Russian master rejects blame

Press, 19 February 1986, Page 1

Russian master rejects blame

NZPA-AP Moscow The master of the Soviet cruise ship which sank on Sunday after striking a reef in the Marlborough Sounds said on Soviet television that the sinking occurred after a New Zealand pilot on board decided on an uncharted route "through fiords.” However, passengers said the liner hit rocks off Cape Jackson after the Marlborough Harbourmaster and pilot, Captain Don Jamison, announced he had handed the helm to the master. One passenger, Mr Mark Raymond, aged 24, of Sydney, said the ship was heading out of Queen Charlotte Sound, off Cape Jackson, with the Walker Rock beacon about 1000 m off the point of the cape to the left of the ship. Captain Jamison then announced over the public address system that he was leaving the helm. "Next thing, I look out and we are on the other side of the beacon, in between the beacon and the land, and then we hit,” said Mr Raymond. Captain Vladislav Vorobyev, interviewed by telephone on Soviet national evening television news, said the Mikhail Lermontov, on a cruise with Australian passengers, had passed through a beautiful

fiord area in the scenic Marlborough Sounds. “The passengers like those places very much,” he said. “A pilot from New Zealand was on board and he decided to take a route where there were no indications of depth shown on the map.

“It turned out there were reefs under the surface. The ship hit the reef, and the collision tore a hole in the ship,” he said.

Captain Vorobyev gave no more details about the accident, but praised his crew’s courage in staying on board to help off elderly passengers as the ship began to list. The brief telephone interview gave no further

details of the incident. It was preceded by the first film shown on Soviet television of passengers being brought safely to shore and of the site where the Mikhail Lermontov went down.

Earlier, the official news agency, Tass, reported the sinking and credited the crew’s “immaculate training” for the safe evacuation of hundreds of passengers. Captain D. I. Jamison, the pilot aboard the Mikhail Lermontov during her final cruise in Marlborough Harbour Board waters last week-end, is one of New Zealand’s most senior and experienced harbourmasters and pilots. He is also acting general manager of the board, says the Blenheim reporter of “The Press.”

Captain Jamison is one of only three pilots in New Zealand licensed to pilot large vessels in Fiordland, the destination of the Mikhail Lermontov at the time she struck a rock off Cape Jackson on Sunday evening..

Captain Jamison joined the board as Harbourmaster in 1970 after serving as pilot for the Southland Harbour Board.

The chairman of the Marlborough Harbour Board, Mr B. J. Dalliessi, said yesterday that Captain Jamison had piloted

hundreds of vessels .in Queen Charlotte Sound and Tory Channel. Several times he had piloted cruise ships from Picton and continued with them, technically as a passenger. He had then resumed pilot duties in Fiordland and continued on to Sydney.

The board’s pilotage boundary extends from Cape Kaomaru on the eastern side of the Queen Charlotte Sound entrance in line west to the end of the Marlborough Sounds. Mr Dalliessi said Captain Jamison and other pilots normally left ships at this line near the end of Long Island. But the

Mikhail Lermontov had engaged Captain Jamison to take the liner to Milford Sound. ,'.7- ' Mr Dalliessi said that when the? ship was holed Captain Jamison was probably still on the bridge, as it was just outside the board’s waters. “The captain of the ship is always ultimately reponsible and the pilot is there to give him advice in limited waters,” he said. “When they were out there (Cape Jackson), Captain Jamison may still have been on the bridge, but technically the captain (of the ship) would have taken charge.”

Mr Dalliessi said the Mikhail Lermontov could not remain indefinitely at the bottom of Port Gore. r

In the master’s attempt to beach the ship at Port Gore she had come inside the board’s boundaries by a couple of kilometres. It was too early to say what would happen to the liner but the board had the power to have her removed, said Mr Dalliessi.

Mr Dalliessi said he was "just amazed" to hear that the master of the cruise ship had made statements to the news media about the accuracy of charts before the preliminary inquiry began in Wellington yesterday. Captain ‘ Jamison had not yet had the opportunity to, give his side of the story, and “The Press” could not reach him for comment, last evening. According to a Reuters report on the monitoring of a message to Moscow Television, Captain Vorobyev said the vessel hit a rock not shown on navigation charts. The New Zealand pilot had tried to lead the ship on to a safe course but she hit rocks not shown on the chart.

The Royal New Zealand Navy said navigation, charts of the area were “more than adequate" to have kept the cruise ship clear of rocks.

The Navy hydrographer, Commander Ken Robertson, said, “There is certainly nothing wrong with the (chart) information that is being used.”