it was
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: reconstructed in nineteen seventy eight, but yeah, the only way
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: to get out was the doors. And even so the
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: emergency exits weren't really labeled properly, so people didn't know
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: where they were. There was no here are your exits
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: here and here like you'd get on modern boating ship
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: sailing cruising situations. And like it was worse on the
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: lower decks, right because on that lower saloon it was
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: much more difficult to find the doors and find the
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: way out. Like they didn't they didn't have it marked clearly.
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: So now the marchingis it did have enough life rafts
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: had seven life rafts which could support twenty people each
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: and also had seven boys lifeboys which could have two
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: people each. Now remember the Marchioness was rebuilt in the
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: nineteen seventies, which was during a period where riverboat discos
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: were very much a thing, and so people were starting
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: to rent out boats to have parties and yes, discos
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: on the River Thames, and yeah, it was very much
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: just part of that market. And for these disco boats,
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: they didn't really do a safety briefing. So you can
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: have your lifeboats and your boys and everything else. You
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: can have your emergency exits, but nobody's telling you where
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: they are, nobody's showing you the right way to evacuate,
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: nobody's preparing you for it. That being said, we have
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: to bear in mind that it took thirty seconds for
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: the Marchings to sink, meaning that it's unlikely that anyone
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: would have the time to get to a lifeboat, you know.
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: But yes, people would just come on board and stop boozing.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: So there were four cruise slash staff members on the
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: boat that night, so you had Captain Stephen Faldo and
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: first mate Andrew McGowen, so they actually had a business
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: together as well. Called top bar enterprises, which people who
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: were renting the Marchingess could like rent out their top
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: bar service so they wouldn't have to like organiz eyes
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: and get all all the party stuff done themselves. They
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: could have you know, food drink staff all there, and
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: so yeah, there's a bar company doing it for you.
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: To Captain Faldo, he was twenty nine years old, but
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: he'd been like on the Thames working on it since
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: he was seventeen, which was fairly regular for the time.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: He had his full waterman's river license for like five years,
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: and he became a captain of the Marchioness in nineteen
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: eighty seven. Now, something that gets brought up every now
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: and again is the captain he hadn't renewed his river
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: man's license because it had like just run out, and
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: so technically technically he wasn't supposed to be on the
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: river because he hadn't renewed his license. Now, the license
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: cost fifty pet to renew, it's not a huge amount
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: of money, and in the inquest they kind of agreed
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: that listen, it wouldn't have made a difference because like
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: he's been on the sea for what twelve years, he
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: knows this stuff, and it wouldn't have been a big
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: deal to renew and it wouldn't have changed anything, so
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: it was kind of irrelevant, like a point. And Andrew McGowan,
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: he was only twenty one years old. He had been
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: an apprentice to a waterman in like eighty six and
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: by February eighty eight he had completed courses at the
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: Port of London Authority for chart work and seamanship, and
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: he'd actually got his apprentice license in May of that year,
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: which is when he became a crew member of the Marchioness.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: And so the two men, they were well experienced and
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: they knew the river. The Martianess had been booked from
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: one am to six am on the twentieth of August
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: nineteen eighty nine, and people sort of filtered in, you know,
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: they got in, started having their drinks, and at twenty
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: past one in the morning, the Marginess left her mooring
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: at Charing Crosspair and was ready to just gently dis
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: go down the Thames. Everything was going smoothly, and this
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: was actually the second party of the night, so there
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: had been one on the nineteenth between seven and eleven pm,
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: and everything was hunky dory. Everything had gone fine, And
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: so now we're on to Antonio's party that started at
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: one and Jonathan, who had been like the dude organizing
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: the party for Antonio, he was feeling a bit weird,
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: little bit nervous, apprehensive even because he's like it's a
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: floating pub on the River Thames. But he gets some drinks.
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: Other people are drinking, having a good time, and so
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: he starts to chill out a bit, starts to relax
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: and starts partying. And Antonio he's having a great time.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: They're having a great party. Everyone's having fun, and you know,
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: it's just a good time for all. And by all,
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: I mean the party goes themselves. So because that upper saloon,
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: because it's right next to the wheelhouse, the disco they're having,
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: I mean they're they're partying, they're playing their boogie woogie music.
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: You know, it's so loud that the crew can't hear
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: the radio, which means they also couldn't use the radio
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: because nobody would hear them, and because they were traveling
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: down the center of the river and not like picking
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: a side, which they often did. You know, it's usually
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: okay if you can hear the radio. But again they
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: could not. So their plan was to head down the
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: river as far as the Tower of London and then
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: go up to Charing Cross let off some of the
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: passengers because you know, some people are done, you know
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: they're done with a party. So that was the plan.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: They'd go down there, they'd come back up, let some
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: people off, they'd head back down the river to Greenwich
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: before coming back to Charing Cross to end like a
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: quarter to six in the morning, so five forty five,
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: and yeah, it should have been a standard evening. The
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: weather was decent, like, there wasn't any any big wind
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: rain issues. There was great visibility because there was a
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: full moon, and the river itself like rivers ebb and
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: flow like there are tides, and there really wasn't any
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: so smooth sailing is yeah, it should have been smooth sailing.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: Now again, I should probably mention this. This bloody upper saloon.
