Stay up to date with notifications from The Independent

Notifications can be managed in browser preferences.

Our happiness was wrecked at Zeebrugge: It is seven years since the Herald of Free Enterprise sank, and for some survivors the ordeal is not over yet. Martin Whittaker met a family fighting for compensation from P&O

Martin Whittaker
Thursday 05 May 1994 00:02 BST
Comments

Alan Rogers used to be a self-employed builder. Until the beginning of 1987 he was doing well. He, his wife, Sue, and their three young children had recently moved into a five-bedroomed house in a leafy Cheltenham suburb.

He worked long hours, thought nothing of lugging a steel boiler up a ladder, and took great pride in the quality of his work. His business had a turnover of pounds 46,000. In his spare time, he loved sailing, canoeing and doing up the house. He had his own racing dinghy and looked forward to teaching the kids.

Today Alan, 6ft 1ins, is registered disabled, walks with a stick and can barely climb the stairs, let alone teach his children to sail. His beloved dinghy was reduced to ashes after he dragged it into the back garden and burned it in a fit of rage.

Sue sits and chain-smokes. Their house is run-down, the furniture shabby and neglected. Alan says the whole family is in turmoil: 'We're a family at war. We're fighting the children all the time - they're fighting us.'

So what happened to the Rogers family? Alan, 44, Sue, 34, twins William and Emma, 10, and Adrian, eight, were among the survivors on the Herald of Free Enterprise. The ferry capsized in Zeebrugge harbour in March 1987 killing 193 people, after setting sail with the bow doors open.

The whole family were diagnosed as having post-traumatic stress disorder, then a condition that was only just being recognised. Alan gets depressed, the children still wake up screaming and have counselling and Sue can't talk about it without bursting into tears.

They are unable to put the disaster behind them because they are still fighting the Herald's owner, P&O European Ferries, over a final compensation settlement. They heard last week that a new offer was to be made soon.

William and Emma were just three, and Adrian 18 months, when the family returned from a day trip to Belgium. They went into a television lounge on board. Alan, a former Royal Navy reservist, recalls: 'We hadn't been in there many minutes when there was a call from the ship's carpenter over the Tannoy.

'Then the ship started to list over. And I said 'hang on - it's going to hit something'. My training was telling me he was making an emergency manoeuvre. By the time I got that out, there was water going past the windows. People started screaming. It went over on to its side. When it got to 90 degrees, there were people flying through the air. If they weren't sat down where they could get a grip, they had no chance. They just fell into the plate-glass windows.

'I was trying to protect William, who was on an inside seat. As the boat began to turn over, he fell under the table we were sitting at. He was actually falling into the corridor, but I was still holding his arm. I couldn't get him back up, so I turned and put my legs through the hole, and lowered myself through. By then I was holding on with one hand, I'd got William cuddled into me. He was looking as someone came through the plate-glass window. They were cut to shreds.

'I turned his head from that to look aft just as the windows exploded on the side of the ship. So he went from one nightmare to another, I went from one nightmare to another. Sue had hold of Emma. Adie was still in his buggy at the end of the table.'

At this point Sue breaks down and cries. I suggest we stop, but Alan says: 'This doesn't do any harm. It is a part and parcel of therapy. You confront it.'

After a minute he continues: 'The buggy had gone down to rest against the leg of the table. Sue remembered a bloke falling and grabbing the buggy handles to save himself, which flipped the buggy up in front of her with Adrian still strapped in it. She managed to hold on to him.

'When the windows exploded, it was bang] All the lights went out. We had hit the sea bed. I floated back up on the water with William. As I came up through, the water still rising, Sue said to me 'I think Adrian's dead. He's not moving'.'

The family were trapped in pitch- dark with about 40 others. They don't know how long they were in there. 'You couldn't see one another - you could only shout and that was what all the noise was,' Alan says. 'Then you'd get a splash, somebody lost their grip and fell.'

Rescuers smashed a window and threw a rope down. Alan climbed out and then helped pull the children out. He found a lifeboat ladder and lowered that in for the adults. But Sue was too weak and almost gave up. Rescue workers finally managed to haul her out.

