Oceanos
 The Oceanos in Piraeus, June 1986
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The Oceanos was a cruise ship that sank off South Africa in 1991 . It had a length of 150 m and a volume of 14,000 GRT . The ship was launched in July 1952 in Bordeaux as a passenger and cargo ship Jean Laborde for the shipping company Messageries Maritimes . It then went through several name changes until it was converted by the Greek shipping company Epirotiki Lines into the cruise ship Oceanos .
Downfall
The ship was on August 3, 1991 with 571 passengers and crew on the way from East London in South Africa to Durban . It was in a storm off the Transkei when an explosion sound was heard in the engine room at 9:30 p.m. , causing the ship to leak and the propulsion system to fail. The seawater ran through the bulkhead of the engine room into the sewage system through a 10 cm hole for a ventilation pipe that had not been closed after maintenance work . Due to the lack of check valves , the seawater distributed through the sewer pipes in the lower decks, so that the ship slowly sank.
The captain Yiannis Avranas decided to abandon the ship, but was overwhelmed with the situation and did not initiate a coordinated rescue operation. The ship's officers prepared the lifeboats without giving the passengers instructions or offering any assistance. Instead, civilian employees on the ship, including the musician Moss Hills , the tour guide Lorraine Betts and the magician Julian Butler, tried to look after the passengers and organize the evacuation.
Since the Oceanos increasingly flip side got all lifeboats could not be lowered into the water. The officers who were involved in the ditching used the boats available for their own rescue. Around three o'clock, around 220 passengers and crew members remained without a usable lifeboat, including the master. The volunteers used the radio on the unmanned bridge to coordinate the rescue with other ships.
The first helicopters of the South African Defense Force arrived at around 6:30 a.m. for air rescue. Captain Avranas was one of the first to join the group of people waiting on deck. Due to strong winds and space for a maximum of two helicopters next to each other, the rescue operation dragged on for several hours. A total of 16 aircraft were in use, including 13 Aérospatiale SA 330 transport helicopters , which pulled the remaining people up using a winch.
The ship sank around 3:30 p.m. The wreck lies in a known position about ten kilometers south of Coffee Bay at a depth of 91 m. All 571 passengers and crew members survived the accident.
aftermath
Several survivors expressed their anger at the behavior of the captain and the ship's officers. In addition to his responsibility to rescue passengers and crew, Captain Avranas also disregarded the tradition “ The captain is the last to disembark ”. He later explained: “When I give the order abandon ship, it doesn't matter what time I leave. Abandon is for everyone. If some people want to stay, they can stay. ” (In German: If I give the order to leave the ship, it doesn't matter when I disembark. The order applies to everyone. If some people want to stay, like this can you do that. )
Moss Hills had to witness a shipwreck again a little more than three years later; he was engaged as an on-board musician on the last voyage of the cruise ship Achille Lauro , which sank on December 2, 1994 after a fire and the resulting explosion.
Web links
- A Captain's Tale: "The Rescue Was Perfect - Everybody Is Safe." In: International Herald Tribune , August 8, 1991 ( online )
- Cruise ship sinking. on YouTube
- Description of the ship and photo documentation of the sinking
- Video document of the downfall on YouTube
- Revisting the sinking of Oceanos (English)
Footnotes
- ↑ a b www.wrecksite.eu "Ancona MV (1971 ~ 1974) Oceanos MV [+1991]". Accessed January 1, 2014.
- ↑ www.allatsea.co.za Disasters at Sea: MTS Oceanos ( Memento of the original from June 1, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Accessed January 1, 2014.
- ^ A b Philip G Van Rensburg: Diving the Oceanos. March 5, 2004, accessed December 30, 2013 .
- ↑ a b Moss Hills: My Story of the Sinking , September 1991. Retrieved on July 12 of 2019.
- ↑ Dateline NBC : Miracle on the Wild Coast , May 23, 2010.
- ^ Paul Dubois: Puma SA 330 in SAAF Service . Retrieved December 30, 2013.
- ↑ Career Overboard? In: The New York Times , August 11, 1991. Retrieved December 30, 2013.
