Sinking Cruise Ship: Launch the Lifeboats (Part 1 of 2)
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A few miles off the Eastern Cape of South Africa, a luxury cruise ship, the MTS Oceanus, found us in heavy seas. Forty-knot winds shriek in the darkness as huge swirls batter the stricken ocean liner. Thirty-foot waves crash across her guardrails. Below deck, 35-year-old musician Moss Hills staggers down a dimly lit corridor. He's breathing hard. His eyes glisten with fear.

Fortunately, Moss doesn't need a light to find his way through this ship. Its layout is etched in his mind. He passes the boutique, the restaurant, the bar. Places that should be full of happy passengers. But right now, they're all deserted. Or rather, abandoned. Scattered objects lie strewn across the floor. A dropped handbag, a smashed glass, a life jacket. Suddenly, the ship lurches, forcing Moss to throw out an arm to catch himself. He waits a moment before continuing along the corridor.

At the end of the passage, he opens a door to a narrow stairwell. The gloom is punctuated by the flickering red emergency lights that line the walls. Moss strains his ears. He thinks he can hear water. Not the crashing of waves outside. This sounds like it's coming from inside the vessel. Clutching the handrail, Moss raises his handheld camcorder. With a trembling finger, he hits record.

It's not unusual for him to film these voyages for fun, capturing happy memories of his life at sea. But today, he is documenting an unfolding disaster. I can hear the water, and it's quite loud, and I can hear it splashing, this big body of water sloshing about from side to side. Moss descends deeper into the bowels of the ship. Several decks down, he stops dead. He not only hears water now, he can see it flowing over the carpeted floor.

As I descend the stairs, it's so dark, but you've got the emergency light and you can see the lights playing on the water and the water moving around as it does that. And then I'm realising you can see it coming down the corridors and underneath the doors of the cabins. These are the passenger decks. If the water has risen this high, it means that everything below, the galley, the crew decks, the engine room, must already be submerged. A trickle of dread runs down his spine.

And that was my first absolute proof and confirmation that not only were we sinking, but we were already pretty much half sunk. Ever wondered what you would do when disaster strikes? If your life depended on your next decision, could you make the right choice? Welcome to Real Survival Stories. These are the astonishing tales of ordinary people thrown into extraordinary situations. People suddenly forced to fight for their lives.

In this episode, we meet Zimbabwean guitarist Moss Hills. In August 1991, he and his wife Tracy are working as musicians on board a Greek ocean liner. It's their job to keep the passengers happy, whatever the weather. But when the Oceanus hits deadly seas and the power cuts out, the couple will find themselves responsible for a lot more than the guests' entertainment. But when we saw the bridge was completely abandoned, all of us just suddenly realized

That's it. It's just us. We are now in charge of this rescue. I'm John Hopkins from Noisa. This is Real Survival Stories. Saturday, August the 3rd, 1991. It's 5.30 p.m. just off the coast of South Africa. On board the MTS Oceanus, a party is underway inside the lounge. While the band performs on stage, smiling passengers sway and tap their feet. This is the customary sail away party, held whenever the ship leaves port.

Normally, it would take place up on deck, but this evening, bad weather has forced them inside. The same bad weather that delayed their departure from the port of East London. Not that the passengers seem to mind, they're just enjoying the music. On stage, 35-year-old Moss Hills easily maintains the atmosphere, segueing seamlessly from Beach Boys covers to The Beatles. A seasoned performer, Moss understands his brief completely, to keep all eyes on him

and not on the waves crashing ominously beyond the portholes. I have a very positive outlook on everything, on life, on situations, circumstances, you know, and I've always been the sort of person who looks at the better side of things, and if there's a problem, I always try and sort it out, and I've always been like that, and I'm still like that, and

If there's something needs doing and I don't know how to do it, I'll just figure it out. I'll just make it happen. If you can't go over it, try and go around it. If you can't go around it, go under it. But just keep going. So I have a very positive outlook on life generally. The Oceanus and her 581 passengers and crew are sailing from Cape Town to Durban, a distance of 800 nautical miles along the Eastern Cape.