Sue suffered bad cuts and was bruised from head to toe. William had to be resuscitated in hospital after being rushed in with hypothermia. The other two children suffered from shock.

At the time, Alan had not realised the extent of his injuries. He had metal embedded in his left arm. And when he returned to England, X-rays revealed that he'd broken two vertebrae.

But the after-effects hit the family hardest. 'William was happy-go- lucky before. He would talk the hind legs off a donkey,' recalls Alan. 'Afterwards he had black moods and was very depressed, very angry. The first painting he did afterwards was completely black. The children's dreams started straight away. They just screamed the house down at night. You couldn't bath William, couldn't shower him, couldn't wash him - you couldn't let water near him at all.

'You couldn't get him upstairs at night if the curtains weren't drawn. He couldn't look at glass when it was black on the outside. That went on for about three years.

'Emma went very quiet. She had dreams, she was frightened of water. She wouldn't let us out of her sight. She clung on. You couldn't go to the toilet without her watching you, clinging to the door making sure you didn't go again. It's only in the last 12 months that she's talked about it at all.

'I went through a massive guilt trip. It was me that said book the ferry crossing. It was me that put my family on the boat. I couldn't get Sue out. Someone else had to do that. In treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder, you rely on the spouse to help the partner through. But we've both got the same problem. We've built brick walls. We no longer sleep together. We've got our own separate rooms.

'I think without the children we wouldn't be here now. I've tried to take my own life. They were down here having the twins' fourth birthday party, I was up in bed popping pills. I had a fortnight in hospital.

'I was in a lot of pain - that's why I did it. I wanted to get rid of it. I'd had enough.'

Alan hasn't worked since February 1989, when he had a brief spell as a lorry driver, but could no longer do the job. Now the family live on pounds 137.82 a week benefit.

The public inquiry into the disaster described P&O European Ferries as 'infected with the disease of sloppiness'. The company and seven of its employees were subsequently charged with corporate manslaughter. The Old Bailey trial in 1990 collapsed after 27 days when the judge told the jury the prosecution had failed to provide a case of manslaughter. By this time, most of the claims had been settled.

Compensating those involved in the Zeebrugge disaster has been a complicated process involving hundreds of lawyers, and payouts have varied enormously. In April 1989, a panel of three top lawyers awarded payments to 10 survivors, ranging from pounds 151,114 for a 54-year-old man who lost his wife, daughter, mother and grandchild, to pounds 9,135 for a 22- year-old woman who developed an intense fear of water. These were the only claims to go to arbitration after negotiations broke down over how much should be paid for nervous shock. Until these cases were settled there were few precedents.

Alan Rogers has received several interim payments totalling pounds 20,000, to come out of the final settlement. He says these payments have vanished into his overdraft. He is still thousands of pounds in debt.

He has been offered pounds 12,500 compensation for psychological damage, pounds 7,000 for physical injuries, pounds 5,000 for being on the ship when it capsized, and pounds 48,000 for future loss of earnings. But he rejected the offers, believing them to be derisory.

Since the loss of earnings offer in August 1992, he says it has become a real battle. P&O has requested and received more medical evidence, and letters have flown between firms of lawyers. P&O says Alan Rogers' claim is among 20 outstanding. The company is disputing the origins of Alan's injury and he is furious at the suggestion that his injury might pre-date Zeebrugge.

'Of course we feel very, very sorry for people who have lost loved ones, he says. 'Our case is different to theirs in the fact that we have had no one to grieve over. Most sympathy must go to people who were on the ship and were bereaved. We know something of what they have gone through. I do know, though, that some people have settled their compensation claim and regretted it, receiving an absolute pittance. I'm not going to let that happen to me.'

Sue and the children were each offered a pounds 5,000 fixed payment for being aboard the Herald of Free Enterprise when it capsized. They have rejected them. 'We'll be fighting for those when my claim is settled,' says Alan.

'You know, the worst thing is that to this day, no one from P&O has even written us a letter saying sorry. That would have gone a long way, wouldn't it?'

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in