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Editor: Rod Sullivan
Profession: Maritime Attorney

Category: Safety at Sea

The "Free Surface Effect" and overloading may have caused the sinking of the tour boat Ethan Allen on October 22nd, 2005.

On Friday, June 30, 2006 at 12:00 the NTSB issued 3000 pages of raw data explaining the investigation they have undertaken into the sinking of the Saratoga based tour boat on Lake George in which 48 people were thrown into the water, 20 of whom died. Most of the deceased were elderly tourists from Ohio and Michigan.

While the data included no conclusions, it tended to indicated that the Ethan Allen was overloaded when it capsized and that a malfunctioning water pump may have allowed the boat bottom to fill with water. The presence of water in the bilge of a boat can cause something called the free surface effect.

Free surface effect was also implicated in the sinking of the Al-Salam Boccaccio in the Red Sea in February, 2006.