This stretch of land is known as the Wild Coast on account of its tempestuous seas and rocky shores. As he strums his guitar, Moss glances over at the band's bassist, Tracy. Voluminous dark curls cascade over her shoulders. She returns Moss's gaze, a smile flashing across her lips. The onstage chemistry between the duo is palpable and little wonder. Moss and Tracy aren't just bandmates, they're husband and wife. They've been performing together for over 15 years.

They used to play in clubs and bars around South Africa and made a decent living that way. But their lives changed forever when their agency booked them their first gig on a cruise vessel. As musicians working aboard a passenger cruise liner, I love it because every single person who comes to watch you play is on holiday.

It's not like when you're playing on land, somebody might have had a tough day at work or they haven't got much time. They have to go and drop the kids off or do whatever. Here, when you're on a cruise ship as a musician, your audience walks in, they listen to you playing. Every person is on vacation.

It's just this great feeling and then you're with them for a week, maybe 10 days, sometimes a bit longer if it's a longer voyage and then they all disembark and brand new people come on board. So you've got that whole stimulus of new people, new faces and all your tired one-line jokes are fresh again because it's new people. It's just a great atmosphere. I love it. The couple now spend most of their time at sea. They wouldn't have it any other way.

It's not just the steady work. The lifestyle is intoxicating. The exotic foreign ports, the briny air, even the occasional spot of bad weather. It's all become part and parcel of their existence. There are downsides, however. By far, the hardest thing about going to sea is what Tracy and Moss are forced to leave behind on land. Their 15-year-old daughter, Amber. Our daughter, Amber, has been on the road as the

It's not always easy.

But Amber's happy, and it works for them. In fact, she left the Oceanus just a few days ago to head back for school. Moss and Tracy's current contract is the longest they've ever done. For the next eight months, this 500-foot-long vessel will be their home. Bon voyage.

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It's around 7 p.m.

Storms at sea are just part of life at sea. This is what happens. And

They don't happen that often or else cruising wouldn't be so popular. And, you know, modern cruise ships try and cruise in areas when it's not the season for bad storms, but they are unavoidable. They do happen and it's not unsafe to sail in them, but it's not comfortable. But while Moss and Tracy may be used to the odd bumpy voyage, the same can't be said for the passengers. We're eating in there and we can hear...

guests in the restaurant kind of gasping and sort of shouting out as the ship's rolling around, they're falling around. And the waiters are so good at being able to walk with trays full of food on a moving ship. They do it all the time all over the world. And during a storm, they've got to be very careful. But this storm was so bad that even a few of the waiters ended up dropping trays of food, which very rarely happens.

and we could hear a guest, "Oh!" And we thought, "Wow, this storm's getting worse and worse." - As the ship lists sharply to starboard, a deep vibration reverberates up through the floor. The light fittings tremble along the ceiling, setting the glass jingling like wind chimes. Moss glances over at Tracy. - My wife Tracy's a very organized, calm woman, and this storm is getting really bad,

And she says to me, look, I'm going to go to the cabin and just get a couple of emergency things ready just in case. I'll pack a little bag that's got some warm clothes, some head covering, a cap. We'll put on some sun protection cream in there in case we're out in a lifeboat in the sun. And I'm saying, it's going to be fine. Don't worry. And she says, I'm just going to get that stuff ready. I just...

Don't believe anything really bad is going to happen. It's not that I think nothing will ever happen. I just didn't think it was bad enough to warrant that. But she's always very organised and said, look, I'm just going to go and get that ready just in case. And I'm thinking, well, you know, we've been through really bad storms before and storms worse than that. We'll be fine. As Tracy heads off to their cabin, Moss checks the time. They're not due to be on stage again until 10 p.m.