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: So the upper saloon blocked behind them, and because they
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: don't have a third person to be lookout, like, they
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: don't know what's coming up behind them effectively, and so
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: as they're going down the river, like they had no
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: idea that bowbell was coming up behind them, and the
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: bowbell it's much larger, much larger than the Marchioness. It
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: was two hundred and sixty two feet by forty four feet,
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: which is math seventy eight by thirteen and a half metals,
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: and it weighed one thousand, eight hundred and eighty tons.
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: And yeah, yeah, it's a dredge as well, so it
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: was an aggregate suction dredger. So it has this big, massive,
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: I don't want to say claw. It's basically this long
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: sucker effectively, so it's dredging the bottom of the river.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: So it is sucking up, excavating, scraping, it's you know,
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: mixing up and sediments, debris, so you've got like sand, gravel,
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: rubbish or trash, you've got silt, just all the stuff
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: on the river floor and it's dredging up to be
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: processed through a grading plant on board. So there's a
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: lot of machinery on this boat, so it's heavy, it
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: is strong, It has a big suction hare courtil. You
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: can't see the claw I am making with my arm,
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: but if you could, you'd say that makes sense now
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: as well. Because there's so much machinery on the bowbell
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: it is also obscuring vision for that boat so there's
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: a blind spot directly in front of the Bowbell, so
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: it's like right in front of the boat because the
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: forward view from the deck is obscured. Now, on top
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: of this, like the back of the Bowbell was lower
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: than it should have been. It was a little bit down,
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: and so that blind spot because of the angle of
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: the ship, it was a larger blind spot than it
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: typically would have been, and so it couldn't see in
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: front of them for over a thousand feet, which legally
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: is twice as large as what it should have been.
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: And the Bowbell and the Bobell sister ships had been
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: involved in more than fifty incidents of bumping into other boats,
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: banging them, ramming them, hitting bridges and piers, a lot
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: of which on the Thames, for example, in nineteen eighty one,
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: there had been a collision between the Marchioness's sister ship,
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: the Harlingham, and the Bowbell sister ship, the Boat Trader.
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: The Bobell, like the Marchioness, was not a new ship.
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: It was slightly younger though, considering it was only twenty
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: five years old, because it was launched in nineteen sixty
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: four by the ELSA shipbuilding company of Troon Scotland. I've
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: been to Trun and that's probably the most interesting fact
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: come out of there. So the Bowbell was one of
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: six bow ships owned by East Coast Aggregates Limited, so
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: they managed the South of the Coast Shipping company and
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: so they were basically all down there. So the Bobell
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: had nine crew members working that night, thirty one year
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: old Captain Douglas Henderson. There were two mates, three engineers,
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: two able seamen and a cook. So you had two
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: crew who were stationed at the front of the boat.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: So they were supposed to act as lookout like that. Well,
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: when the investigation started, when the investigation was started, when
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: it was started, initially they claimed that there were two
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: crew members acting as lookout on the front, like on
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: the bow of the ball. Now over time, you know,
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: different members have said different things and as such there's
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: not a clear narrative really. But yet the people who
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: are stationed on the bow of the bowl, like they're
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: acting as lookouts, but they didn't have like walkie talkies
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: or radios. They would just shout up and hope that.
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: They were heard.
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: And like they had asked for walkie talkies but the
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: company had not provided them. The Bowbell started its night
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: from the nine Elms pier in your parsa power station.
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: So it left was it one twelve am, so like
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: almost quarter passed, and the Thames Navigation Service like it
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: contacted them and informed them of this. So this is
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: like further west down the river. And as the Bowbell journeys,
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: you know, down the river, it is constantly reporting in
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: on the radio. So it passed Vauxhall Bridge at one
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: twenty am and Waterloo Bridge at one thirty five am.
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: And so the boat as it is heading up the Thames,
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: down the Thames, it's going about five and a half knots.
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: And remember throughout this they're in contact with the Thames
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: Navigation Service, and so it is like radioing to like
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: other river traffic that the dredge is coming through, the
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: bowbells coming through. Now the Martioness does not respond to
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: any of these like radio calls, whether they were ignoring them,
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: which seems silly for people who have been on the
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: water this much like they've been there for a while,
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: they know about the radio. So it's more likely that
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: they simply just could not hear it, and they think
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: it's because of that disco room because it's like right
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: next to the door of the wheelhouse and all that
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: boogie boogie music. It's just loud. It's very loud. I
• 32:05
  Speaker 1: have a feeling there was a lot of base involved.
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: You know, the wom that gets in your ears. It's
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: the eighties. They're they're trying some new stuff. So the
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: Bowbell itself, it's moving what three point two knots like
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: along the river because it's a gentle cruise. It's a
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: pleasure boat. It's just you know, not making things difficult
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: for people. And so it had left Charing Cross at
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: one twenty five and it's heading like east on the
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: river and the Bowbell it is catching up because it's
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: doing five and a half knots, so it is gaining
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: on the Martianess and just I think it's just before
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: Blackfriar's Bridge the Hurlingham right it passes the Marching Yes,
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: because they're they're both as it passed, the Marchiness actually
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: passes it because they're both having like a party cruise
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: and they're both going down in the same direction over
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: the river. So the martian Ess it is just past
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: its sister boat to the Hurlingham and it's gone through
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: the Blackfriar's Bridge, like the central arch of the Blackfriars Bridge.
