A Canadian cruise ship struck submerged ice off Antarctica and began sinking, but all 154 passengers and crew, Americans and Britons among them, took to lifeboats and were plucked to safety by a passing cruise ship.The entire vessel finally slipped beneath the waves Friday evening, about 20 hours after the predawn accident near Antarctica's South Shetland Islands, the Chilean navy said.
No injuries were reported although passengers reportedly endured subfreezing temperatures for several hours as they waited in bobbing lifeboats for a Norwegian liner that took them to a Chilean military base in the region.
The New York Times has a more moment-to-moment account (and some blowaway pics):
In the lecture hall, they were told that water was creeping in through a fist-size hole punched into the ship’s starboard. As it flooded the grinding engine room, the power failed. The ship ceased responding.
“We all got a little nervous when the ship began to list sharply, and the lifeboats still hadn’t been lowered,” John Cartwright, a Canadian, told CBC radio.
About 1:30 a.m., the passengers climbed down ladders on the ship’s side into open lifeboats and inflatable craft. They bobbed for some four hours in the rough seas and biting winds as the sun rose and the day broadened, sandwiched between the 20-degree air and the nearly freezing waters. Their ship traced loose circles in the steely ocean.
And then a research ship and a Norwegian cruise liner that had heard the distress call approached.
I've been looking for video but so far just have this YouTube link to a sequenced slideshow. I know I'm not the only person who can get mesmerized by catastrophic events. All in all, it seems like a fitting capper to the Thanksgiving holiday.
That is, if your Thanksgiving wasn't in Baghdad.
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