154 Rescued after Antarctic Cruise Ship Hits Ice

IHT

Toronto, Nov 24: A small, historic cruise ship with an imperfect security record was listing dangerously after it struck ice in Antarctic waters today, with 154 passengers and crew members evacuated in a flotilla of lifeboats and inflatable boats, the cruise operator and coast guards said.

Late into the day, the small red and white ship - named the Explorer but known affectionately as "the little red ship" - was listing dangerously to starboard in steely gray waters below a low sky. The vessel - on an expedition to trace the doomed route of the explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton - sent out a distress signal in the middle of the night (5:24 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time) after it began to take in water through "a fist-sized hole," said Dan Brown, a spokesman for G.A.P. Adventures, the Toronto-based tour operator that owns and operates the ship. He said the "running assumption" is that it hit an iceberg. Water began to trickle into a cabin and eventually flooded the engine room, causing the ship to lose power.

The accident occurred well north of the Antarctic Circle in an island chain that is part of the Antarctic peninsula, which juts close to South America and has seen sharp warming of temperatures in recent years.

As the satellite distress signal was being picked up by coast guard stations in Britain; Norfolk, Va.; and Ushuaia, Argentina, the ship's 100 passengers - 14 of them American, 24 British, 17 Dutch, 12 Canadian and a smattering of other nationalities- were awakened and told to don warm clothes and life preservers, said Mark Clark, a spokesman for Britain's Maritime and Coastguard Agency, which was one of the first authorities to receive the distress signal. They clambered down ladders on the ship's side to board lifeboats.

Clark said they were taken aboard a small research vessel, the National Geographic Endeavour, that was nearby, before they were transferred to a Norwegian cruise liner, the Nordnorge. But Brown said open lifeboats bobbed in the frigid waters for four hours before the Nordnorge could help them. Jon Bowermaster, a travel writer and filmmaker who was lecturing on the National Geographic Endeavour, said by satellite phone: "We arrived just exactly alongside the Nordnorge. There was a long line of black rubber Zodiac boats and a handful of orange lifeboats strung out and it was very surreal because it was a very beautiful morning with the sun glistening off the relatively calm sea. And all you could think was how relieved these people must have been when they saw these two big ships coming over the horizon. They'd been in the lifeboats around four hours, but cold. The water temperature is not quite freezing and wind chills in the 20s, Fahrenheit." Passengers on the Endeavour prepared hot tea and gathered blankets, and a section of the ship was dedicated to emergency medical care. Luckily, there were no emergency cases.

In February 1972, the Explorer, then operating for a Norwegian line as the Lindblad Explorer, ran aground close to the same spot, in similar circumstances. Amid the heaving seas, all her passengers then - mostly Americans - had to be rescued by the Chilean Navy.

On Friday, it was not immediately possible to reach the Explorer's passengers, who had paid somewhere between $8,700 and $16,700 for the 18-day adventure expedition. Brown said they were being taken to King George Island in Antarctica. He said there was confusion about where exactly they would be taken from there.

"The Chileans think they are taking them to Chile, the Argentinians think they are taking them to Argentina and the Brits are talking about taking the British passengers to the Falklands," he said.

The Chilean authorities said the passengers were being taken to the Chilean Air Force base on King George Island, the President Eduardo Frei Montalva Base, and later the commander of the base was quoted as saying that the Norwegian ship had arrived at the shore of the base around midday, but the passengers had not been able to disembark due to bad weather conditions.

Brown said the company had not yet been able to speak to anyone on board, but some radio stations had managed to speak to the captain of the Nordnorge, and he had reported that "everyone is healthy, uninjured and comfortable," Brown said. Their families are in the process of being notified about the accident, he said.

According to the BBC, First Officer Peter Svensson told Reuters: "We were passing through ice as usual. But this time something hit the hold and we got a little leakage downstairs.

Related reports from agencies:

More than 150 passengers and crew were rescued after an expedition cruise ship struck what is believed to be an iceberg and threatened to sink in the Southern Ocean 700 miles south-east of Cape Horn yesterday.

Twenty-three British holidaymakers, who paid up to £4,500 each in the hope of enjoying the splendour of a southern polar summer, were among those ordered to don lifejackets and climb aboard liferafts before taking to the open sea to be transferred to another vessel. No one was injured in the operation, which was co-ordinated by the US naval base at Norfolk, Virginia, almost 8,000 miles (13,000km) away.

The drama began in sub-zero temperatures in the Bransfield Strait off King George Island, Antarctica, at 5.24am yesterday. The MV Explorer, the first passenger ship to navigate the North-West Passage in 1984, had been chartered by a Canadian travel company.

It began taking on water and was soon listing at a 20-degree angle. Despite efforts to pump out the icy water, the order to abandon ship came nearly two hours of the first distress signal.

The ship was almost on its side last night, as the rescue ship carrying the 154 off-loaded people reached the South Shetland Islands, about 70 miles (110km) from the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. The islands, about 1,800 miles from the South Pole, support a handful of research stations and are part of British Antarctic Territory, although they are also claimed by Argentina and Chile.

Arnvid Hansen, captain of the Norwegian cruise ship NordNorge, which picked up the passengers, said all were safe. They had been billeted in the ship's premier lounge, where they were able to dry their clothes and were being served hot food. "All are aboard my vessel. There are no afraid passengers or anything like that," he said. "Some are cold but none has hypothermia. We are giving them as many clothes as we can."