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: It passes through there, and it is heading towards the
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: central arch of the Southark Bridge, so it's like the
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: middle arch. You know, it's aiming for there. And just
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: as the Marchioness passes under the Southern Bridge around one
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: forty six am, the Bowbell is right behind and it
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: caught up. Now, some survivors say that this collision happened
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: and before the bridge. Others say it happened after. And
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: the report, the report says it happened just just after. Now,
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: this collision happens, and this report Jesus Christ, this investigation
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: to say it was handled poorly, is is like like
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: that would be taking liberties, I would say.
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: So.
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: Yes. The two semen who were on the front of
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: the Bowbell, they said they saw the Marchioness less than
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: a minute before the collision, and they said they saw
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: it to the side, like forty five meters to the side,
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: and thought it was on a parallel course to the bowbell.
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: So they were going in the same direction, and they
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: thought the bowbell would just overtake the Martianess like it
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: was going to be a close call, but they thought
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: it'll make it, and they didn't think it was gonna
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: be anything, and so they didn't yell up to the
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: wheelhouse to warn them. The Chief Inspector of Marine Accidents
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: would write a report and it would say it appears
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: from the evidence that martianists then altered to porte so
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: as to converge. They attempted to shout a warning which
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: was heard by a few passengers on the deck of
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: the Marchioness, but not in either vessel's wheelhouse, perhaps because
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: of the noise of the disco which was in progress
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: on the boat. So as well, on this part of
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: the river, like there's a bend, very slight bend, and
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: the central arches of like the bridges, so the southern
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: bridge and then the next two bridges downstream, they're not
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: quite aligned. So if you're going through the central arch
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: of the southern bridge, then you need to go through
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: the others by altering course a little like you have
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: to do it like straight away in order to get
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: through the next pass. And so this is thought to
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: be like a contributing factor to the collision, because the
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: Marchioness would have automatically started to turn, but also, no
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: one in the bowbell's wheelhouse saw the boat before the collision.
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: No one in there saw it. They only had the
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: two lookouts who didn't shout up. So when these boats collided,
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: the initial point of impact was on the starboard bow
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: and so, which is the right side of the ship
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: of the Bowbell, which basically impacted a point towards the
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: stern of the martian Ness on the port side. So
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: this collision, it caused the Marchioness to sort of pivot
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: onto this side, and the bow of the Bowbell smashed
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: through the windows on the port side of the Marchioness,
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: and that was like towards the back of the boat.
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: Now there was a second point of impact and it
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: was sort of closer to the center of the Marchioness,
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: and the pressure of this you know, second impact, it
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: forced the boat onto its side, which made water rush
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: in like yeah, there was a hole in it. So
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: the water is just going into the broken windows and
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: the upper structure of the Marchioness, the sort of the
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: upper floor it gets ripped off by the bowbell's anchor,
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: which if it hadn't Actually they think this actually contributed
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: to less people dying because of the lack of emergency exits.
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: This gave people away out effectively, the bowbell steamed right
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: over the top of this little party boat, pushing it
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: directly under the water. So basically the boat the Marchioness
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: is hit. Once it's turned to its side, it's hit
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: a second time. Windows break, it is flopped over upside down.
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: The anchor rips the sort of the upper floor of
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: the party area. The bowbell then goes over the ship,
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: pushing the Martianess underwater. It bobs up and down and
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: it would then sink within thirty seconds from the first
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: point of contact the initial impact. Within thirty seconds, the
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: Martioness was on the river floor. When you think about
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: how short a period of time that is, it is shocking.
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: So the mate McGown he is like ejected from the
• 39:12
  Speaker 1: ship from when that top part is ripped open, and
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: he manages to climb onto the side of the boat
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: right and open a door which led to the dance deck.
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: Like he managed to get this door open on the
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: port side to get people out, Like he managed to
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: get some people out of that bottom floor and then
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: and then it sank. Jonathan Pang only became aware of
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: what was happening like seconds before it happened. So he
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: and his friend Timothy Blake were on the top deck
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: at the bar and tim grabs his hand. It says,
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: get over the side of the boat. And he points
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: to the window and he sees the bowbell like coming
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: towards them, and all the glass in the windows on
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: the side of the burst. Water starts flooding in. He's
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: up to his waist in water and the next thing
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: he knows like he falls out of window, like he
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: can't figure out what's going on. There was a floor
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: and then there wasn't, which now we know was the
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: anchor ripping that top deck. So Jonathan Pang, he wears glasses,
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: and this was a time where glasses had glass lenses
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: in them. Still they're usually a form of plastic nowadays,
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: but at this point they were still glass. And his
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: first thought is, if anything happens to my glasses, they'll
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: shatter in they could stab me. I need to be
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: able to see what I'm doing, And so he takes
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: his glasses off. He's in flight or fight mode. He
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: hears a crack and then he's in the water. Because
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: he was on that top deck. The majority of people
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: on the top deck, they're just automatically just thrown into
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: open water. But the people on the low they're trapped.
