Lyme Bay canoeing disaster

On 22 March 1993, a group of eight schoolchildren, aged 16 - 17yrs, and their teacher from Southway Community College, Plymouth were accompanied by two instructors from St Albans Outdoor Centre on a kayak trip across Lyme Bay, in red Mirage Scout Kayaks. It was a sunny Sunday morning when the group set out. The party consisted of eight teenagers and two trainee instructors; a young man and a young woman. The instructors were later to be discovered to have had very minimal training [1] and had only recently started in the sport themselves. Although the party intended to cross an open stretch of tidal water they had not informed the coastguard. Joe Stoddart, the adventure centre manager, became worried about the group and the time they were taking, but did not inform the authorities about the missing party. Instead, he waited two hours, while trying to conduct a search from the cliff tops using his car. Eventually he gave this up and went out in his boat to try to find the group, all the while failing to inform the authorities.

At 2.43 pm a local fisherman found an empty kayak floating about 2.5 miles (4.0 km) south east of Lyme Regis. He radioed the Weymouth coastguard who scrambled a Sea King helicopter, from Portland. At 4:11 pm the Lyme Regis Lifeboat launched. The first rescues of the group's teacher and their young male instructor was made at 5:38 pm. During the period of 5.43pm to 6.40 pm, helicopters picked up the rest of the surviving students and the female instructor. Before the lifeboats and helicopters were scrambled, the coastguard phoned around to see if he could find out if anyone was missing a kayak. He pointed out that if the boat had had some identifying features such as a name, adventure centre name, phone number on it, then the whole process would have been easier. So initially the response was to send out lookouts to prominent cliff tops to see if anything or anyone could be spotted. If they had been kept informed of the activities, they would have acted differently and very much more quickly.[2]

As a result of a series of errors and circumstances, four of the teenagers drowned. The party had run into difficulties straight away as one kayak became swamped. The group was swept out to sea, where all their kayaks were quickly swamped.[3] Simon Dunne helped to keep the spirits of the group up by singing songs and being encouraging, while they tried to survive by huddling round the one remaining upright boat.[2]

This area of coast is known for a strong funnelling off-shore wind, particularly at the time of year of the trip. Stoddart had trained the two instructors just prior to them taking their first group of young people, this one. They had been given rudimentary instruction in an outdoor pool. The two passed their one start performance test just prior to taking on this post. Mirage boats are not suitable craft for doing this type of crossing and the members of the party were so inexperienced as to not be able to use spray decks. The two 'instructors' had spray decks. The kayak which became swamped did so due to a wave hitting it and the water getting in via the cockpit. As these were closed deck kayaks, the water was now trapped inside the boat, making it unstable. As the instructors were not trained in deep water rescues nor in putting students back into boats, once the first capsize happened they were at a loss over what to do. The boats were rafted up. the student with the swamped boat was put back in but the boat was not emptied, other than by trying to scoop the water out. The Charmouth Funnel wind began to push the raft out to sea as the line of bodies acted like a sail. [2] As the group got further out the waves increased in height and caused further boats to become swamped. Early boats, such as these, did not come fitted with air bags to maintain their buoyancy and to stop them filling with water. Some of them did not even benefit from closed cell foam blocks. Once the boats filled with water they began to sink. The students were left in the water with only their personal floatation devices and inadequate personal clothing for the prevailing conditions and the sea temperature.

The delayed response, due to the lack of information provided by the centre manager, the inadequate information on the boats and the delay by the manager in reporting his lost group may all have contributed to 3 students dying from hypothermia before rescuers managed to get them into hospital, and another dying later.[4]

A local coach, who was qualified to run such a trip, is quoted as saying that he would not have run the trip unless all the participants had their three star in personal performance, let alone the instructors. British Canoeing (BCU as it was then) stated that the minimum leadership skills for a leader on that trip would be Senior Sea Kayak Instructor, which is a qualification which takes a minimum of one year to achieve once the Kayaker has achieved a 3 start in personal performance, which could take another two years on top.

The subsequent investigation resulted in the prosecution of the parent company and the centre manager. The owner of the activity centre was convicted of gross negligence manslaughter over the deaths. This was the only successful conviction involving a corporation for this offence[5] in the UK. The owner was jailed for four years, but his sentence was cut to two years on appeal.

This incident accelerated governmental discussions to end self-regulation of outdoor education centres. The Activity Centres (Young Persons’ Safety) Act 1995, introduced by Labour MP David Jamieson was passed through Parliament in January 1995[6] and an independent licensing authority, the Adventure Activities Licensing Authority (AALA) was formed, funded by the Department of Education and Employment (DFE) and under the guidance of the Health and Safety Executive.[7]

• Cairngorm Plateau disaster