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From The Times

November 24, 2007

Iceberg blamed as passengers flee holed ship in icy waters

Passengers of the MS Explorer cruise ship arrive by lifeboat at Fildes bay on King George Island

Will Pavia, Hannah Strange and James Bone

The growth of 'adventure cruising'

They had paid more than £4,000 each for an adventure in the Antarctic Ocean. Last night the 24 Britons who had kept their spirits up by telling Titanic jokes as they drifted for hours in icy waters must have felt that they had got their money’s worth.

The ship on which they were awoken by a loud bang soon after midnight became the focus of a huge rescue operation off King George Island involving the Chilean Navy and coastguards from Argentina, Britain and America.

With 67 fellow passengers, nine “expedition staff” and the 54 crew on board the stricken MV Explorer, they had been hustled into lifeboats at the crack of the polar dawn to float on a freezing sea beside the iceberg that crippled their vessel. Hours later, the abandoned cruise liner sank.

The passengers and crew were picked up by a Norwegian cruise liner five hours later. A minor international wrangle followed over whose base on King George Island should have the honour of receiving them. King George Island, the largest of the South Shetland Islands, is disputed territory. The Chilean Navy wanted them to be transferred to Chile and the Argentine contingent thought that they should go to Argentina, where the cruise began on November 11.

Safe and snug in the gym of the Chilean base on the island, Bob Flood, a British member of the expedition team on board the Explorer, recalled the ordeal. “After midnight we were going through a lot of ice,” Mr Flood, from the Isles of Scilly, told The Times. “There was a lot of crunching. It did not seem to be anything out of the ordinary, but there was one big bang. A passenger shortly after reported water on the lower decks.”

As the ship began listing, passengers were called to the muster station at about 1am. “Then the electricity cut out and we lost the engine,” Mr Flood went on. “At that time a large iceberg came and lodged itself on the starboard side of the boat. That would have prevented us launching the life boats. At 3 o’clock an order was given to abandon ship. A general Mayday went out.”

No one panicked, and the passengers were in high spirits. “We knew there were ships not too far off,” Mr Flood said. “There was a lot of joke-telling. It’s the most bizarre thing that people tell Titanic jokes.”

Andrea Salas, 38, a crew member, told a radio station in Argentina: “I was in the bar after midnight, with my colleagues and some passengers, when I saw people from the lower cabins, wet and shouting, ‘There’s water’.”

There was a hole “about the size of a fist” and a crack in the hull, GAP Adventures, the tour operator, said yesterday. Ms Salas escaped in a lifeboat. She said: “There was wind and it was very cold, and we were wet because of the waves.”

They were expected to spend the weekend in corrugated-iron cabins at the Chilean Eduardo Frei Montalva airforce base and the neighbouring Professor Julio Escudero Research Station. The 91 passengers had begun their “adventure travel experience” from Ushuaia on the southern tip of Argentina. Fourteen had booked a Spirit of Shackleton tour through the British travel company Explore; the remainder were customers of the Canadian company GAP Adventures. The 2,398-tonne Explorer, the “little red ship” famed as the first cruise ship designed for the fledgeling Antarctic tourist industry, was built in 1969 in a Finnish shipyard by the pioneering tour operator Lars-Eric Lindblad. Equipped with an ice-resistant double hull, she was the first passenger ship to travel unescorted through the Northwest Passage and was billed by GAP Adventures as “the go-anywhere ship for the go-anywhere traveller”. The Explorer had headed south for the Antarctic Peninsula to explore the Southern Shetland Islands and cruise through fields of floating ice.

Graham Hockley, of the Institute of Marine Engineering, Science and Technology, said: “The ship is relatively small compared with the potential size of an iceberg. The top of the iceberg may be 50 metres away but it may have a second false summit under the water. If the ship strikes a point on the iceberg at a right angle, the force can be concentrated into a small area and puncture the hull.”

The Explorer’s search and rescue co-operation plans were held by British coastguards at Falmouth. At 5.30am the nightwatch officer in Cornwall received a phone call from coastguards in Norfolk, Virginia. A large Norwegian cruise liner, the Nordnorge, was deemed the most suitable to go to the cruise ship’s aid. Captain Arnvid Hanson said that it took five hours to reach the stricken cruiser, by which time she was listing at 23 to 25 degrees. He said that all the passengers were fit and well.