Alongside the rescued Britons were four Irish, 14 Americans, 12 Canadians and 10 Australians as well as Dutch, Japanese and Argentinian tourists.

Susan Hayes, of the Toronto-based travel group Gap Adventures, described how icy water began gushing into the vessel after a cabin was pierced by ice and a fist-sized hole opened up. "The ship was travelling out of Ushuaia in Argentina, travelling southbound to Antarctica. Off King George Island it hit ice and began taking on water," she said.

Antarctic tourism has become popular as environmental awareness has grown and interest has soared in the scenery and wildlife of the poles. The number of cruise ships operating in Antartica has grown dramatically, with 52 expected at Ushuaia during the current October-April high season.

Visiting the poles is risky. In January, 300 passengers were rescued after a ship ran aground in Antarctica. In August, 17 UK tourists were injured, three seriously, when a glacier sent ice crashing on to the deck of a luxury cruise ship off Svalbard in the Arctic.

The 2,400-ton MV Explorer set out on 11 November for a 19-day trip through the Drake Passage. The sea between the tip of South America and Antarctica was named after Francis Drake, even though he sailed through the less treacherous Magellan Straits, in 1577.

The Hampshire-based adventure company Explore said 14 of its clients were on the vessel and were taking part in the Spirit of Shackleton tour. Ashley Toft, of Explore, said: "Our major concern is with our customers. While such incidents are very rare, they are nevertheless shocking."

Ernest Shackleton led an Antarctic expedition in 1915 when his ship, Endurance, was crushed by ice and he made a heroic escape to the South Georgia islands.

Environmental campaigners have long complained about the growth in tourist numbers polluting the once pristine expanses of the world's last great wilderness, Antarctica.

But for a group of hapless adventurers bobbing around in lifeboats, buffetted by a freezing Antarctic wind as their cruise ship lurched lower in the water, it was the busy tourist traffic through the Southern Ocean that ultimately saved them.

Last night, the group were recovering aboard a Norwegian tourist vessel which also happened to be cruising through the area, reflecting on an ordeal which demonstrated that more than 90 years after the Titanic, icebergs still sink ships.

The drama began just before 1am. As the cruise ship Explorer was picking its way through the Antarctic sea ice, it hit what experts believe was a "growler" - a huge iceberg shorn from the Antarctic ice shelf. Despite being built to withstand such conditions the impact caused a hole in the hull and Explorer began taking on water. An emergency operation swung into action and as temperatures dipped below -5C (23F) the 100 passengers and 54 crew abandoned ship and took to the sea in small open top lifeboats.

For the next four hours - as they watched Explorer sink - they waited for someone to come to their aid.

Eventually, the Norwegian cruiser NordNorge appeared. Captain Arnvid Hansen said that although the passengers in the lifeboats were in good spirits when he arrived, they were cold and hungry.

"It was no problem to get them on board. They were picked up from the lifeboats ... and this operation took around one hour," he said.

Speaking yesterday afternoon he added: "They are in our premier lounge now having warm food and drying their clothes on board. Some are cold but none has hypothermia. We are giving them as many clothes as we can."

Hansen said he was planning to head for King George Island where he hoped all the passengers would be able to land.

Among those rescued were 24 people from the UK. They had been taking part in a 19-day tour, starting from the port of Ushuaia on the southern tip of Argentina and including the Falkland Islands and South Georgia.

John Shears, from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), said he had been a passenger on Explorer and said it was well equipped to deal with the challenging conditions in the Antarctic. "I was surprised to hear what had happened. It is ice-strengthened and designed to operate down there and it runs a good safety operation," he said.

According to climate scientists the area where Explorer ran into trouble is warming faster than any other part of the globe. This led to speculation yesterday that there had been a subsequent increase in the number of icebergs breaking away from the ice shelf making the waters increasingly dangerous for ships. But BAS scientists said there was no evidence to back up the theory. "Our information is that there was nothing out of the ordinary in the area at the time," added a spokeswoman.

Shears said there had been a huge growth in the number of tourists visiting Antarctica in the last 10 years. But he added that its popularity as a tourist destination had made the area safer. "In this instance it was other tourist boats that came to help and that was what allowed this rescue to pass off relatively smoothly," he said.

Yesterday it emerged that UK Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) inspectors had found five faults with Explorer when it docked at Greenock, Inverclyde in May. These had included missing search and rescue plans and lifeboat maintenance problems. Watertight doors were described as "not as required", and the fire safety measures also attracted criticism.

But a MCA spokesman said the problems "were not huge" adding: "[They] were all rectified before the vessel sailed. It would not have been allowed to depart if everything had not been sorted out."

A spokesman for Explorer said it had had a subsequent safety check in the US in October and been given a clean bill of health.

Explorer, built in 1969, is regarded as one of the best-known specialist cruise ships in the world.

It pioneered the tourist market for Antarctic tours and last night a spokesman for the vessel's tour company, Gap Adventures, said it had an excellent safety record.

"The M/S Explorer hit a lump of ice off King George Island this morning and the impact left the vessel with a crack in the hull the size of a fist," he added.

"All passengers and crew have been evacuated, they are all accounted for and are safe and well."

Wish you were here?

There were 6,000 visitors to Antarctica in 1992 and 30,000 in 2006/07, of which 9,693 were Americans, 4,518 British, 4,082 German, 2,756 Australian

At least 58 cruise ships from 12 countries ply the southerly tourism route with almost 300 visits a year through the November-March season

The Explorer conducted 12 trips in the 2006/07 season, ferrying almost 1,200 passengers to the Antarctic