The Marchioness
On August 20, 1989, Jonathan Phang and several friends gathered for dinner before going on to a birthday party on the Thames riverboat, The Marchioness. Several hours later, 51 passenger on the boat were dead: their average age was 25.
The Marchioness had been hit by the 1,500-tonne dredger, The Bowbelle, and party-goers were thrown into the river or trapped in the vessel by loose furniture. Those escaping into the strong tidal waters of the Thames had to struggle to survive.
The Bowbelle had been involved in more than half of the 18 collisions on the Thames in the previous 20 years. The design of the dredger severely hampered visibility from the wheelhouse, and radio contact between river vessels was poor. Like many older passenger boats, The Marchioness had been adapted to provide more passenger accommodation and she, too, suffered a lack of visibility.
There is no designated search-and-rescue service on the Thames, although the police and rescue operations and other craft should go to the assistance of casualties in the water. On the night of The Marchioness disaster, it is thought that 27 people who escaped into the water drowned before rescue reached them. Margaret Lockwood-Croft, who lost her son, Sean, found out that he had been seen alive in the water 25 minutes after the boat went down.
Thames river trips are already taken by about three million people a year, a number which is bound to increase with the opening of the Millennium Dome. Ten years after The Marchioness disaster, there are fears that not all the shortcomings in safety on the river have been addressed.