Isn't a serious problem that with the growing number of ships going to Antarctica to exploit the popularity operators are using Captains inexperienced in the geographical territory so not used to what to do? They may know the Arctic but conditions in Antarctica are quite different. It is unbelievable that a modern ship could hit an iceberg. And I can only see more ships having problems as witnessed by the Fram incident.
The governments should act before it is too late

An ex-Explorer passenger, Colchester, UK

While it is of great consolation that everyone got off the boat safely, GAP head office have been next to useless at looking after all those due on the shipÂ´s next trip. Litigation will follow from alot of unhappy customers.

temporary ushuaia resident, uk,

As the inventor ( now retired) of 'SUBRELLA' a device designed to rapidly cover holes in ships below the below the water line, I am continually amazed that after all my efforts for over 30 years to get this device accepted as a serious item of maritime safety equipment, ships are still getting holed and sinking!
Just what does it take to get things accepted?

Barry Simpson, Banbury, Oxon

I understand that the mission of this ship was designed to take enviro whackos on a global warming fact finding escapade.
Kind of ironic that the ship is now a Giant carbon footprint on the bottom of the ocean with 48,000 gallons of diesel fuel on board!
And the cruise operator is a buddy of algore....too funny!

bobby walker, Eugene, Oregon

There were not just Britons on board... Typical of British media to always give a British slant on topics...

Nathalie H, Manchester, UK

Passenger ships are built to sink upright, which is why lifeboat capacity is the total of port and starboard boats, whereas on cargo ships you have to have full capacity on each side, in case the vessel lists and you can only get boats away on one side.
This vessel looks like she is listing heavily to starboard, and I look forward to the enquiry as to why that is. Well done to the Master and crew for getting all the passengers off safely. Lucky the weather was good, seas look practically calm..getting off in high winds and swell and listing like that, doesn't bear thinking about!

Ian Smith (Master Mariner), Sotogrande, Spain

I see you list 100 passengers' nationalities. What about the crew? Or don't they count in your minds? They are the ones who would have had to ensure the safe disembarkation of the passengers, before they could do so themselves.

Ann, Leeds, West Yorkshire

I'm sure all Times readers were given prority on the lifeboats, so there was nothing for you to worry about.

MP, London, UK

A very sad photo indeed. 'Lindblad Explorer' was, if not a pioneer in high latitude cruising using small vessels, the leader in a new generation of such ships. Among the pioneers in the Arctic were Bergenske's 'Pallas' and Vesteraalske's 'Lofoten' and 'Andenaes', in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I only saw 'LE' once. off Trondheim, while southbound from Svalbard on board Nordenfjeldske's 'Harald Jarl', of similar size. Questions remain to be answered here. The ship was abandoned around five hours after being holed. The severe list developed afterwards (otherwise lifeboat launching would have been difficult or impossible). Were the pumps simply switched off, having performed well during that binitial period? Was there a mechanical breakdown? Or did the hole, reportedly ONLY as big as a fist, provoke structural failure in the hull plating, and suddenly increase in size. Any answers from those involved?

MIKE BENT, UVIEU, SPAIN

Rcottrell, Padova Italia, Italia tells us that British journalism is wretched and explains that people should be employed who remember theorems about displacement of objects in water. This is just after he has told us that the greatest mass of an iceberg is made up of air. How long before they become a hazard to aircraft?

Perhaps the journalists are writing at an appropriate level to suit their readers.

M Arnold, Nuneaton, UK

this is like a second titanic!!!

rich, lancashire,

Nothing like a real taste of adventure!

Rosemary, London,UK,

""Iceberg blamed" ............. holing ship....
Naughty iceberg!!

mike, oxford, UK"

Isn't this a little unfair on icebergs which are, let's face it, a fast disappearing species.
There it was minding it's own business, just floating along like you do, when a ship of gawking tourists come to point and stare at it.
Aggressive behaviour at best.
What do you expect an iceberg to do?
Let's have a bit of compassion here.

Steve, Hebden Bridge, UK

I'm not sure how the crew could be certain it was only one fist-sized hole. But one issue is whether watertight compartments were secure or open when the collision happened. Crews tend to prefer to have them open to allow easy access through the ship. That might be a factor the enquiry will consider. One fist-sized hole should not sink a ship if it is properly secured.

Alan Boswell, Chelmsford,

It appears that the passengers had been properly taken through the emergency drills .Hence the saving of all their lives. It was not so onboard the cruise ship in which I was a passenger earlier this month. The Lifeboat Drill in the Bahamas was carried out when the ship was in port and many passengers who had joined that day were ashore.So some never carried out this vital exercise.
Furthermore the passengers were never taken out to their lifeboat being merely counted at their muster station.

