Good morning Spo,
During the tenure of my Pilotage career I witnessed and experienced 3 aft accommodation gangway fall failures…..all three when my vessel was underway. Two of those when the gangway was being housed and the other when it was being broken out in preparation for berthing.
On all three occasions the vessel had to be stopped and held in the channel with the escort tugs whilst the gangway was retrieved with block and tackle which took anywhere between 1.5 ~2 hours.
The stevedores got wind of this and demanded that all floating gangways be rigged with a preventer system.
Quite frankly, I don’t give a damn what the SOLAS regulations say…….THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS IN THE REAL WORLD.
Nor do the SOLAS hierarchy climb Pilot ladders in the middle of the night in 5 metre seas and swell.
Edit: Some more reading for you.