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: Not only do you have a boat that's flipped on
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: its side, because you know, when your space is altered
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: in that way, it's really hard to figure out where
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: you are and get your bearings. Which is bad enough,
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: but then if something like this flips, you've got furniture
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: in those rooms, like you're going to be pinned down
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: against things, like even if you wanted to get out,
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: you might not find a way to do so. But
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: Jonathan Pang, he managed to survive this along with Andrew Sutton.
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: He was there with his girlfriend Helen. He didn't know
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: Antonio Dvinskill is like he didn't know what. He was
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: friends with a friend, Chris Garnum, who was like, you
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: got to come and have a good time. And they
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: felt awkward for being there because they weren't like part
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: of the core group because like there were one hundred
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: and thirty people on this boat, and they didn't know
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: there was only one hundred and thirty. I mean, that's
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: still a lot of people for that amount of space.
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: But yet they thought because they could hold what one
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: hundred and sixty five including crew, that there was going
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: to be about one hundred and fifty people on the ship.
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: On the boat. But yeah, Andrew and his pals they
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: were feeling a bit weird because they didn't really know
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: the birthday boy, and so they had gone out to
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: the four deck of the boat, keep wanting to call
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: it a ship. So he's at the front of the boat.
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: He's there with Tommy Lamagnum. He's there with his girlfriend Helen,
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: and this happens and they are thrown into the water
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: and Helen she's screaming like it's I mean, it's not
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: the coldest because it's August, but she's just been thrown
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: into the water. She's screaming and he's still holding her
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: hand right as they're thrown in and they're trying to
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: swim away, and he's trying to like drag her as
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: he's swimming, but his legs, his legs feel trapped and
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: he can't. He's trying to figure out why, and so
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: he thinks that he's caught in something, and so he
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: looks down into the water and it's his friend Tony
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: grabbing his legs. He's trying to pull himself up to
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: the surface, but Tony was being dragged down, whether because
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: the boat was pulling him down or because the current
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: was pulling him down. And Andrew said that he couldn't
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: grab him because he was holding on to Helen, and
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: he could either let go of his girlfriend and try
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: and save his friend and maybe allays get pulled down
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: by that current, or not save his friend and try
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: and save his girlfriend. And next thing he knows, Tony's gone,
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: and he and his girlfriend Helen, they're on the water
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: and he tries to like bring her towards the north
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: shore of the river, and he's trying to pull this
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: woolen coat off her because she's got this heavy woolen coat.
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: It's all soaking, so it is starting to drag her down.
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: And he's trying to get into these boats that are
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: in barges because like there's a bunch of stuff moored
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: along the river, but everything is covered in algae, and
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: so he's trying to hold onto things he can't grip,
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: and so it's like half an hour he's trying to
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: like climb onto something, and eventually he finds something buoyant.
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: There was something floating in the water. He doesn't know
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: what it is, but he manages to throw Helen's arms
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: around it, like he's trying to keep her because she
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: at this point is unconscious, and he was about to
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: give up, and he couldn't get into a boat, you know,
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: he couldn't keep going. He was exhausted, and just when
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: he was about to let go, he sees Helen's legs
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: above him because she's being pulled into a police boat.
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: And the next thing he remembers is he's lying down
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: on the boat and he has two police officers like
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: they're trying to resuscitate Helen because she's out. So he's
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: gone from being in the water to being on the
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: floor of this boat, and he's saying, two people desperately
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: try and save his girlfriend's life. Now he and Helen
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: will be taken to the hospital shortly thereafter. Now he
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: would get released pretty quickly because he didn't really have
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: any great physical injuries because of where he was in
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: the boat and how he landed in the water, and
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: there were other people that needed the medical attention more
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: than Andrew did. So after he's released from the hospital,
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: he contacts another friend and gets them to drive him
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: down to the river to see if there's anything else
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: they can do to help. They try to drive down,
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: but they end up like in a different area. They're
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: not near where the disaster happened. But like the fact
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: that he did that instead of going home, Like maybe
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: he's still running on adrenaline. Maybe he's just desperate to
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: help him. Mean, he watched his friend die. He doesn't
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: know if his girlfriend's alive. He's almost died, and he
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: wanted to go help, Like that's something. And there was
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: another survivor Innette Russell. She was up on the deck
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: when the collision happened, and for her, like her first thought,
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: as soon as that impact happened, she jumped off the ship.
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: She dove into the water, so she ends up underneath
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: and when she comes back up, it's silent. So between
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: her leaping off the boat and getting back to the surface,
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: silence the Marchioness. It's already halfway in the water, and
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: as the Marchioness is sinking, she is pulled back under
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: and she's taken by the current through the arches of
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: the Southern Bridge. Now a net. She is, I'm gonna say,
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: a decent swimmer. She's quite strong, and so she manages
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: to swim against the current and make it to the
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: bank of the river and it gets put in an ambulance.
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: She gets taken to the hospital. They check her out,
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: they go good enough, and then they discharge her and
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: she's taken to the Howard Hotel, which is on the embankment, right,
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: so it's on the Thames, and the police were using
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: that as their information center for the accident. They were
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: questioning survivors, they were trying to gain information, that's what
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: they were doing. They were using this as their point.
