Saturday, November 24, 2007

Cruise Ship Sinking Off Antarctica

There are plenty of articles on this incidence that occurred yesterday. Basically they all say the same thing. The M/V Explorer hit ice and began taking in water. All the passengers and crew were put in life boats and then rescued by a Norwegian ship. The ship sank after about 20 hours of taking on water. All were rescued and the only injuries were some mild cases of hypothermia.

I found this mostly interesting because I have experienced first hand how well the ships help each other in these sometimes dangerous waters. On my expedition on the M/V Polar Star in December 2006 I remember that we got a distress signal from a ship that was stuck in the pack ice. We were an icebreaker and went and pulled them out and then led the way through the rest of the pack ice until they were in open sea. It just shows that in this area cruise ships often are the ones to help each other because there are not always military ships in the area. In this case yesterday the passengers and crew were rescued by another cruise ship the NordNorge, which is part of the Hurtigruten company's cruise ships and I have been on its sister ship the Kong Harold in Norway and we saw this ship when in Antarctica and they sent over a boat to give the captain of our ship who was also Norwegian a Christmas gift.

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