Still, he might as well start checking everything's in order. But when he arrives in the lounge, he sees chairs toppling over and ashtrays sliding off tables. Up on stage, mic stands and instruments are scattered everywhere. He hurriedly gathers up the fallen equipment. He's just tying down a speaker when Tracy bursts in. And she's looking really quite concerned. And she's saying, look, I've just seen the chief engineer who has a cabin right next to us.

come rushing down the corridor into his cabin and he looked as if he was wet and Tracy says she's asked him what's going on he's just ignoring her completely and she said what's that about I mean something's going wrong and I started to get the first little fingers of concern coming in thinking well what was that about why would the chief engineer be soaking wet

There's no time to ponder this, as the first guests start arriving to grab the best seats. Their faces are nervous, some gray with nausea. They seem relieved to find the band setting up. Moss and Tracy exchange a bewildered shrug. There haven't been any announcements from the captain, no alarms sounded, no orders from the senior staff to suspend the normal routine. It leaves the musicians with little option.

When you're a performer, the show must go on. It's just, it's in your blood. I mean, it doesn't matter how I feel. It's my job to perform and I love doing it. When you get on stage, everything else goes away and you just get yourself lost in the fun of performing. So we thought, right, we'll just, we are going to start performing. Moss and Tracy get on stage and begin their set. Soon they're joined by a couple of the other entertainers.

As they get into the swing of it, the audience starts to relax, appreciative of the distraction. When Moss looks up from his guitar, he now sees smiling faces looking back at him until they're plunged into darkness. All the lights go out and that has never happened to me before. And suddenly you can sort of feel a kind of a jolt of concern and a little bit of fear starting to creep in. Think, what's that about?

I was just smiling and making jokes and saying, oh, don't worry, you know, we haven't paid the electricity bill. The lights will come back on soon. In this murky gloom, I can just see all the people in there. And we're just waiting for power to come on. I can't even make an announcement over the microphone because there's no power. There's no mics. But I do have an acoustic guitar. And so I decided to play a bit of guitar with Tracy and a couple of the magicians there, Robin and Julian. And we just...

We're just kind of singing a few sing-along songs acoustically, just trying to keep the atmosphere in the room, and we're just waiting for the power to come on. With the ship now tilting dramatically to one side, it's getting harder to preserve the illusion that everything is under control. And as he strums his guitar, Moss notices something else. The pounding waves sound louder than before, more distinct. It takes a few seconds for him to realize why.

The background drone of the ship's engines has suddenly disappeared, which means the propellers are dead, which means they must be drifting. Minutes go by and people are starting to now get very tense. And we've got people who are in the restaurant, which is the deck below us, are now leaving the restaurant, coming up the stairs and straight into this lounge where we are. And the lounge is now filling up and the more it fills up,

More anyone who's not in the lounge is seeing, "Oh, that's where everyone's going." And it just starts to fill up with people. And still, we're in darkness and still no announcements, no officers, nothing. More and more guests file into the lounge. As the chairs fill up, people start sitting on the sloped floor in frightened huddles. Soon, hundreds of eyes are staring up at the stage, looking to Moss and the others for answers.

So I thought, you know, what I need to do is just go out and see if I can find what's happening. We're sort of just shouting out to people in the audience and saying, OK, everyone just stay here. Everyone sit down. Don't stand. Try and remain on the floor so you don't fall around. Because at this stage, everything that's not fixed down is sliding around. You've got chairs, tables, pot plants everywhere.

drinks glasses, everything is just, if it's not in your hands or fixed, it's falling over and rolling around the floors. So I say, I'm going to go down and find out what's going on. One of the magicians, Julian, offers to accompany Moss while Tracy and Robin stay behind with the guests. The two men hurry out of the lounge through a side door and descend a flight of stairs. As they go, they run into other crew members.

Some of them wearing life jackets, some of them officers. All are racing towards the quarterdeck. Moss presses them for answers, for an explanation, but nobody seems willing or able to provide any clarification. The ship seems to be in chaos. Standard emergency protocol has been replaced by blind panic. Like every cruise ship, we've got lots of crew from all over the world and there's lots of different languages and people shouting this and that.

And Julian and I are just standing there thinking, what's happening? And we're asking people, what's happening? What's going on? It's just we are being ignored. Everyone's got their own mission and we don't know what it is. But the crew are looking a bit panicked. Some of them have got little backpacks. So we think, OK, let's just carry on. We're going to just keep going down and see if we can find out, see if there's an officer in the engine room.

