Boat Accident Claims
Check if you can claim compensation
If you were hurt on a boat, a ferry, a charter trip or a jet ski, you may be able to claim. Be aware that accidents at sea do not always carry the usual three year deadline. Some are as short as two, so it is worth checking early.
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Can you make a boat accident claim?
If someone else’s carelessness caused your injury, you may be able to claim. You do not need to have been on the boat. Swimmers, paddlers and people on a pontoon or gangway are hurt by boats too, and so are passengers who never left the deck.
What “a boat accident” actually covers is much wider than it sounds, and the situations have little in common with each other legally. A ferry passenger who falls on a wet stairwell, a deckhand injured working a winch, a family on a canal boat holiday and someone thrown from a hired speedboat are four different claims against four different defendants, running under different rules. That is our problem to sort out. Yours is to tell us what happened.
You may have less time than you think
Almost everyone knows the three year rule for injury claims. Accidents on the water are the exception that catches people out, and it catches out more than a few solicitors too.
Where you were travelling as a passenger, on a ferry, a cruise, a charter or an organised boat trip, your claim may fall under international rules for carriage by sea rather than under ordinary injury law. Those rules can give as little as two years, and the courts have very little room to extend them once the time has gone. Booking it as part of a holiday package does not necessarily buy you the extra year either.
We are not saying this to alarm you. We are saying it because the fix takes one phone call and costs nothing. If your accident was more than eighteen months ago, please treat it as urgent rather than something to get round to.
Which clock is running?
Travelling as a passenger
Ferries, cruises, charters and organised trips, including small commercial craft such as a RIB excursion. Often two years rather than three, with limited scope to extend.
Two vessels collided
Where the injury arose from a collision between boats, a shorter maritime limit can apply regardless of whether you were a passenger.
Working on board
Crew, deckhands and galley staff are usually in ordinary employer liability territory, where the normal three years applies.
Jet skis and personal watercraft
These are generally treated differently from boats in law, and the ordinary three year limit is more likely to apply. Worth confirming rather than assuming.
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Children and people who lack capacity are treated differently again. Tell us the date and the type of trip and we will confirm your position.
Most boat injuries are falls, not disasters
The Marine Accident Investigation Branch recorded 1,631 reports of accidents in 2024, covering UK vessels worldwide and any vessel in UK coastal waters. That figure counts incidents involving vessels rather than injured people, which is a distinction a lot of legal websites get wrong.
Look at the injuries themselves and a clear pattern shows up. Among crew on larger merchant vessels, roughly four in ten injuries in 2024 were falls, either on the same level or to a lower one. Wet decks, moving stairwells and the gap between a boat and a pontoon do most of the damage.
That matters for your claim, because a fall is rarely bad luck. It usually traces back to a missing handrail, a surface that was never treated, a gangway rigged badly or a crossing that carried on when the forecast said it should not have.
of the 151 passengers injured at sea in 2024 suffered a fracture
Broken bones made up the overwhelming majority of passenger injuries that year, ahead of sprains, dislocations and head injuries. One of the 151 died. These are not minor incidents, and they are not rare.
Quality improvement project, William Harvey Hospital, England, February 2020 to April 2021. Published in Cureus. A single hospital’s audit, not a national figure.
How boat accidents happen
If yours is not on this list, it does not mean there is no claim. Tell us what happened and we will look at it properly.
Ferry and passenger vessels
Falls on wet stairwells and car decks, doors and ramps that close on people, injuries thrown about in heavy weather, and food or water illness on board. Ferry accident claims run against the operator and its insurer.
Boarding and gangways
The gap between the boat and the pontoon is where a surprising share of serious injuries happen. Unlit gangways, no handrail, no crew helping people across, or a vessel that moved as somebody stepped.
Speedboats, RIBs and thrill rides
Spinal and back injuries from slamming over waves at speed, passengers thrown from seats, collisions with buoys or other craft, and briefings that never warned anyone what to expect.
Canal and inland waterways
Hire boat holidays go wrong at locks, moorings and lock landings. Crush injuries between hull and wall, falls into the water while reboarding, and boats handed over with no proper instruction.
Hire craft and jet skis
Craft handed over without a safety briefing, no kill cord fitted or explained, brakes and steering never maintained, too many people on board for the seats available, or life jackets that were not provided.
Hit while in the water
Swimmers, divers, paddleboarders and kayakers struck by powered craft. Propeller injuries are severe, and the question is usually whether a proper lookout was being kept at all.
What boat accident compensation includes
Claims are valued on their own facts and outcomes vary, so nobody can tell you what yours is worth from a web page. What we can set out is what one is built from.
The injury itself
The pain, the surgery and rehabilitation, the months in a cast or a back brace, and anything you cannot do now that you could before. Assessed from medical evidence about your particular injury, using the Judicial College Guidelines.
Psychological effects count here too. People who have been in the water, or watched someone else go in, often carry that long after the physical injury has settled, and it belongs in the claim.
The money side
Earnings lost, treatment and physiotherapy paid for privately, travel to appointments, care given by family while you could not manage, and adaptations you have needed at home.