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: So in net she gets a phone call, right, she
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: gets a phone call there from her father. He had
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: phoned the hotel or he'd found a way to know that.
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: This was like the point. So her parents they lived
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: out in Oxfordshire, so they live in the fancy part,
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: and the police had gone to their door, right, and
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: they'd gone to the house and told them that Annette
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: was missing, presumed it. And so the dad he's frankly
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: phoning around trying to get some information on his daughter.
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: And then he phones and he finally hears her voice.
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: Like this shows you just how much of a shit
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: show this investigation was. Like Annette was survived, Like there's
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: a note of her being in hospital and the police
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: are already going up and saying that she's probably dead. Like,
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: you don't go there straight away, you gather information first, motherfuckers,
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: Like why would you go and say I think your
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: child may be dead. It's the same evening or the
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: same morning, Like it's not it's not like eight hours.
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: What are you doing. Out of the one hundred and
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: thirty people on that boat, fifty one died, including Antonio
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: Davis Goncellez and the survivors. So many are still traumatized
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: by what happened, Like some of them were in such
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: shock that once they managed to make it to the
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: river bank, some of them just went home because they
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: didn't know what else to do. Like that's wild. So
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: here's the thing. What actually saved a lot of lives
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: that night was the fact that the Hurlingham, which was
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: the Marchiness's sister ship, was so close by. It was
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: also like being a little party boat, and it was
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: going in the same direction, so it was only like
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty to two hundred feet away when
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: the collision happened, and the crew and the partiers they
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: saw it. They saw it happen, and the first thing
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: they did was head to the side of the of
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: the disaster to pull people out of the water, and
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: they were just like grabbing people from the water and
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: pulling them in through the windows. Like the crew actually
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: had to warn people on the Hurlingham not to like
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: rush to one side so that because if they did,
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: it would topple. So they didn't want that to happen,
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: and so they were like, some of you need to
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: stay over here, some of you need to like go there,
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: and so they had a couple of people like wait
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: out one side and then others were just pulling people
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: in through the windows. So George Williams, who was the
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: Hurlingham captain, he put a call on the radio asking
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: people to send like emergency help, and the Thames Navigation
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: Service misheard the location. So instead of sending the rescue
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: efforts to the Southwark Bridge, they were sending them to
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: Battersea Bridge and the Thames Division of the met They
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: only heard like a little bit of the radio call
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: and so they asked the Thames Navigation Service for confirmation
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: and clarification, and so all of the emergency services, all
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: of the rescue operations they were going to the wrong
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: part of the river and then like after this as well,
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: after this had already happened. After one collision, the Bowbell
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: also hit one of the piers at the Cannon Street bridge,
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: So after that happened, they also radioed to correct the location.
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: Captain Henderson of the bowbel He reported that he believed
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: he had struck a pleasure craft and it had sunk.
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: So the captain he had reported that this had happened right.
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: He said he was distracted by the Harlingham's lights, that
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: he didn't see the pleasure boat, that you know, he
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: was heading this way, that he lost steerage and doesn't
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: know after that. But here's the thing. The bobil collided
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: with the Martioness. It sunk, they know this, and it
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: kept going. It didn't stop, It didn't deploy its lifeboats.
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: It did not provide any aid whatsoever to the people
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: who were drowning in the river. Because here's the thing, right,
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: it's like a hit and run, you know, like hitting
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: someone is one thing that is that it's an accident.
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: That could be an accident. There could be an explanation
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: for that. But if you keep going and you don't
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: stop and you don't help, like that's that's the worst part.
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: That's the crime. That's the difference between manslaughter and murder
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: in my opinion, because you could have saved someone's life.
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: What if what if they needed taken to a hospital,
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: what if you just needed to perform CPR, whatever, what
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: if you just got them out the bloody water. Okay,
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: there are currents in the Thames. You don't want to
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: swim in the Thames. Apart from the fact that it's
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: really dirty, you don't want to be in that water.
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: It's it's not a safe body of water. So within
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: half an hour, within thirty minutes of the disaster, a
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: major incident was declared at Scotland Yard and the Police
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: body's Recovery team was deployed, the first of which arriving
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: at Wapping Police Station, where bodies were held until the
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: mortuary in Westminster was adequately prepitit because it wasn't used
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: to having this many bodies now. It wasn't until the
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: next day that the wreckage of the Marchioness was found
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: and they had to begin work on raising the vessel
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: from the riverbed. When the boat was brought to the surface,
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: twenty four bodies were found on board, twelve of them
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: being in the lower salon, and the remaining twenty seven
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: bodies were found in the river. With the last body
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: it wasn't found until like a fortnight, like two weeks later.
