DELTA D'OC: The Fire the Crew Beat, and the Certificate Nobody Noticed Had Expired

Off Port-Saint-Louis-du-Rhône, 12 February 2013 — 11:00

DELTA D'OC, a 24.7m steel trawler with 4 aboard including her owner-skipper, was mid-tow when the engine's low oil-pressure alarm sounded, followed by the engine surging and hunting. The skipper sent his son below. He found fuel-oil smoke and flames around the turbocharger.

What Happened

The engine was stopped from the bridge. The skipper grabbed a 6kg dry-powder extinguisher and went below himself via the port machinery ladder to fight the fire directly — using two extinguishers, about 8kg of powder between them, he and his son had it under control within minutes. The engine was restarted just long enough to haul the trawl, then shut down again on a low-oil-pressure trip. By 14:15 the skipper called CROSS La Garde to report the fire was out, no assistance needed, with a tow already arranged from a nearby trawler. No one was hurt, though both men were mildly affected by the irritant gases from the powder reacting with the hot surfaces — neither had a respirator mask to hand.

What the Investigation Found

The fire's most likely cause: a lubrication fault at the turbocharger shaft bearing, causing overheating, oil combustion, and the turbo seizing entirely. That's a mechanical failure any well-maintained vessel can suffer. What BEAmer found next to it wasn't mechanical at all. The vessel's official safety certificate and load-line certificate had both been issued the day before the fire — but her last actual periodic safety inspection was in June 2009, nearly four years earlier. In the years between, the owner had at one point told the inspecting authority he was considering scrapping the vessel under a fleet-reduction scheme; that application was twice refused, and somewhere in the administrative gap that followed, the vessel simply stopped being re-inspected — noticed by neither the owner nor the regional safety office managing her file, until BEAmer's own investigator flagged it after the fire.

Does a Safety Management System Actually Apply Here?

This is worth answering directly, because it's the real gap this incident exposes. Fishing vessels — of any size, in France or the UK — sit outside the scope of the ISM Code; the Code applies to cargo ships, tankers, and passenger ships above defined tonnage thresholds, not to fishing vessels. There's no equivalent requirement for DELTA D'OC to run a documented safety management system the way a large cargo ship must. What does apply, in the UK, is the Maritime and Coastguard Agency's own certification and periodic-inspection regime — reinforced for the smallest vessels by the dedicated Code of Practice for Fishing Vessels under 15m Length Overall (in force since 6 September 2021) — which functions as the practical equivalent of what failed here: a periodic, external check that keeps a vessel's safety status current. It isn't a voluntary system in the sense of being optional, but unlike a documented SMS, its currency ultimately still depends on someone — owner, operator, or the inspecting authority itself — actually tracking the renewal date. That's exactly the link that broke for four years aboard DELTA D'OC.

Check Your Vessel

• Owners/skippers: Do you know your vessel's actual safety certificate and periodic inspection expiry dates from memory, or only from the paperwork itself — the way DELTA D'OC's owner effectively did?
• All crew: Are respirator masks actually stowed next to your fire extinguishers, ready to grab together, or only the extinguisher?
• Skippers: If you've previously applied to decommission or scrap a vessel and the application was refused, do you have a clear process for confirming the vessel's normal safety inspection cycle has resumed?

Source: BEAmer (Bureau d'Enquêtes sur les Événements de Mer, France) — Rapport d'enquête simplifié, Incendie machine à bord du chalutier DELTA D'OC, 12 February 2013, published December 2013. Regulatory context: Merchant Shipping (ISM Code) Regulations 2026; MCA Code of Practice for the Safety of Fishing Vessels of less than 15m Length Overall (in force 6 September 2021).