Cruise Ship Law

CTV News
Canadian Press

HALIFAX -- A Cook Islands safety probe into how Laura Gainey was swept off the tall ship Picton Castle was delayed partly because ship staff accounts of events differed with what appeared in a preliminary report, says the South Pacific nation's transport secretary.

The island nation halfway between New Zealand and Hawaii is conducting the inquiry because the training vessel, based in Lunenburg, N.S., is registered in the Cook Islands rather than Canada.

Aukino Tairea, the country's transport secretary, said in an interview that he expects to receive the report this week. He had originally expected it at the end of May.

The original investigation was conducted by retired naval captain Andrew Scheer, a consultant based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and was released in March to the Cook Islands ships registry.

Tairea then appointed a three-person review panel - including a New Zealand lawyer, a Cook Islands police inspector and a member of the island's ship registry - to go over its findings.

Asked if the panel had any problems with the initial report, Tairea replied, "It didn't quite provide the information that stacked up with some of the information provided by the ship, or the captain's stuff.

"The board found it difficult to understand the chain of events that have happened, and some of the processes on the vessel itself."

Scheer's office in Fort Lauderdale said all comment must come from the Cook Islands.

Tairea said he doesn't expect the marine board of inquiry he appointed will take much longer to supply the report.

"We're just as anxious to receive the report as anybody else. I'm going to force him (the inquiry chairman) to get the report out as soon as possible," he said in an interview last week.

He also noted that one member of the board of inquiry had been travelling to meetings of the International Maritime Organization, which had delayed the drafting of the final report.

Peter Lahay, the Canadian co-ordinator of the International Transport Worker's Federation, a trade union group that represents seafarers around the world, said the Transportation Safety Board of Canada and Transport Canada "should have taken some initiative" on the case.

"It should have been a Canadian investigation," he said. "It was a Canadian death, essentially a Canadian vessel. I think that's a strong enough connection for Canada to have had an investigation."

The safety board is supplying information to the Cook Islands to assist in its inquiry.

The Picton Castle accident happened last December about 880 kilometres southeast of Cape Cod, in seas with waves over seven metres and winds that gusted to more than 80 km-h.

After a three-day search for Gainey, the vessel continued its voyage to Grenada and spent the winter and spring travelling the Caribbean providing sail training to students and trainees.

The barque was also temporarily converted into a "pirate vessel" for producer Mark Burnett's latest reality series, Pirate Master.

Ken Potter, the manager of operations for the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, said Canadian authorities have the legal authority to conduct their own independent inquiry into such accidents, but chose not to in this case because international conventions dictate that the flag state should be the lead agency.

"We're not precluded from doing it," he said in an interview. "However, the flag state has the first right, and the first obligation to do so. In this circumstance it just seemed expeditious to allow the flag state to do it."

He said findings by the Canadian safety board legally require action by affected federal departments, but that isn't the case with the investigation done by the Cook Islands.

"Legislatively, if we make a recommendation to a minister, the minister is obliged to respond within 90 days to one of our recommendations," he said.

Asked if that applies to the probe into the Picton Castle, he responded: "Not on Canada."

"This, of course, was not a Canadian vessel."

The Transportation Safety Board is an independent agency with a mandate to identify safety deficiencies and report publicly on all of its findings.