Impact half-empties liner swimming pool—witness

Press, 27 April 1989, Page 3

Impact half-empties liner swimming pool—witness

NZPA Sydney The impact of hitting rocks at 15 knots sent more than half the water in the Mikhail Lermontov’s upper deck swimming pool crashing over the deck, a witness told the New South Wales Supreme Court yesterday. After the impact, the swimming pool was less than half full, a witness, Mr Henry Evans, said. Mr Evans, aged 72, a retired commercial fisherman and former New South Wales state fisheries inspector, was sitting with his wife beside an upper deck pool when the luxury liner rounded Cape Jackson in the Marlborough Sounds on February 16, 1986. "We struck the rocks very hard. I could feel it grating for maybe three minutes before the ship moved into deeper water,” Mr Evans said. “We went immediately to our cabin to get our life-jackets and coats because I knew no ship could withstand an impact like that and stay afloat.” Three witnesses, including two passengers, gave evidence on the second day of what is expected to be a three-week hearing to deter-

mine liability for the sinking of the Soviet liner. After picking up their life-jackets, Mr and Mrs Evans headed for the forward lounge where they waited for about half an hour before hearing the first announcement in English over the ship’s public address system. “And that was to tell us that our evening meal would be late,” he said. A call eventually came for Mr and Mrs Evans’s lifeboat group to go to its station. Though they headed toward the station, crew members intercepted them and sent them in the other direction. “We were directed to go through passages and up and down stairs between decks. This went on for four or five minutes,” Mr Evans said. The passengers were not told where they were being taken and the crew seemed to have little idea themselves, he said. In darkness and with the ship listing badly, Mr and Mrs Evans eventually stepped off one of the upper decks on to a fishing trawler that had come alongside. They were later transferred to a

lifeboat from the inter-island ferry Arahura. The manager of Divers World in Wellington, Mr Malcolm Blair, told the court the three main damage areas to the ship’s hull were on the port side. In March this year, armed with a tape measure, a slate and an underwater pencil, Mr Blair measured gashes of 11.5 m long and 8.4 m long, and a 4.9 m-long section of tears, denting and punchmarks in the steel hull. The ship had settled on its starboard side in soft mud. As far as Mr Blair could tell, there was no damage to the starboard side of the hull. He also checked both bow anchors and found they were in a position where they could be let down with no obstructions to their chains. Counsel for the plaintiffs expect to call at least three more witnesses, including Captain John Reedman, master of the L.P.G. tanker Tarahiko, who ignored assurances from the Lermontov crew that no help was needed after the ship was holed.