Lakonia (ship)
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The Lakonia was an originally Dutch passenger ship put into service in 1930 under the name Johan van Oldenbarnevelt , which served as an Allied troop transport during World War II and later made cruises to the Canary Islands for a Greek shipping company . The ship was in service for a total of 33 years. On December 22, 1963, a fire destroyed the luxury steamer, which was on a Christmas cruise to the Canary Islands. 128 passengers and crew were killed because the fire could not be controlled and the evacuation of the ship was desolate.
history
Dutch luxury steamer
The ship was built at the Nederlandse Scheepsbouw Maatschappij shipyard in Amsterdam for the Dutch shipping company Stoomvaart Maatschappij "Nederland" (internationally known as the Netherland Line ) founded in 1870 and baptized with the name Johan van Oldenbarnevelt . The godmother at the launch on August 3, 1929 was a Mrs. Tegelberg-Hooft. The Johan van Oldenbarnevelt had a sister ship , the Marnix van St. Aldegonde , which was commissioned in 1929 . The two ships were the largest ships in the Netherlands at the time and were built for passenger traffic from Amsterdam to the colonies of the Dutch East Indies .
The ship had a passenger capacity of 770 people on seven decks: 366 first class, 280 second class, 64 third class and 60 fourth class. The Johan van Oldenbarnevelt was the 89th ship on the Netherland Line. It was named after the Dutch statesman and diplomat Johan van Oldenbarnevelt (1547–1619) and was able to transport 9,000 tons of cargo in addition to passengers . On May 6, 1930, the ship left on its maiden voyage.
The steamer was designed as a luxury liner, which was reflected in its elegant equipment. The interior was designed by the painter and lithographer Carel Adolph Lion Cachet and the sculptor Lambertus Zijl. Much teak paneling , polished marble, and copper panels were used in the common rooms ; in addition, Cahet and Zijl decorated the public spaces of the ship with statues, mosaics , tapestries and chandeliers . The first-class smoking salon had ebony furniture , a glass dome and four large panoramic windows with a view of the foredeck. There were also three dining rooms, a writing and reading room, a music salon, a kindergarten and several bars. The Johan van Oldenbarnevelt had one of the first swimming pools on its sports deck that could be covered with a folding glass roof in bad weather.
Use in World War II
After the outbreak of the Second World War, the passenger ship was chartered by Holland-America Line and was from then on registered in Jakarta ( Indonesia ). It was initially used to bring cargo from Jakarta to New York .
From January 20, 1941, the Johan van Oldenbarnevelt was a troop transport and was in service with the Orient Line . The ship was converted for this purpose in the Northern Irish shipyard Harland & Wolff in Belfast . From then on, the ship was registered in Willemstad ( Curaçao ) and could transport up to 4,000 soldiers. After bringing troops to India , Singapore and Penang until the end of the war , it returned to Amsterdam on February 13, 1946. On March 11, 1946, it was returned to the Dutch government.
Between 1946 and 1950 the Johan van Oldenbarnevelt was a troop ship in Indonesia. It transported Dutch soldiers during the Indonesian independence struggle.
Australia route
In 1950 the ship returned to regular service, but from now on it was used in passenger traffic to Australia and New Zealand . She completed her first voyage on this route on September 2, 1950. The Johan van Oldenbarnevelt proved to be a complete success on this route, so that in 1951 she was completely rebuilt and modernized in a dry dock in Amsterdam. The class system of passenger accommodation was abandoned and replaced by a passenger class with space for 1,414 people. The cabins and public spaces were designed to match the luxurious ambience before the ship was used as a troop carrier. The number of lifeboats has been increased from 16 to 24.
On January 23, 1953, the steamer had to return to Amsterdam because fire had been discovered on board. It was arson suspects, but it could not be proved. In 1958 another major renovation was carried out that took three months to complete. The passenger accommodation was redesigned so that the ship could now only carry 1,210 people, and three more luxury suites were added. The ship was supposed to meet the new standards in terms of comfort and leisure activities, so a night club , a cinema , a souvenir shop, another promenade deck and a second swimming pool were installed. The main mast was relocated, the funnels raised, the superstructure lengthened and the black hull painted gray.
From April 2, 1959, Southampton (England) was the new home port of Johan van Oldenbarnevelt . She has now been marketed as a cruise ship and used for circumnavigations of the world with stations such as Australia, New Zealand, Bermuda and New York. She made her last voyage on June 30, 1962. On February 3, 1963, the Johan van Oldenbarnevelt was decommissioned by the Netherland Line and thus ended her 33-year career in the service of this shipping company.
