Douglas Faulkner, who died recently, had a varied and highly accomplished career as a naval and marine architect.   He was involved in the design and testing of the first British nuclear submarine, HMS Dreadnought.   He was later an assistant professor at the Royal Naval College,  a structural advisor at Bath, and appointed to the John Elder chair of naval architecture at Glasgow University.   He will be probably best  remembered, however, for his work in solving the mystery of the sinking of the MV Derbyshire, which disappeared with all hands in the Pacific September 9, 1980 during Typhoon Orchid.

Douglas Faulkner

Douglas Faulkner, who has died aged 81, was appointed as an assessor to Lord Donaldson of Lymington’s inquiry in 2000, and put forward the now widely accepted view that the ship, trapped for several hours in a severe typhoon, had encountered such exceptional waves that they broke directly on to the hatches, which were not designed to withstand such loads. Douglas’s opinion, backed by formidable research and analysis, has had a significant impact on ship design and the regulations to which naval architects must work.

Coming towards the end of a distinguished career in marine architecture, this episode encapsulated those principal elements in Douglas’s work for which he achieved international renown – his concern to find better ways of establishing the true strength and survivability of marine artefacts – ships, submersibles and offshore structures – and by also developing more scientific ways of predicting the extreme conditions to which such artefacts might be subjected, thus ensuring that the risk of loss of life and property could be made acceptably small. His 40-year output of papers and reports, and his many contributions at national and international levels, have ensured his place in the annals of marine science and technology.

Until and beyond his retirement in 1995, Douglas and his team at Glasgow made outstanding contributions to reliability-based design methods for marine structures. His early student interest in hydrodynamics was rekindled by the Derbyshire experience and led him into a study of freak waves, for which he became the senior adviser to a major collaborative European research project. The many honours and distinctions conferred on him included election in 1981 to the Royal Academy of Engineering and honorary degrees from the universities of Gdansk and Lisbon, as well as the most prestigious medals to be awarded by marine institutions in Britain and America.

Thanks to Alaric Bond for passing the news along.