Moss and Julian descend to the bottom of the ship. They heave open a metal door and rush down a darkened passage, their footsteps clanging over the galvanized steel grating. The air is hot and reeks of diesel fumes. Moss feels hopeful, however. Whatever else is happening on board, whatever chaos has consumed the upper levels, down here in the ship's beating heart, the technical crew will be working hard to fix the problem. But when they reach the engine room and peer inside,

those hopes evaporate. Normally, this place is a hive of activity, a cacophony of thrusting pistons, spinning turbines, and humming generators. But right now, all is still. Even worse, it's deserted.

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Gradually, they become aware of a noise, the faint but unmistakable sound of water. We can see a watertight door that's closed, and they usually are closed because this is below the waterline. But it sounds to us as if we can hear water the other side of that door, kind of rolling around, sloshing from side to side. But we're not sure because we are below the waterline. The water is pounding the sides of the ship. But we're thinking, wow,

I think we might be sinking. Moss and Julian hurry out of the engine room and make their way back up to the lounge. Without the counteractive force of the ship's propellers, the vessel is drifting sharply sideways now, and Moss can feel the impact of the ocean even stronger than before. When they reach the upper deck, they turn a corner and run straight into Lorraine Betts.

She is the cruise director and their boss, responsible for overseeing the onboard entertainment as well as staffing and general passenger experience. Moss is relieved to see her. The Kenyan is unflappable and a consummate pro, just the person you'd want in a crisis. But he's even more relieved to see the dark-haired, middle-aged man Lorraine is talking to, the captain. Finally, they're going to get some answers.

But when they ask the skipper for information, the response comes back with the blow of a blunt object. "Prepare to abandon ship." Moss blinks in disbelief. Abandon ship? In the middle of a storm? He summons the courage to ask why. What could be happening that is so bad they need to take their chances in the ocean? You don't question the captain. I mean, I'm a guitarist and the captain says, "Well, we need to prepare to abandon the ship."

You can't question that. But I was still asking and saying, well, why? Are we on fire? No. Are we sinking? No. Okay, well, then why do we need to abandon the ship? And the captain saying we need to abandon the ship as a precaution because we can't get the engines restarted. And we're thinking that's a very extreme thing to do. We're in the middle of a bad storm at night. We're going to put people into lifeboats and just get them

pounded by the seas, it seems better to just wait on board. So we begin to doubt what the captain's saying. But the captain isn't about to debate his orders with a musician. He spins around and marches back up to the bridge. Moss stares at the baffled faces of his colleagues. None of them have any answers, but what they do have is orders. And with no other officers around to help, Lorraine starts implementing the captain's command, abandon ship.

We go back to the lounge and Lorraine, our cruise director, then starts organizing and getting sort of the entertainment team, not just singers and magicians, but it's all part of this entertainment hosts and these children's hosts and the whole team that works underneath the cruise director. And she starts saying, right, we need to try and start getting things organized. And she basically galvanizes us and gets us going.

Gradually, authority seems to be reasserting itself. Lorraine takes to the stage. Calmly, she explains to the passengers what's happening, that there has been a mechanical failure with the engines, and given the weather conditions, the captain has ordered a precautionary evacuation of the ship. They will shortly begin distributing life jackets before loading everybody into lifeboats. There is a mass intake of breath and a moment's stunned silence before the collective outpouring of alarm begins.

Stifled sobs, cries of despair, and parents whispering reassurances to their children. Here and there, indignant voices rise above the hubbub, demanding to speak to the captain. Lorraine turns to the entertainment crew. Action stations. Tracy, Lorraine, and several others are to remain behind in the lounge, performing head counts and helping guests into life jackets. Meanwhile, a group, including Moss, will head down to the quarterdeck, where the lifeboat muster stations are located.

Surely, some senior officers will be there to issue further instructions and supervise the evacuation. Moss and Tracy clasp their hands together, a fleeting squeeze of reassurance, before they both rush off to perform their duties. Moss follows Robin and Julian out of the lounge, stepping through the doors onto the quarterdeck. He is greeted with a sudden blast of noise, wind, and spray. He wipes his stinging eyes, then peers out beyond the guardrails.