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: Remember when I said we'd circle back to them not
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: knowing how many people were on the boat. Yeah, they
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: thought there might have been one hundred and fifty people
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: on the boat. Now we know now there was only
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: one thirty, but there could have been more, and they
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: didn't have an exact number. And so after they recovered
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: the fifty one bodies, you know, they didn't know how
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: many they were looking for. They thought there was going
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: to be more, so they were still looking because they
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: just didn't know. In the first few hours of the investigation,
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: Captain Henderson and second mate Kenneth Noble of the Bowbell
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: were arrested and breathalyzed and they were like, oh, they
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: didn't drink alcohol, wasn't the cause of this. Well, as
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: it turns out, Captain Henderson had misled the initial investigation,
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: so he had six pints of beer and then slept
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: for three hours before going on his nightly Captain of
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: the Bowbell. The sinking of the Martioness, it was everywhere.
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: It was in the papers, it was on the news,
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: Like you couldn't be in the country and not hear
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: about it, and so you would. London is a bustling city.
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: It's where lots of people go to start a new life,
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: go to school, get their new jobs, because it's the
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: place people go, like people go to the big city.
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: And there were so many parents who saw this on
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: the morning news and they didn't know if their kids
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: were alive or dead. And this is the time before
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: everybody was accessible, where everybody had a mobile phone, like
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: people were writing letters still, you know. One such parent
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: was Margaret Lockwood Croft her son Sean. He was twenty six,
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: and she knew that he lived near where the sinking
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: had happened, and so she tries to phone him. She
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: leaves a voicemail, she doesn't hear from him, and she's like,
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: got a bad feeling about this, and so she's like,
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: I'm going to London. So she travels into London because
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: she's going to find out, She's going to figure out
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: what's going on. She goes to the information center and
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: when she gets there, she has an interview with an
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: officer and she's filling out this form asking these questions
• 58:27
  Speaker 1: about how Sean could be identified if he was one
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: of the ones on the boat. And then the very
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: last question, what funeral director are you going to use?
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: That question, what funeral director are you going to use?
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: That is how Margaret lockwood Croft discovered her son was dead?
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: What funeral director are you going to use? When I
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: say this investigation was a shit show, this investigation was
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: a shit show. And this was a way that many
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: of them, many of the families of those who had passed,
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: that was how they found out. And this was going
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: to be the start of thirty forty year battle, like
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: it's still going on really for the families, for the survivors,
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: because like the day after the disaster, the coroner for
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: the city of Westminster opened the inquest and then it
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: turned it on the very same day. Identifying those who
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: had passed it was not going to be an easy process.
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: And the people who were working on this on the
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: identifications of these bodies, they didn't believe that the families
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: would be able to correctly identify their loved ones. They
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: thought that with the bodies being submerged in water. Like
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: here's the thing, I don't know if you've ever seen
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: a water logged body. Don't look it up, but it
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: is not good. It's the way that the water fills
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: the cells of the body, It bloats it, it's it's
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: not it's not the person you knew. But friends and relatives,
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: like they were coming forward and they were naming the
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: exact outfits people were wearing on the evening. I know,
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: there's this whole argument of you don't want to see
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: them like that, but for some people that is what
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: they require, it's what they need. Like you shouldn't deny
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: someone the opportunity to identify their loved one. But like,
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: there was this worry that people would, you know, get
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: confused and misidentify and all this kind of stuff, and
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: it can be difficult, and there was a worry that
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: it would delay burial and cremation. They felt that the
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: rate of decomposition waterlog bodies, so on and so forth.
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: But anyway, they decided the best way to identify the
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: bodies was through traditional methods dental records and fingerprints. And
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: so they went to people's homes, they found items that
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: would probably have or hopefully have their prints on them,
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: and they found dental records when they could, and when
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 1: the body has been in water. It made fingerprinting difficult.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: So in order to fingerprint they were going to have
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: to get off the dermis as opposed to the epidermis,
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: because the layers of skin were decomposing because you're decomposed
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: quicker because of the water. And they had lots of
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: hands on board for this. They had extra people in
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: because they were just so many bodies. And so the
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: first thing they did they like, they make a log
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: like in great detail, clothes, jewelry, general appearance, hair color, tattoos,
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: any scars, moles, distinguishing features, and you know, anything anything
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: that could assist an identification. Police officers made note the
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: body was photographed and refrigerated, there would be a postmodern
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: and hopefully made presentable for viewing by relatives. And at
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: this point when they did this, the thing that was
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: incredibly upsetting was when they saw their loved ones, when
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: they did see them that their hands were removed. Most
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: families will refused the opportunity to see the victims, and
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: they didn't know at the time that the hands had
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: been severed. Friends and relatives had provided descriptions of victims
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: and their clothing, but the coroner's office, the pathologist and
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: the police decided that any visual identification of the bodies
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: would be too distressing, and so twenty five people had
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: their hands removed and the families were told they could
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: not see the bodies before burial or cremation because their
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: deterioration would be too upsetting. Sally Smith, who saw photographs
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: of her daughter's body afterwards, said that she has no
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: doubt that she could have identified her daughter like She
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: said that she could have understood if her daughter had
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: lost a limb in the accident, but the fact that
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: both her hands were cut off and to be told
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: that that what was happened afterwards, she found that distressing.
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: And here's the thing. It wasn't the fingerprinting that identified
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: her daughter. It was the details that Sally Smith had
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: provided at the opening of her inquest. Jane Burke's father, Peter,
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: tried to see her body after the post mortem, but
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: he was told her coffin could not be opened. He
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: was brought into a room with a wooden box, just
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: left there, a wooden box with his daughter's body inside,
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: not that he could look at it, not that he
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: could see her again, and so he just left after that.