Greek cruise ship
On March 8, 1963, the General Steam Navigation Company of Greece , a Greek shipping company founded in 1939, bought the ship. There were again major renovations: the decks and lounges were renamed and redesigned, 12 new cabins were added, one of the swimming pools was enlarged, the kitchen rooms and pantries were renovated and the hull was painted white. In addition, an air conditioning system and pneumatic Roots blowers were installed for the mixture formation of the ship's diesel . The tonnage of the ship increased from the original 19,040 GRT to 20,314 GRT. In addition, other common rooms such as the Tropicana Restaurant, the Atlantic Room and the Pavilion Theater have been added.
The new owner was the Ormos Shipping Company (mostly called Greek Line ), a subdivision of the Greek shipping company Goulandris, which baptized the ship with the name Lakonia . The template for this name was the Greek region of Laconia on the Peloponnese peninsula . From now on the Lakonia made cruises from Southampton to the Canary Islands. On April 24, 1963 at 5:00 p.m., she left for her first voyage. The ship proved so popular that the Greek Line planned a total of 27 trips for 1964. The Lakonia operated this route for the Greek Line together with the even larger ships Arkadia and Olympia .
The safety equipment included 24 lifeboats for a total of 1455 people, an automatic fire detection system and two small fire stations that were equipped with fire fighting equipment. There were enough life jackets in the cabins for all passengers on board, and an additional 400 pieces were stored on deck.
Downfall
beginning of the journey
On Thursday, December 19, 1963 at 7:00 p.m., the Lakonia left Southampton for an eleven-day Christmas cruise to the Canary Islands. It was her 18th trip for the Greek Line. On board were 1022 people (646 passengers and 376 crew members). Except for 21 people, all passengers were exclusively British, while most of the crew consisted of Greeks and Germans. The ship was under the command of the 53-year-old captain Mathios Zarbis, a seafaring veteran from the Greek island of Andros . The first stop should be the island of Madeira , then it should go to Santa Cruz de Tenerife and Las Palmas de Gran Canaria .
There had been a rescue drill with the crew the week before , and the day before departure, the Lakonia passed a UK Transport Department safety inspection . The ship had a Greek certificate of seaworthiness . On December 20, an exercise on the lifeboats took place with the involvement of the passengers. The first three days of the cruise were uneventful. During the day, the passengers on deck played shuffleboard or tennis , sunbathed in the lounge chairs, swam in the pool or went shopping in the glazed Agora Shopping Center, while in the evenings there were banquets and dance evenings. The Greek Line's travel brochure promised “absolute freedom from worry and responsibility. Enjoy a vacation you will never forget ”.
The fire
At around 11 p.m. on December 22, a steward noticed smoke coming out from under the door of the hair salon. He opened the room and found it completely on fire. He and another steward tried to put the fire out, but it was out of control and spread rapidly into the corridor and the adjoining cabins. The two informed the purser , Antonio Bogetti. An alarm sounded on the bridge and a display board indicated that a fire had broken out. The ship was about 180 miles northwest of Madeira at the time .
Captain Zarbis set off a fire alarm, but it was so weak that it was not noticed in many parts of the ship. The theme party “Tropical Tramps' Ball” took place in the ballroom of the Lakonia that evening. The hall was filled with dancing passengers, the band played live music, and the tour guide George Herbert had just chosen the “ Hobo King” and “Hobo Queen” among the passengers. Due to the volume in the ballroom, the fire alarm was not noticed here either. Some people could smell smoke, but most thought it was smoke from cigarettes.
Captain Zarbis wanted to inform the passengers of the fire over the public address system, but the fire had already destroyed the system. Only when thick clouds of smoke entered the hall and the band stopped playing did the people notice the fire. The tour guide ordered the passengers on deck and to their boat stations. The film Bob on Safari with Bob Hope and Anita Ekberg was just beginning in the on- board cinema of the Lakonia and the cinema guests thought the alarm was part of the opening credits. The fire spread so quickly that the upper decks were on fire within ten minutes. Fighting the flames was no longer possible; many passengers who had already gone to bed could no longer escape from their cabins. Several crew members went to the lower decks to free people trapped, others swung themselves over the ship's side with ropes and pulled trapped passengers out of the portholes of their cabins. When the cauldrons began to explode , thick clouds of black smoke enveloped the decks, making it difficult to breathe and causing many people to lose their bearings. Numerous passengers who jumped overboard crashed into the hull and were dead before they reached the water.
At 11:30 p.m., chief radio operator Antonios Kalogridis sent the first call for help. Another message followed at midnight and the last message came at 00:22: “The last SOS from Lakonia . I can't stay in the radio room any longer. We're leaving the ship. We need help immediately, please help us. ”Many passengers who couldn't find their way up through the smoke were told to wait in the main dining room for instructions. But since the hall was right in the path of the fire, they avoided it. Shortly before 1 a.m., the order to leave the ship was given. Partially dazed or panicked passengers, most of whom were wearing evening or themed party costumes, went to the lifeboats. Evacuation of the burning ship was very problematic as several boats burned down before they could be launched and others could not be lowered using the partially rusted davits . Two lifeboats capsized and threw their occupants into the sea, another crashed into the hull. Less than half of the boats could be lowered safely and very few of them were fully occupied.
