N.Z. man lost as ship sinks

Press, 19 December 1989, Page 1

N.Z. man lost as ship sinks

PA Auckland A New Zealander is one of 23 men lost when a ship, on its way to New Zealand, sank in a Canadian ice storm. Winds of 150 knots, waves 15 metres high and temperatures of —lsdeg. claimed the entire crew of the Vanuatu-registered Capitaine Torres. The ship, which had just been bought by Sofrana Unilines, was on its delivery voyage from Germany to New Zealand. Staff in Sofrana’s head office in Auckland heard details of the last six hours of the ship’s battle relayed via satellite. They listened helplessly as Captain Claude Vicario, of France, described the storm and the his ship was having as ice formed on its decks. They last heard from the 10,000-ton ship when the captain said it had heeled over to 40deg. and he was about to give the order to abandon ship. At the time, a 2000-ton ice-

strengthened Canadian coastguard cutter was only two miles away in the storm, which also claimed another cargo ship and two fishing boats in the entrance to the Gulf of St Lawrence. The managing director of Sofrana, Mr Christian Jean-Louis, said the men had little chance of survival in the darkness. “If you have to abandon ship in those conditions you will not survive more than about five minutes.” The coastguard estimate the ship sank about 9.30 p.m. local time on December 8. The operations manager, Mr Mike Wade, said that the full crew list had not been released, because they had not yet been able to check that all next of kin had been notified. It is believed most of the crew were from Fiji and New Caledonia, with the remainder from Vanuatu and the Philippines. The New Zealander aboard was the chief engineer.