Even in the darkness of the night, you can see the ocean seething. Vast black walls of water laced with white spew. Moss, Robin, and Julian inch their way along the starboard side to the lifeboat stations, struggling to keep their footing on the wet, listing deck. When they arrive, they do find some crew members already there, but not officers as they'd hoped. Instead, they are met by a handful of the ship's hospitality staff.

Waiters, cooks and cleaners are gathered around the winching cables, their bodies bent away from the storm, working fearlessly to lower the lifeboats. When we go out and start looking at trying to launch the lifeboats, a lot of the Filipino crew, who are just the most amazing people, and these guys had gone to their lifeboat stations, even though there was no announcement from the bridge, there was no alarm sound and nothing, they'd gone to their lifeboat stations.

With officers absent, the Filipino crew have taken the initiative. Luckily, a handful of them have been trained to work the lifeboats. They've already managed to lower the vessels partway down over the side of the ship so that they might be boarded, but they're stuck. No one is quite sure how they will get the boats the rest of the way to the water, and the hospitality staff have news. It seems that one lifeboat has already been successfully launched.

by a handful of the senior officers intent on saving themselves moss is dumbstruck so much for women and children first i don't know really why some of these senior officers and other crew got off in a lifeboat and abandoned us only they know what was in their minds but they knew then that the ship was sinking we hadn't been told that but they knew that it was sinking and so

It shouldn't happen, but I think in their minds it was right. Well, it's just every man for himself. We're going to get off. We knew then that it was going to be up to us to try and organize this rescue. It is almost 11 p.m. Moss and his colleagues huddle on the quarterdeck of the Oceanus, screaming to be heard over the elements. There are seven remaining lifeboats on board.

We don't know anything about launching lifeboats, which lifeboats to launch, how many to put in them. Nothing about that.

But now suddenly, this group of entertainers, we're now trying to do all this. The entertainment crew lead groups of passengers to the muster stations. Terrified guests, swaddled in bright orange life jackets, line up, ready to embark. Even getting them safely on board the lifeboats is a challenge. Although it was rolling around constantly from left to right, port to starboard, it was more or less all the time

becoming more and more of an angle the floor leaning with the starboard side in the water and the port side lifting out and it was just getting worse like that and we went to go and launch the starboard side lifeboats first because the lifeboats are not properly fixed to the side of the ship as the waves pound the ship and it rolls the lifeboat swings out over the water and creates a gap of a couple of meters between the ship and the lifeboat

And then as the ship rolls back, the lifeboat comes back in and crashes against the side of the ship and remains there for several seconds. And then the next roll and it swings away again. Every time the lifeboat smashes back against the ship, Moss and his colleagues desperately grab onto it. In the few seconds they have before it rolls back again, they hurriedly shepherd the terror-stricken passengers across. Eventually, they succeed in filling the first boat without any injuries. Now for the hard part.

lowering them the remaining distance to the water. Moss reaches out for the cable, trying to keep it steady. The coarse metal threads cut into his fingers, but he tightens his grip. He gives a nod to his colleagues, who do the same. They start turning the winches. In short, uncontrolled bursts, the lifeboat drops jerkily towards the water. The cables strain and creak as the crowded vessel twists in the wind. Another massive wave slams against the hull.

There is a deep, sonorous groan of stressed metal as the ship lists even further to starboard. The deck tilts 45 degrees, sending sun loungers and deck chairs careering into the ocean. But then finally, the lifeboat hits the surface. With the first vessel deployed, Moss and his colleagues move down the deck and onto the next one, while Tracy and Lorraine keep bringing the passengers out in groups of 20.

I think this whole process is taking us about certainly a couple of hours because we're doing it so slowly because we don't quite know what we're doing. But between us, we managed to get things worked out and work out what to do and successfully launch all of the lifeboats on the starboard side of the ship. And with that, we did about 350 people, something around that number. It is sometime around midnight.