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: Don't worry it gets worse for reasons that no one
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: has been able to explain. The hands. The severed hands
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: of these victims were found four years after the disaster
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: in a plastic bag in a freezer in the mortuary.
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: They didn't even return the hands, which if nothing else right,
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: if someone is Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, I believe in certain
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: religions you are supposed to have your entire body or
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: as much of your body together and you have to
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: be buried as quickly as possible like that, that's part
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: of it. It's all together. And by doing that, you've
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: just like you didn't need to keep the hands. There's
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: no reason to keep them. And the reason that the
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: news got out about the hands in the first place,
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: like initially, was when a funeral director who had looked
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: over the body of Simon Wellington, like he tells the mom,
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: Judy Wellington, that the hands were missing. And the thing
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: is they didn't need to sever his hands at all,
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: because Simon, right on his body, he had his wallet,
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: his credit cards, his ID, his bank details and his
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: car keys on them. He had his ID and everything
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: that was his on him, and still they severed his hands.
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: And it gets worse you're thinking, how bad is it?
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: It gets much worse. So Simon, he's of Caribbean origin.
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: Mm hmm, Simon was not a white man. So initially, initially,
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: instead of being given the body of their son, Simon,
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: whose hand for no reason, had been severed to identify
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: the man who had his identification documents upon his own.
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 3: Body, they instead of giving that corpse back to them,
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 3: they received the body of a white man, not of
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 3: their son.
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: So that was, I don't want to say the first
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: nail in the coffin, but that was the first, the
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: first note that something was up. And when they finally
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 1: got the chance to bury Simon, they did so without
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: his hands. And the only reason they knew was because
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: the funeral director told them. And for them like this
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: hurt jury so much because Simon was he was a model,
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: was an artist and a bass player. His hands mattered
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: to him and they were left in a freezer in
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: a Westminster mortuary. So not only do you have this
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 1: inquest which was poorly handled, not only do you have
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 1: this investigation that was poorly handled, you also have the
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: fucking press because the tabloids just don't know when to
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: shut the fuck up. So the tabloids. Well, oh they
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: were horrid. The Evening Standard wrote a headline about how
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: they were a few less cowboy boots on the King's Road,
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: which was thinly veiled, if even veiled in any way
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: like homophobia. And so it went from being oh, no,
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: what a sad disaster with all of these young people,
• 1:09:03
  Speaker 1: to being a good thing that people had died. Fifty
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: one people had died, and they're like, well, less aids,
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: Like they were seriously making AIDS references and just insults
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: towards the LGBTQ community. Young people died, and they're like, whoo,
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: less gays, Like, what the actual fuck. There's talks about, oh,
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: they were partying too much, they were doing this. You
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: know what did they expect, Oh, consequences. That's not a consequence, buddy, No,
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: And this is conspiracy moment. There's a report that says
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: a bulletin was sent out to the emergency services saying that,
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: based on information from a known and reliable source connected
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: with the pleasure put in industry, the Marchioness was carrying
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: a party of one hundred and twenty homosexuals and lesbians. Consequently,
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: there was a high risk of aid contamination for all
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: officers and emergency services. Now I can't confirm this, but listen,
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 1: people are horrible and this could have happened. A lot
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 1: of families said that they felt that they were being
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: treated poorly by the police, by the officers there, and
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: could this be why. Jonathan Pang, who had survived this,
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: he had been told that he hoped that they enjoyed
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: his fifteen minutes of fame. Following the death of fifty
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: one people, including his friends. In October of that year
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: of nineteen eighty nine, the companies that owned the Bowbell
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: and the Marchioness, they agreed to pay six million pounds
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: in compensation to the families of the victims like altogether,
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: not each and neither company accepted liability, no accountability, nothing,
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: And one week afterwards it was recommended by the Director
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: of Public Prosecutions that no criminal charges should be brought
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: against Captain Henderson. That was the recommendation. But this meant
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: that the inquest couldn't take place until they knew Henderson
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: was going to be charged or not, because they couldn't
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: prejudice a trial, and so the inquest wasn't a full inquest.
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: It was like a mini in quest, like a series
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: of like specific inquests to each of the fifty one
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: bodies in their causes of death. Now, shockingly enough, the
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: majority of people died through drowning. Then, on the twenty
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: sixth of April nineteen ninety the Director of Public Prosecution
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: stopped the inquest because they decided charges were going to
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: be brought against Henderson, and he was charged under the
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 1: Merchant Shipping Act of nineteen eighty eight for failing to
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 1: have effective lookout on his ship. Henderson has two trials,
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: he is acquitted in both, and at this point there
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: was still no public inquiry to the disaster. Instead, the
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: government decides to publish the Marine Accident Investigation Branch's report
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: on what had happened, which was not received well by
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 1: the families or the survivors because they hadn't interviewed anybody
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: on the boat. We hadn't interviewed any survivors. They went
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: specifically off of police information, and that's not enough. It
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 1: took six years for there to be another inquest. In
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: nineteen ninety five, the inquest took place, and the jury
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: it returns with unlawful killing, which would imply that someone
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 1: is responsible, but whom there were no charges, there was
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: no one to blame when there are clearly people to blame.
