Exhausted passengers tell of scramble for survival

Press, 18 February 1986, Page 3

Exhausted passengers tell of scramble for survival

By

PATRICIA HERBERT

and SIMON LOUISSON The passengers of the Mikhail Lermontov, exhausted from their ordeal, told their stories yesterday of the nightmare sinking and their scramble for survival. Their descriptions of the sinking were as vivid as they were different. One man described the impact as the Mikhail Lermontov hit the reef as “a severe thump,” and

another said the force was sufficient to lift the 20,000-ton liner out of the water. Mr Snowy Peat, of Sydney, was hanging over the deck rail at the stern when she hit, and, looking ahead, saw white water between the land and the lighthouse. Looking behind, he saw a great area — about 60 sq ft — of swirling mud and rock. He remembers that the ship went “a bit crazy in the steerage.” Another

man described the movement as “a definite list to the starboard side.” Mr Peat had a berth in the lower decks and headed towards it, but lost his nerve. The dominant recollection was of climbing down the rope ladders to the lifeboats. For those who found the rope too short and had to drop the last two metres, the memory was especially acute. Mr Stan Smith, aged 65, of Sydney, said a lot of

people had to jump "sft to 6ft” and that even at his age (he was younger and more agile than many) was "not easy.” He praised the “tanker boys” of the Tarihiko as “excellent,” the Russians as “very helpful,” and the English hosts aboard the cruise ship for “keeping us calm.” Mrs Nea Mellingham was also impressed. She said it had been “a horrifying experience” but that they could not have had

better treatment. Everyone was mavellous, she said. But Mr Smith, who was among the last to safety and left the liner only 30 minutes before she went down, said he felt the passengers should have been prepared earlier. His criticisms were echoed by Mr Henry Wilkens, aged 70, an experienced yachtie from Adelaide, Mr Wilkens described the evacuation from the fast-sinking vessel as fairly orderly, but said they had not been told what to do or where to go and that the Russians had seemed to have no system at all. As he remembers it, there was no communication from the bridge when the ship hit, none until 2 hours later when she was beached.

Then, he said, the instructions were given mainly in Russian and came across as bits and pieces. "We really didn’t get clear messages.” Mr Smith also referred to the confusion caused by language differences. Mrs Grace Turner, of Auckland, made the same point. “The interpreters kept saying, ‘no worry. No worry’,” she said. “I’ve never seen anything so disorganised' in my life.” By contrast, Mr Wilkens remembers the atmosphere as “quite calm — no panic at all.” Mr Neville Mellingham, of Sydney, said the pitch of the deck as the ship heaved under water was so steep that some of the passengers had to be pulled by ropes to the side. The crew members who landed at Wellington were grey-faced and exhausted and would not talk to the news media. Some were carrying light overnight and shopping bags, presumably all they managed to salvage, but more than many of the passengers came away with. Ms Simone Young, aged 18, of Melbourne, said she was awakened by a Russian sailor and that she knew something was wrong only because the fruit kept falling from a table to the floor. She had looked down the stairwell and seen water, but her main concern had been to find her mother. “She was in the disco playing scrabble,” she said. “We met on the deck and just stepped into a lifeboat.”

Mr Arthur McGuire, Sydney, said he had not wanted to go on the cruise as he had had a premonition something was going to go wrong.

He said-that when the ship started listing about 15 degrees he had told his wife they had to get off.

“The crew never told us anything.”

One woman said she had been locked in her cabin by automatic doors, had to break her way out, and ended in the galley. She had left $4OOO worth of jewellery behind.