Moss watches the last of the starboard side lifeboats drift off into the darkness, swallowed by the storm. Godspeed. With no time to think, they hurtle around to the other side of the ship. There is another 200 or so passengers who still need evacuating. They clamber up the steep, angled deck, fighting gravity.

And then it was time to go and launch lifeboats on the port side of the ship, the left-hand side. And then we had the opposite problem because now as the ship's tilting over so far on the starboard side, the port side of the ship, the lifeboat is forced by gravity hard against the side of the ship. And so

initially quite easy to get people into it, which we did. But then when the Filipino crew released the cables for the lifeboat now to go into the water, it doesn't go because it's lying against the side of the ship because the port side of the ship is not vertical anymore. It's at an angle because the whole ship's tipping over onto the starboard side and that lifeboat wouldn't go down properly. And then it suddenly started skidding down the side of the ship

the front of the lifeboat first and then the back and then the front. Moss and the others watch in horror as the boat scrapes and grinds its way down the hull. It looks as though it might flip over and spill its terrified occupants out into the sea at any moment. It was almost tipping people out of it and it kind of bashed and crashed its way down, boom, into the water and the people in it were...

sort of screaming in fear as it was crashing down the side of the ship and eventually into the water and off it goes. And we thought, this is just too dangerous to launch any more of these lifeboats. We can't launch these. We're going to probably kill someone doing it like this. Moss collapses against the railing, his lungs heaving from the exertion. We were left with about over 200 people on board and no way to get off. Now what do we do?

The captain, the last anyone saw of him, was insistent that the ship was simply suffering from engine failure. He had explicitly said that the ship was not sinking. Well, it doesn't feel that way to those on deck, or to the terrified passengers still cowering in the lounge. Just then, out by the lifeboats, Moss hears a familiar sound cutting through the crashing waves, Tracy's voice. She comes out with Lorraine, their boss, bringing the next group to evacuate.

Tracy comes out to me and says, you know, how's it going? What's happening? And there's just a general feeling of urgency growing all the time as all of us who are left on board can see the storm is still raging, but that the ship is definitely sinking. It's tilting so badly over to the starboard side. It's now getting almost impossible to walk because the angle of the deck is just so steep.

And Tracy just carries on getting people out of the lounge along with the other entertainers until we get to this point where now we can't launch any more lifeboats. And our cruise director Lorraine says, well, you know, let's just go to the bridge and ask the captain what we should do next. The captain and whatever senior crew remain on board will surely be on the bridge. It's time to get some answers.

But before they head up, Moss decides to go back down below deck and see for himself what's really going on. Better yet, he'll take his camcorder and document it. Frankly, he doesn't trust that the officers truly understand or accept the seriousness of what's happening. Leaving the others, he dashes back inside. Then I'm going down the staircases and it's difficult to go because the ship's rolling around and it's so dark. And then as I get down to a lower deck, it's the D deck.

As I'm approaching that deck from above, I can hear the water. And it's quite loud and I can hear it splashing and this big body of water sloshing about from side to side. And there was like a shock in my body as I realised the water's there. And as I descend the stairs, it's so dark, but you've got the emergency lights, just little bits of lights.

on the water and you can see the lights playing on the water and the water moving around as it does that and you can see it coming down the corridors and underneath the doors of the cabins and this is one of the passenger decks so that means that the engine room the crew decks the galley all that area must be underwater and that was my first absolute proof and confirmation that not only were we sinking

but we were already pretty much half sunk and the ship just could never be saved from that point. I mean, there's just too much water in the ship now. With a trembling hand, Moss lowers his camcorder. His worst fears have finally been confirmed. They are going down. In the next episode, we return to the Oceanus for the second and final part of Moss' extraordinary tale. With time running out on this sinking ship, the heroic entertainers are faced with a desperate ultimatum.

save the lives of the remaining passengers, or die trying. But when we saw the bridge was completely abandoned, all of us just suddenly realized, that's it. It's just us left. The severity of the situation and imminent danger does descend on you, and you think, oh my word, how on earth are we going to get out of this? That's next time on Real Survival Stories.

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