Not all ferry passengers identified

Press, 9 March 1987, Page 1

Not all ferry passengers identified

By PETER O’HARA, NZPA staff correspondent Zeebrugge

The Belgian authorities told New Zealand’s Brussels Embassy at the weekend that they knew of no New Zealander in the disastrous sailing of the ferry Herald of Free Enterprise.

However, the assurance did little to conceal the fact that there is limited official knowledge about the identities of people who board some ferries plying the English Channel.

The owner of the ferry, which capsized in horrifying circumstances outside the Belgian harbour of Zeebrugge with the heavy

loss of an estimated 135 lives, admitted privately that passenger lists were nowhere near -complete because many people boarded without names being known. As the extent of the tragedy was .still being assessed yesterday, a Townsend Thoresen spokesman, Mr Paul Ellis, acknowledged there 1 were criticisms from relatives that there was lack of information about those who had been in the ship. He blamed the Belgian judge investigating the tragedy, saying the judge did not want any list made public until the identities of all the victims were known.