Disasters at Sea: Why Ships Sink

21 March 2012

TX: Sunday 1st April, 8pm, Channel 4

On the 100th anniversary of the sinking of RMS Titanic, a brand new one-off documentary looks into the disaster and safety of passengers at sea. In this modern age, huge lavish and extravagant cruise ships tower above the ocean surfaces boasting the latest state-of-the art shopping malls, cinemas and tennis courts offering arrays of bars and restaurants. With a century of advanced design and new technology and despite being built by the world's greatest expert marine-engineers and scientists, lessons from the past are being constantly overlooked and these ships continue to sink.

The Titanic embarked on her maiden voyage in April 1912 and was the largest, heaviest, most expensive luxurious man-made moving object on the planet built by the world's most skilled labour force. Regardless of this, the ship sank after striking an iceberg causing catastrophic consequences which shocked the entire world and prompted a scrutinised investigation into the dangers found at sea.

One hundred years later, the world re-lived the chilling horror of events when luxury cruise liner, the Costa Concordia suffered a similar impact. The ship was a palace of the ocean with a capacity of 3780 passengers and an impressive 290m long and 31m high. Yet in January this year, it capsized and sunk off the Tuscan coast causing one of the worst disasters in the cruise industry's history.

The documentary will also tell the captivating stories of many infamous shipping tragedies including Sea Diamond which sank in the Mediterranean in 2007 and the Oceanos which capsized off the coast of South Africa in 1991.

Disaster at Sea: Why Ships Sink examines the complex web of design and construction weaknesses, navigational and human errors, and the failures in evacuation plans which contribute to the sinking of ships claiming the lives of their passengers. With use of dramatic archive footage from recent decades, the documentary will examine the science behind the individual tragedies of ships and feature in-depth interviews with marine-engineering experts to find out whether we can prevent another devastating disaster at sea.

 

Production Company
Pioneer Productions

Producer/Director
Chris Amess

Executive Producer
Bob Strange