Michael Boyd-Carpenter, Creyssac, France

In WW2 they kept ships afloat which had been torpedoed.
An explosion makes a much bigger hole than the basketball size one that sank this double hulled ship.
Some explanation is necessary here. An adventure for the trippers but a disaster for the environment
By the way it was a Finnish built ship and they don't make rubbish here

magellan, turku, finland

I seem to recall that US Navy and other vessels carry timbers and some steel plates and similar supplies for fixing breaches that are fixable. It seems that a "fist sized hole" would be of a fixable size. Is it known whether the deck with the hole was underwater before the crew could do emergency,repairs, or that there were no repair materials at hand? Hope we learn the answers as the inquiry proceeds.
Also, have captain and OIC on the bridge been taken into custody by any governmental authority?

H Abrams, Tallahassee, FL;USA

But was a clunking fist?

Hugh Bartholomew, Thornton, UK

Confronting danger, the ship was fragile, but not the willing of those adventurers.

Helen, Shanghai , China

Bloody Hell Leslie Hewett... how big is your fist?

Drew, Leeds,

...Thanks to the perfect 'eyes' of norway crew!...it'll be possible another Titanic...the principal fact is that this ship haven't the necessary safety requirements for cruise..!...in our society the $$ and Â£Â£ are over the human lifes...sigh..

Stefano, FVG, Italy

stefano, pn, italy

I was on a great cruise with the Explorer in March 2005. The ship weathered two hurricanes extemely well. Thick pack ice did present the ships engines with two much of a problem and we had to turn back at 64 deg S.

The ships condition was excellent. The passengers were trained well in emergency procedures before we even entered the Drake Passage. The crew, both officers and men, appeared to be well trained. The service on board was excellent. The food - even in the storms was first class.

All in all they provided us with an excellent trip. Five stars in extreme conditions.

I was planning a second trip with the Explorer in the near future.

It is a great loss and a sad day.

Alistair Hill, Hildesheim, Germany

alistair hill, hildesheim, germany

Seems a bit clumsy to me, agree with the above post. Avoiding icebergs in Antarctica is a fairly straightforward case of being vigilant at all times.

Paul Ward, St. Neots, Cambridgeshire, UK

Note that this is the Nordnorge's 2nd Antarctic rescue mission this year. Back in January, she picked up the passengers from the Nordkapp which gashed herself on a well known submerged rock at the entrace to the caldera of Deception Island, also in the South Shetlands. Me I'm going back again at Xmas but on the Sergey Vavilov, one time Russian spy ship, built for spying in polar waters and now converted for cruising.

David Oates, Cardiff,

Let's not jump to conclusions about why this inexplicable accident occurred and wait for the official Investigation.

I did an 18 day Antarctic Cruise on a similar but slightly larger ship the World Discoverer in December 1997. I never felt endangered even when we were in remote locations like South Georgia or The South Orkney Islands with no other ships likely to be only a couple of hours steaming distance away.

This is the second accident this year involving a cruise ship in Antarctica, the first being when ms Nordkapp "hit a rock" entering Neptune's Bellows at Deception Island in January, another accident that should not happen as the dangers of this entrance are well documented and charted.

Luckily both accidents happened when the MS NorgeNorge was close by to take off the passengers and crew. Perhaps Antractic Crusing has become safer with more (and much larger) ships operating in the area, or our the operators taking too many risks to meet the expectations of tourists?

Dr John H. Youle , Munich, Germany

"Iceberg blamed" ............. holing ship....
Naughty iceberg!!

mike, oxford, UK

I enjoyed an expedition cruise to Antarctica and South Georgia in the Marco Polo, which was the trip of a lifetime, and I would return again and again. It is the most exciting and stimulating experience, anyone can enjoy. The knowledge of the crews in these waters, their expertise in handling passengers in all situations is admirable. Please do not let this unfortunate incident put anyone off going there. I promise you it will be the best trip you can ever make.

Gwenda Evans, Chislehurst, Kent. UK

Explorer had a double bottom, not a double hull. Crew was "in the bar" when passengers, not crew, discovered water on lower decks. Hull must have been breached at least two decks above the bilges.
Icebergs are easily detected by sonar which is the principal reason that ships hardly ever strike one. Apparently, crew wasn't watching sonar or anything else for that matter.
M/V Explorer deserved an adequate crewing but didn't get one.
Too bad.

silverpelicanfeather, Saint Augustine, FL, USA

Does double hulled mean they don't bother with pressure bulkheads? This ship should have survived such a small hole. Perhaps there's more to the story yet.

