An Italian Job - Michael Grey February 2021

 An Italian job

By Michael Grey

Whatever your particular mode of transport might be, you are well advised not to have any sort of accident within the jurisdiction of the state of Italy. An advanced European country, you might think, with a well-developed system of justice? That may be the impression everyone who loves that country likes to think, but just don’t make any sort of a mistake in Italian waters, if you don’t want to end up serving a custodial sentence.

This view has been recently reinforced by the treatment accorded to five members of the crew of the cruise ship MSC Opera, which, it might be recalled, had a spectacular “hard landing” in 2019, trying to get alongside in the port of Venice. Terrifying videos were instantly available from several angles, showing people running for their lives on the quay as the ship, apparently out of control, bounced off the wharf and slammed into a harbour cruise craft. Five people were injured in the general mayhem.
The initial explanation was of a “technical problem”, but such malfunctions did not save the master of the ship from a five month gaol sentence, with the ship’s chief engineer and the chief electrician being given two months apiece. Two others were found to be at fault and were given ten days gaol time.
The rationale behind these sentences, as revealed by the court, was that there were indeed problems aboard the ship as she approached the port, but that the accused pressed on with their intention to berth, when they perhaps should have held off until it was perfectly safe to proceed. The company, which backed its on-board team, maintained that the technical problem was just that, and the fault lay with the people responsible for the equipment.

Custodial sentences in such a situation might seem very harsh. It was possibly influenced by the location of the incident, and the timing, as it coincided with a tremendous effort by people in Venice to get big cruise ships banned from the lagoon. It also has to be borne in mind that unlike some places that have a system where the cause of an accident is investigated by independent marine professionals, in Italy the investigation is merely part of a judicial process – in effect a trial, where any professionals play only an advisory role.

Italy is just one of many countries that have elected to maintain such a system, and shows no reluctance to commit to prison those deemed to have been responsible for marine accidents. There have been a number of such occasions in recent years. Maybe one should not be judgemental in such matters, but it might reasonably asked what might be served by the criminalising of professionals who have made a mistake, lapse of judgement, or merely have been overtaken by circumstances.
In such cases a complete lay person will surely find the technical complexities that might be extenuating completely mystifying. This is increasingly the case when advanced automation systems effectively relegate the ship’s technical staff to bystanders. The handling of big ships in very confined waters, such a non-professional judge may well conclude, will surely be no more challenging than parking a car.
Italy might have form in this respect, but maybe we should not hold its systems as unduly harsh. Indeed, it might be suggested that the determination of blame, rather than causation, has become entrenched throughout the whole world and that accidents which would once have been dealt with by professional investigation now increasingly involve law enforcement. The enforcers in most of these places are also now armed with a host of useful catch-all charges that can be deployed, such as “hazarding a ship”, to suit the situation in a wide range of circumstances. They are surely giving effect to something of a societal change that has seen growing intolerance to any sort of “accident” – a word that has ceased to have much meaning.

Will marine professionals be less inclined to any form of error, if they know that it carries with it the risk of a custodial sentence, to satisfy the public demand for somebody to be “held to account” for his or her actions? And in an age when these marine professionals are being asked, overtly or covertly by managements, to shave safety margins, to handle bigger and bigger ships in more fraught circumstances, with prudence and caution being regarded as outmoded, shouldn’t we cut them a bit of slack?

Michael Grey is former editor of Lloyd’s List.

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