Ex-lover told to turn autopilot off: Trial
Not trained on switch, court told
The order to switch to manual steering came about the same time Karen Briker first noticed treetops outside a window where there should only have been water.
The Queen of the North passenger ferry and its 101 passengers and crew were quickly approaching Gil Island, a remote mass of land off B.C’s northern coast that would soon be ripping into the ship’s hull.
Navigating officer Karl Lilgert shouted at Briker, his former lover, to switch off the autopilot so he could take the wheel and turn the ship, Briker told Lilgert’s criminal negligence trial, but it was no use.
Briker, who became a deckhand only the previous year and hadn’t been on the Queen of the North’s bridge since then, did not know how to operate the switch.
She testified Tuesday at Lilgert’s trial in B.C. Supreme Court that she was never trained to operate the switch.
“You felt — and I suggest wrongly — that the delay may have resulted in the accident?” asked Glen Orris, Lilgert’s lawyer.
“Yes,” replied Briker, 47, during her second day of testimony.
“But you had never been shown or told how to do that?” Orris continued. “As a quartermaster, you were never required to switch the autopilot to manual?” “Correct,” replied Briker. Lilgert switched the autopilot himself as Briker left to get the ship’s captain. At some point after that — it’s not exactly clear how long after — the ship struck the island. The ferry eventually sank. Passengers Gerald Foisy and Shirley Rosette were never seen again and were presumed drowned.
Lilgert has pleaded not guilty to two counts of criminal negligence causing death.
Lilgert and Briker were alone on the bridge. The pair were former lovers, with Briker having ended their affair earlier that month, and they were working alone together for the first time since the breakup.
Briker said everything appeared normal until Lilgert ordered a significant course alteration on the autopilot system. Once the trees appeared, Lilgert ordered Briker to switch off the autopilot.
The ferry had recently returned from upgrades, including changes to its autopilot system, and the sailing was Briker’s first time working on the bridge of that ship in almost a year. She was a casual employee and said she had received only about a half-hour of training on the old autopilot system the previous year.
Even then, a quartermaster’s job is to plug headings into the autopilot system, not turn it on and off.
The procedure in place at the time was to have the quartermaster at the wheel while the officer on the bridge changed the autopilot setting.