THE crew of the flooded 14,000-TEU Emma Maersk received high praise from the Danish Maritime Accident Investigation Board (DMAIB) for their "swift decisions and rapid actions" that prevented the incident from getting worse.

But the DMAIB also pointed to several structural shortcomings in the vessel itself, once the largest containership in the world, reported Lloyd's List.

The ship was south of the Suez Canal in February when a failure of a Rolls-Royce stern thruster led to its housing tunnel being breached and flooded, said the report.

The crew found that when the watertight doors leading from the tunnel into the engineroom were closed, they were unable to withstand the water pressure, which caused engineroom to flood.

The flooding made it likely the ship would suffer a complete blackout, which would hamper use of mooring winches controls to the ship's anchors, giving the crew a short time to get the vessel alongside the Suez Canal Container Terminal.

The crew in the engine control room and on the bridge were distracted by the high number of alarms that sounded and radio traffic in Arabic between the pilot tugs and shore authorities.

The vessel's loading computer was unable to make stability calculations when the vessel was flooded and after it was brought alongside, Maersk Line decided to keep water in the engineroom to prevent corrosion of the machinery.

While another Rolls-Royce probe continues into the design of the thrusters and their housing, it is understood that fatigue in the blades and supports led the forward thrusters to fail.

This then led to a fracture of the transverse thruster tube and uncontrollable flooding. The report also reveals that the other stern thruster had a blade replaced last year showed similar fatigue.