David Smith, Stourbridge, UK

As a life-long mariner (navy, merchant marine and ocean sailiing), I cannot understand how a ship built for Arctic and Antarctic conditions could be in danger of sinking due to a 4 inch by 10 inch hole in the hull.
Is this fact, or is it part of the pervasive deception which is sweeping our world?

Leslie Hewett, California, Maryland

The ship may have hit an iceberg on the surface but it is scientifically impossible for an iceberg, the greatest mass of which is air, to be totally submerged. This is why icebergs - all icebergs, without exception, float on the surface of the ocean.
It may be necessary to look for another submerged mass with which this vessel collided and it is likely to be a submarine or some other man made object.
In the meantime, why do you not employ who could remember some theorems known as displacement of objects in water, which are about two thousand years old. British journalism is wretched.

Rcottrell, Padova Italia, Italia

Brilliant!!! - the adventure minded individuals who booked this cruise weren't expecting a real-life adventure of this scale, but what a story to be involved with. They'll be telling their tale around many a campfire for sure! Must check out the GAP Adventure/Explore websites soon!

David, Plymouth, UK

Passenger ships are designed to stay upright as they sink, hence they only need lifeboat capacity for half the passengers and crew on each side, so I'm wondering why she listed so badly. Lucky there were not high winds and heavy swell, or I think the outcome would have been far more serious. Well done to the Master and his crew and I salute his courage with his First Officer for remaining on board in the best maritime traditions. I hope they get off safely as she is clearly going to sink. That means heavy fuel and diesel oil in a sensitive area..no doubt the enquiry will order new regulations ref iceberg areas and that may not be too soon.

Ian Smith, Sotogrande, Spain

Real lucky the weather was calm for the small lifeboats. But how in this day and age does a ship fail to notice and miss such an obvious hazard? And why doesn't a passenger ship operating in iceberg prone waters have the ability to seal off compartments to prevent mall hole from sinking it?

Warren, Calgary, Alberta

This ship and crew were obviously not fit for their purpose. Not only was the hull punctured by an iceberg but it is now listing dangerously letting water in through a 4 inch x 10 inch hole.
The Titanic was a disaster - this is Fawlty Tours.

G J BUNTON, SLOUGH, BERKSHIRE

Scary stuff. The first thing that would have went through every single passengers mind is... not another 'Titanic' scenario? However, with the latest hitech communications onboard, i'm sure their captain would have assured them of a quick safe rescue operation. Something that wasn't available during the real Titanic disaster.

Mohammed, London, UK

The sooner all that damn ice melts the safer the seas will be.

Cromwell, Leeds, England

I've worked in Antarctica for the past 10 years on "expedition cruise ships" as expedition staff, and just returned home from a 3 week trip to this same area in a similar ship to the Explorer. I've maintained that it is not a matter of "if", but "when" there is going to be a major catastrophe with loss of human life. The number of ships offering trips to this area has increased from roughly 10 ships 10 years ago to over 35 ships this year. With this dramatic increase in tourism in these treacherous waters, there are not enough experienced crews to operate all these ships safely in the conditions that are regularly encountered in the Drake Passage and Antarctic Peninsula. I hope this serves as a wake-up call.

Hugh Rose, Fairbanks, Alaska

The passenger paid for an adventure cruise.....they got what they paid for

SteveD, Freeport, Grand Bahama,

All the argentine's tourist are in good condition too. They've arrived in Ushuaia (Tierra del Fuego, the southest province of Argentina near Antartic continent) today.

Gustavo, Rosario, Argentina

There's been a similar accident in Spitbergen lately when British tourists wanted to see the glaciers calving: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article2231571.ece
It's high time people realized 'sightseeing' the polar regions is not a type of undemanding leisure activity...

Anna, Sopot, Poland

Its incredible that a hole 4 inches by 10 inches can sink a modern ship of 2400 tons in this day and age especially one that operates in a region known to favour icebergs

michael higgins, Stockton on tees ,

Damn cruise ships and tourists. What a waste of equipment and now it's going to spill oil. I hope they save her.

Bronco Billeaux, Banff, CA

right - this is not a 'disaster'!!!. No-one has died, no-one is injured, not much has happened. Can we get this in perspective please?

matt, london,

Has everyone forgotten Titanic??

Tony Jordan, Swanage, Dorset, UK

If that was a BBC picture I'd be wondering whether those icebergs were really there ..

G Bradley, eXETER, uk

where have we seen this before... steer clear of ice or make stronger hulls!

marco tilson, paris,