After the boats were gone, there were still hundreds of people on board the Lakonia ¸, which burned more and more intensely and continued to be shaken by explosions. A large crowd gathered in the Agora Shopping Center at the stern of the ship, but when the fire reached them there, people had to jump or lower themselves into the water on ropes. The gangways were also extended on both sides of the ship so that passengers could go overboard from there.
rescue
At 3:30 a.m., more than four hours after the fire broke out, the first ship arrived at the scene of the accident. It was the Salta , a 12,053 GRT passenger ship operated by the Argentine shipping company Empresa Lineas Maritimas Argentinas. The ship was under the command of Captain José Barrera en route from Genoa to Buenos Aires . The British tanker Montcalm (Captain Edward J. Kempton) arrived half an hour later . These two ships took most of the survivors on board.
In the following hours, the Belgian merchant ship Charlesville , the freighters Rio Grande and Mehdi and the British passenger ship Stratheden also took part in the rescue operation. Shortly before dawn, an Avro Shackleton maritime patrol aircraft launched in Gibraltar arrived at the scene of the accident and dropped rescue equipment. Four C-54s from the 57th Air Rescue Squadron of the US Air Force base on the Azores island of Terceira also made their way to Lakonia . The planes dropped life jackets and life rafts to the people in the water. During the evacuation, the Lakonia drifted in the current so that the passengers who jumped overboard were distributed within a radius of about three miles. The rescue ships did not want to get too close to the burning ship as there was a risk that the 500 tons of oil on board could explode.
Captain Zarbis was the last person to leave the ship at around 10 a.m. To the end he had been looking for people on deck who could still be saved. Most of the survivors were taken to Madeira, others to Casablanca .
Among the surviving passengers were the judge and politician Henry Wilson , the architect Owen Luder with his wife Doris and the academic Sir Ivor Jennings with his wife Helen and daughter Claire Dewing.
Aftermath
A total of 128 people lost their lives as a result of the fire on the Lakonia , including 95 passengers and 33 crew members. 53 people were killed directly by the fire , the others died from drowning , exhaustion or the impact on the ship's hull after jumping from the boat deck. A command of HMS Centaur , an aircraft carrier of the Royal Navy , was on 24 December on board the burned Lakonia , which is now a 10 degree strong list to starboard had developed to recover dead bodies. Parts of the superstructure had collapsed and the bow region had large holes caused by the boiler explosions.
On December 24th around 5:30 p.m., the Norwegian tug Hercules tied a rope to the Lakonia to bring her together with three other tugs to the port of Gibraltar . During the voyage, the list continued to increase until the Lakonia finally capsized on December 29 at around 2 p.m. and went down in just three minutes. It sank about 230 miles southwest of Lisbon and 250 miles west of Gibraltar.
The cover picture of Life Magazine dated January 3, 1964 showed a color photo of the burning Lakonia .
examination
The Greek Ministry of Merchant Shipping conducted a two-year investigation into the accident. The committee of inquiry came to the conclusion that the Lakonia should never have passed the safety inspection on the day before departure. The davits were partly rusty, several lockers containing life jackets could not be opened, and oars and floor plugs were missing in several lifeboats, so that the passengers had to constantly draw water. During the lifeboat drill a week before the cruise began, only five of the 24 boats were launched. The committee argued that all boats should have been tested. The allegation that the crew had looted during the accident was dropped after it was credibly assured that they only broke into cabins to rescue passengers and retrieve life jackets.
The investigative committee had other complaints: the order to leave the ship had been given far too late, the officers had not adequately supervised the evacuation and too few crew members had woken sleeping passengers. Captain Zarbis and seven of his officers were accused of negligence. A short circuit in an electrical cable was found to be the likely cause of the accident .
literature
- David Marchbanks: The Painted Ship. An Account of the Fire at Sea Aboard the Greek Liner Lakonia . Secker & Warburg, London 1964.
- Geoffrey Bond: Lakonia . Oldbourne, London 1966.
- David Ritchie: Shipwrecks. An Encyclopedia of the World's Worst Disasters at Sea . Facts on File, 1999.
- Anja Benscheidt, Alfred Kube, Siegfried Stölting: The Lakonia catastrophe 1963. A shipwreck from the survivors' point of view . Historical Museum Bremerhaven, Bremerhaven 2014, ISBN 978-3-931285-04-3 .
Web links
- Website of the ship with detailed information and pictures
- Another website with more information and facts
- The Last Voyage of the Lakonia ( Times report on January 3, 1964)
- The Lakonia in a burned ship list
Footnotes
- ↑ Video Grampian Television: The Old Gray Ladies of Lossiemouth Directed by Graham Mcleish
- ^ High Seas: The Last Voyage of the Lakonia ; Time, January 3, 1964