And the reality, he says, can be far worse than many might have imagined:“In many cases there is extensive damage to the civil engineering installation such as damaged crane beams, rails and also damage to the supportive piles to the underside of the quay,”he says.

Mr Gibbons, senior consultant at Specialist Crane Services, has seen it all. He has been in the crane industry for 35 years and works with all of the large P&I clubs, in particular dealing with claims.

“The implications are considerable and in general the physical damage to and/or loss of the crane are the least of the terminal’s worries,” he says.“In general, the small terminals use two cranes per berth/vessel.

The major terminals use five or six cranes to serve a very large vessel and their contracts generally are to remove/load a certain number of boxes per hour to achieve the shortest possible stay. It is not beyond the bounds of reason that a big terminal handling the biggest ships could have a contract to unload, say, 300 containers per hour at £100/lift, which is a loss of use figure of £30,000/hour if a crane is seriously damaged or destroyed and the berth is seriously disrupted.”

Most facilities can live with the loss of or serious damage to a crane at one end or the other but when you lose one further down the chain you have the possibility of losing the use of two or more cranes, and the associated berth lengths, he points out.

One might suggest that vessels crashing into the quay crane or weather damage are beyond a port’s control.Not so,says Mr Gibbons.“In every case,whether the damage is vessel-related or weather-related,almost all of the damage can be attributed to the failure of some human being to do their job properly.The errors are not limited to the drivers and the blue collar staff – the white collar staff are as much to blame and probably more.” Among the key points on Mr Gibbons’ potential “risk list”:

● Senior management buying the cheapest possible crane from unsuitable crane manufacturers that are allowed to fit the cheapest, least appropriate equipment, tied up with the most complicated contracts that shift the onus on to the manufacturer.

● Operations staff not allowing practical time and availability for maintenance work to be carried out effectively, or putting the cranes in inappropriate locations just to “get them out of the way”.

● Failure to enforce the mooring policy.

● Pilots giving advice to masters but not taking responsibility if something goes wrong.

●Tugmasters being asked to “push” a vessel alongside do not attach a line, but if circumstances change and the vessel gets hit by the swell or an onshore wind, they cannot keep control of the vessel.

●The pollution risks and the possibility of very high fines through regulations on ballast water discharge in port prompt masters to discharge the ballast deepsea and come alongside “barely able to make way or steer because their rudders and propellers are half out of the water”.

Frequently, says Mr Gibbons, crane knockdowns are the result of a collection of misfortunes.He quotes one incident, in which there were five fatalities.A crane due to undergo a major refurbishment was moved to the end of the quay,boom lowered,and crane fixed in place with new rail clamps. This secured for the contractor complete freedom to access all parts of the crane and an uninterrupted upgrade contract – an unusually good result from the contractor’s point of view.

Next, a master heading into port discharged ballast water out at sea, so the vessel came in “like a coke can, bobbing on the water”.The wind caught the vessel and the vessel ran into the crane – with boom down – and knocked it over.

“If the captain had had ballast and was able to steer and make way, or if the boom had not been down, or if the crane had not had new effective rail clamps to stop it moving,the story would have been different,”says Mr Gibbons.“Everybody was doing what they were paid to do, so from their point of view they were doing everything right. But it was the combination of factors. “People don’t look at it in the round; they don’t understand the risks.”

Mr Gibbons says a religiously adhered-to mooring policy is critical.

“If possible,move the cranes out of the way – if the berth is long enough, move the cranes out of the way to each end clear of the berth. Where this is not possible, the cranes should be grouped together in the centre of the berth where the ship is parallel. The vast majority of the crane damage around the world results from the vessel losing control and the bow and/or stern flares overlapping the edge and making contact with the legs of the crane.

“The boom should always be up during berthing/unberthing, except when the cranes are protected by a vessel they are already working. And finally, there should be no personnel on the crane.”