Poor maintenance caused sinkings

The amphibious yellow Duck boats that sank in Liverpool and the Thames suffered from poor maintenance a report has discovered.

The old World War Two boats were used to carry passengers, with two sinking in Salthouse Dock in Liverpool (Duckmarine sinks again) and two in the Thames, (London Duck tours suspended) Keith Gudgin reports.

Jumping into river

In all the sinkings passengers were aboard the boats and had to be rescued, in one event in Liverpool a narrowboat coming to the rescue and its crew pulling people out of the water, as pictured. One that sank in the Thames caught fire, pictured below, with its passengers jumping into the river to escape the flames. But very luckily no one was either drowned or seriously injured in any of the sinkings.

A report by the the Marine Accident Investigation Branch highlighted poor maintenance and a failure to meet standards, with the report stating investigators found that the Ducks did not have the quantity of buoyancy foam required to provide the 'mandated level of residual buoyancy'.

Over 20,000 produced

The Duck is a six wheeled drive amphibious landing craft first made in America during World War Two to transport men and equipment ashore on beaches, with over 20,000 being produced.

Many were used in the D-day landings, and remained in service with the British and other armies into the 1970s.

They were used as trip boats at many seaside resorts, working from the beaches and in rivers, but some were obviously poorly maintained, with the resulting sinkings.