WRONG lubricating oil in a winch was to blame for an accident on board the Southampton superliner Arcadia in which an officer was hit on the head by a spinning handle.

The accident happened when a routine lifeboat recovery exercise went wrong, says the official report into the incident.

"It was found that the winch failed because the lubricating oil used was too viscous and did not match the type of oil specified by the manufacturers of the davit,'' said the Marine Accident Investigation Branch of the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions.

Arcadia's owner, P&O Cruises, is now being recommended to warn crew about the dangers of using the wrong lubricating oil in davit winches.

The MAIB said there had since been a similar incident on the cross-Channel ferry Pride of Calais. The department said other comparable incidents of inadvertent slipping were also reported on ferries Pride of Dover and Pride of Burgundy in 1991 and 1995 respectively.

"The reason for failures was the same as that found on Arcadia, wrong gearbox oil was being used in the davits,'' said a department spokesman. "As number five lifeboat was being recovered after the exercise, it lowered uncontrollably into the water still attached to the fall wires The electrical engineer was injured after this accident when the lifeboat falls were being wound back onto the drum."

The freewheel coupling and oil were changed on the winch about four months before the incident, which happened on December 9 last year in Tenerife.

Similarly, couplings and oil changes were made on seven other winches within the same period.

Following the accident, the oil in the other winches was replaced by the manufacturers specified oil.

The MAIB also recommended P&O Cruises should insist, whenever a malfunction with a lifeboat launching installation took place, any action taken was "planned and execute..''

P&O Cruises said both the MAIB recommendations were implemented immediately. A spokesman said: "This incident did not impact on the safety of the passengers or the ship. The lifeboat was launchable and the incident only occurred during a routine hoisting which we do regularly.''

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