I won't be fall guy for Tongan ferry tragedy, says Scots peer

Published on Friday 22 January 2010 21:52

A SCOTTISH QC has told an inquiry in Tonga he will not be made "the fall guy" for the country's worst shipping disaster.

Lord Ramsay Dalgety, QC, company secretary of the Shipping Corporation of Polynesia (SCP), operator of the Princess Ashika ferry, which sank in August last year, described the vessel as an old "rust bucket".

He also said he agreed with counsel's submission that if the Tongan government had shown proper due diligence in ensuring the 37-year-old vessel was seaworthy the disaster, in which 74 people died, could have been avoided.

Among those who drowned when the ferry sank on 5 August last year was Daniel MacMillan, 48, from Islay, who had been living in New Zealand for five years.

Lord Dalgety, 64, who moved to Tonga in 1991 and was made a law lord in 2008 by King George Tupou V, has denied revising a memorandum of agreement for purchasing the vessel.

"I'm not going to be the fall guy for signing this contract or agreeing to it," Lord Dalgety, a specialist in admiralty law in Scotland, told the Royal Commission of Inquiry.

He was then asked by Manuel Varitimos, the assisting counsel, if he knew what rust was, and whether he had seen or looked for any when he boarded the ferry after a special prayer service before its first sailing in July.

Lord Dalgety said he had not looked for rust, and that the first time he had noticed any was when it was pointed out in a film shown at an earlier hearing.

"Lord Dalgety, I suggest it was patently obvious for anyone who cared to look that Ashika was littered with rust and corrosion," Mr Varitimos said.

Lord Dalgety replied: "But I don't, I don't. I don't deny the conclusion you've come to, that the vessel was – to put it in lay terms – a rust bucket. There seems to be enough evidence to that effect."

Lord Dalgety also said anyone trained in such matters would have spotted the rust but he did not have the time, was not looking for it and had no recollection of rust being obvious to him.

"It was a vessel which had been certified seaworthy," Lord Dalgety told the inquiry.

The inquiry heard that the Tongan government was the sole shareholder of SCP and that SCP was acting for the government.

Lord Dalgety was also questioned about his job with Tonga's Electricity Commission, where he flew first-class business trips and the possible misuse of commission funds to pay for the personal travel, including airfares to New York, and an administrator.

Despite objections from Lord Dalgety's counsel, the inquiry's chairman allowed the cross- examination to continue after Mr Varitimos said it was appropriate – considering the incompetence of the SCP board and that, as company secretary, he headed another commission – so that the issue should be examined to avoid a similar disaster.

Lord Dalgety confirmed he flew first class, saying it was something he had done all his life.

There was widespread anger in Tonga last August after King George Tupou V flew to Scotland shortly after the disaster to take the salute at the Edinburgh Tattoo at the start of his annual three-month holiday to Scotland.