A Transportation Safety Board (TSB) investigation has revealed potential safety concerns on a boat run by the Kingston & The Islands Boat Lines, and cruise ships across the country, following a boat collision in the St. Lawrence River several years ago.
The incident that launched the investigation took place in the summer of 2017, when one of the Kingston company’s boats, the Island Queen III, struck the bottom of the St. Lawrence River during a tour while carrying 279 passengers, 10 crew members and one entertainer.
The collision occurred after the captain of the ship veered off its regular course to avoid a group of sailing dinghies.
“The vessel’s position was being monitored solely by visual navigation,” the TSB report said.
“Although other sources of information and methods of navigation were available, none of these were used to cross-check the visual navigation, allowing the inaccuracy of the navigation to go undetected.”
Hugh Mackenzie, general manager of the tour company, says he believes his company has an excellent safety record, including with respect to the collision in 2017.
“The captain and the crew responded appropriately, brought the vessel back to dock under this difficult circumstance and did very well,” Mackenzie said.
He added that his staff are trained at the beginning of the season, and then undergo biweekly training throughout the season to deal with various emergency scenarios.
No one was injured as a result of the collision in 2017, and the boat was able to make it safely back to shore, but the ship’s steering compartment was damaged and ultimately flooded.
The TSB noted some concerns specific to the Island Queen III about emergency preparedness and the number of life-jackets for children on board the ship at the time of the collision.
As for children’s life-jackets, it is procedure that cruise ships like the Island Queen III must either carry one child’s size life-jacket for every child on board, or children’s life-jackets for 10 per cent of their maximum capacity, whichever is greater.
The ship had 31 life vests for children on board that day, with 32 children and four infants on board.
The TSB noted that there was no procedure in place to actually record how many children were on board, and the crew did not know how many children were on board the ship that day.
Mackenzie said that at the time of the incident, the ship did have the required child life vests on board for one-tenth of its maximum capacity, and that they do keep a tally of how many children’s tickets are sold, but knowing exactly how many children on board would fit those child-sized vests is a more complicated endeavour.
“We have information on a cruise on the number of children’s tickets that we’ve sold, which is up to 15 years of age. But a vast proportion of those kids of that age would take an adult life jacket. So we don’t measure the weight or evaluate the weight of passengers as they’re coming on board,” Mackenzie told Global News on Friday.
Nevertheless, Mackenzie said his cruise ships have life vests for 100 per cent of their adult capacity, and always have 10 per cent extra in children’s life-jackets.
As for safety procedures, the report said the ship did have an evacuation procedure, but did not have a way of testing how well the evacuation procedure would function, since all drills were performed without passengers.
The report also claimed that the ship did not have a procedure to get all of its passengers off a ship in 30 minutes if an “abandon ship” order is called.
Mackenzie noted that changes have taken place since the incident and that new training has been implemented over the last three years.
“What we have done since is we have developed a full evacuation plan that has timing requirements and responsibilities and those things,” Mackenzie said.
As for other issues identified in the report, Mackenzie noted that some were not unique, or even tied to problems at his company.
“They just didn’t look into our organization in framing the report. They looked at the whole passenger vessel industry, the hospitality passenger vessel industry. So a lot of the elements in the report are things that they found at other organizations.”
One element the TSB flagged across the board was crowd control training. The board claimed that the Marine Emergency Duties training, made mandatory by Transport Canada, held by most of the staff onboard the Island Queen III, only allotted about 15 minutes to learn about crowd control — training the TSB says is essential for a ship that is carrying hundreds of passengers.
More in-depth training is required of ships that are larger, but national requirements are based on how heavy the ship is, instead of how many passengers the boat carries, the report noted. This means that training across the board for many cruise ships in Canada, not just the Island Queen III, may be lacking, according to the board.
“The Board is concerned that, until such time as the crew members of all vessels carrying more than 12 passengers are required to complete appropriate training in passenger safety management, there remains a risk that crew members will not be prepared to manage passengers effectively in emergency situations.”
Overall, Mackenzie said he felt the board was exhaustive in its report, but acknowledged the work done by Kingston & The Islands Boat Lines to improve where they could following the collision.
“The report was very complimentary of our proactive activity on addressing a variety of issues, concerns and things that we saw that could be improved out of this incident,” Mackenzie said.