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: So people affected by the disaster they could apply to
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: the government for compensation, but I know it's a complicated process.
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: You're shocked, I'm aware. And in English law there's no
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 1: actual compensation for the accidents other than funeral expenses. So
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: most families they received zilch zip nada. And some families
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: managed to get to civil claims for compensation, but they
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: received anywhere between three grand and one hundred and ninety
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: thousand pounds. But after everything else, they paid all the bills,
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: the lawyers, everything like that. The funerals there they basically
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 1: had pittance, left nothing. And here's the thing, they awarded
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 1: less money because the people who died were young, because
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: the damages were based on the economic loss of the victim.
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: There was another inquiry in two thousand, which was eleven
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: years after the disaster. Lord Justice Clerk came to the
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: conclusion that the cause of the collision was per lookouts
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: on both vessels neither saw each other in time to
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: avoid it, but that was still unlawful, and he also
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: stated that Captain Henderson should have put out a MADI alert.
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: He should have deployed the lifeboat and the life raft
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: of the bowbell. And he puts forward like thirty recommendations
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: to improve river safety. A few of it were actually
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: brought into play, like chains on the river bank to
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: be able to grab onto, like four new lifeboat stations
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: are placed up the river. And all in all there
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: was like forty three new laws like put in place.
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 1: And then in two thousand and seven a criminal act
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: of corporate manslaughter was put into play. And it's good
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: that these things are happening now that they are now
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: in place, but this doesn't help the survivors. It doesn't
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: help the families of the victims. They didn't get just
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: they may never will because no one is willing to
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: place the responsibility not properly. And from the get go,
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: the treatment of the victims in this case, the treatment
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: of the victims in this disaster was beyond poor. Families
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: deserve justice, survivors deserve justice, And to this day, no
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: one has been held accountable for the martian Ess disaster.
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 1: And before we end this episode, I'm going to give
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: you the names of each and every one of those victims,
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: each one of those people who did not survive the
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: Martian Nests disaster, Peter Alcorn twenty three, Christopher Averel twenty,
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: David Ayres twenty nine, Sophie Bennett twenty three, Rupert Blackburn
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: twenty five, Timothy Blake thirty, Jane Burke twenty, Paul Brookman nineteen,
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: Michael Carew forty one, is La Carroll twenty two, John
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: Clark thirty one, Tamson Coal twenty four, Sean lockwood Croft
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: twenty six, Francesca de las Leo nineteen, Sheila Dubenny fifty two,
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: Louis de la Certa twenty six, Howard Dennis twenty nine,
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: Leno Di Giuralmo twenty eight, Marino Drusetta thirty, Paul Ellington nineteen,
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: Stephen Faldo twenty nine, Christopher Gardam thirty one, Michael Gatehouse
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: forty six, Jeffrey Gibbs twenty seven, Carmela Lennon Gorman forty one,
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: Ruth Hadden thirty two, Guy Hallis thirty eight, Hannah Harris
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: twenty one, David Hifield thirty three, Lee Hunt nineteen, Julie
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 1: Hunt twenty six, Julie Ibbotson twenty three, Karen Jarvis twenty eight,
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: Peter j twenty seven, Diane Limb twenty five, Neville Lovelocke
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: twenty nine, Elsa Garcia mcgildy twenty five, Shirlene Manning twenty eight,
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: Tony Lomannion thirty three, Dean Palmer twenty two, Franz Langlands
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: Pierce twenty nine, Stephen Perks twenty three, Angela Plevi twenty nine,
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: Rachel Rakov twenty five, Simon Senior twenty, Vida Shamash twenty one,
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 1: Aziz Chamash twenty, Julian Tremaine twenty eight, Antonio A Vasconcelos
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: twenty six, Domingos e Visconcelos twenty eight, Linda Webster twenty seven.
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: It felt disrespectful to talk about their lives and not
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: give you their names. So ends the story? Does it?
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: Still going with the marchingst Disaster? And so if you
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: liked that episode, please feel free to rate and review
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: five stars that would be super. If you don't want
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: to rate a review or if you haven't getting the
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: next say don't do that, don't forget. You can follow
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 1: me on all the socials. If you're in Canada and
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 1: you know a place send me information for the Oops
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 1: I'm in Canada tour for next year. Oh and it
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: is recommendation time for reading. I'm going to recommend Fear
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: Straight because I watched Fear Straight prom Queen and it
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 1: just was lacking in everything. But read the books. Books
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: are great, enjoy them for lessening. Oh, Wine and Crime.
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 1: Go listen to Wine and Crime. They're awesome. Go do that.
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: And for watching. You know what I rewatched over the
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: weekend and it made me feel great. Dumpling. I love Dumpling.
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: It is one of my happy films. I cried during it,
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: so clearly I'm going through something right now. But yeah,
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: that's where I'm at. So I'm going to go now.
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: I have I have know. I'm not gonna tell you
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 1: what that. You're gonna have to wait for that secrets,
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 1: but I am going to bid you good night. Adios.
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: Au Revoirs of Wadism my friend Bubby