Property counts as well. Phones, glasses, cameras and clothing lost overboard or ruined are recoverable, and so is the cost of a holiday that ended in a hospital.
The same international rules that can shorten your deadline can also make your claim easier to prove. Where a passenger is injured in certain defined kinds of incident, things like a fire, a collision, a capsize or a defect in the vessel itself, the carrier can be liable without the passenger having to establish that anyone was careless.
That is a meaningful difference from an ordinary injury claim, where proving fault is usually the hard part. It does not apply to every accident on the water and there are limits on what can be recovered, so it needs checking against what actually happened to you. It is one of the first things we look at.
Not sure what your claim might involve? A free conversation will tell you more than any figure on a page.
Evidence in a boat accident claim
Almost all of it sits with the operator rather than with you, which feels like a problem and is not. Those records can be obtained through the claim. You are not expected to have kept anything.
Nobody wrote anything down at the time? More common than it should be. The Marine Accident Investigation Branch has itself reported being approached about injury claims where no record of the accident existed at all. A missing report does not end a claim, and the gap can be worth knowing about in its own right.
No Win No Fee boat accident claims
There is nothing to pay to start, and nothing to pay while the claim runs. If it does not succeed, you do not pay us for our work, subject to the terms of your agreement.
If it succeeds, a success fee comes out of your compensation. It is capped by law at 25% of certain parts of the award, and it is agreed with you in writing before anything begins. Costs such as the medical report and court fees, and the insurance that protects you if the claim fails, are explained at the same time rather than surfacing later.
Ask us about the money on the first call. It is a fair question and there is a plain answer to it.
Frequently asked questions
The things people ask us most after an accident on the water.
Who can make a boat accident claim?
Anyone injured on or around a boat because someone else fell short. That covers passengers on ferries, cruises and charters, people on hire boats and holiday craft, crew and galley staff, and swimmers, divers or paddleboarders struck by a powered vessel. You do not have to have been on board at all. You can also bring a claim for a child, or for an adult who lacks the capacity to bring one themselves.
How long do I have to make a claim?
Please do not assume three years. That is the ordinary rule for injury claims on land, and accidents at sea are the main exception to it. Where you were carried as a passenger, on a ferry, a cruise, a charter or an organised boat trip, international rules for carriage by sea may apply instead and the period can be as short as two years, with very limited scope for a court to extend it afterwards. A shorter limit can also apply where two vessels collided. Crew claims and jet ski claims are more likely to sit on the ordinary three years, and children are treated differently again. The honest answer is that it depends on facts we can establish in a few minutes on the phone, and it is worth doing that now rather than later.
My accident happened abroad or on a foreign vessel. Can I still claim?
Often, yes, and more often than people expect. Where a UK passenger booked with a UK operator, a claim can frequently be brought in the UK courts even though the accident happened in foreign waters. What decides it is usually where the operator is based, what the ticket or booking terms say, and the flag of the vessel, rather than the coordinates. Send us the booking confirmation and tell us the name of the vessel or the trip, and we will tell you where you stand before you commit to anything.
Do I have to prove the crew did something wrong?
Not always, and this is one area where the law is more helpful to passengers than most people assume. For certain defined kinds of incident, such as a fire, a collision, a capsize or a defect in the vessel itself, a carrier can be liable to a passenger without the passenger having to prove that anyone was careless. Outside those situations the usual approach applies and we build the case from the operator’s own records: the risk assessment, the maintenance history, the log and the briefing. Either way, working out which route applies is our job rather than yours.
A ferry crossing in bad weather threw me across the deck. Is that anyone's fault?
Nobody is responsible for the weather. Somebody is responsible for deciding to sail in it, and for what was done to keep passengers safe once the decision was made. The questions in a ferry accident claim are usually whether the crossing should have gone ahead on that forecast, whether passengers were warned and asked to stay seated, whether loose items and furniture were secured, and whether crew were where they should have been. All of that is answerable from the operator’s own paperwork, which is why weather is a weaker defence than it first sounds.
What should I do first after a boat accident?
Get medical attention, and get it recorded somewhere even if you feel able to carry on. After that, report it to the operator and ask for it to go in the accident book, take photographs of wherever it happened while it still looks the same, and get a first name and a contact for anyone who saw it. Keep the booking confirmation. If none of that happened because you were more concerned with getting home, that is completely normal and it does not sink the claim. Call us and we will work with what exists.
Find out if you have a claim
Tell us what happened, roughly when, and what sort of boat it was. You do not need the vessel name, the operator’s insurer or any paperwork. We will come back to you with a straight answer, including if the answer is that there is nothing worth running.
- Free, no-obligation review
- We check your time limit on the first call
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Check if you can make a claim
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Other claims we handle
If it has been a while, please do not wait any longer
People put off making a boat accident claim because the accident happened abroad, or because they were told the operator was foreign, or simply because they assumed they had three years to think about it. That last one is the costly assumption. Tell us what happened and we will give you an honest answer, free and with no obligation.
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