High Seas: The Last Voyage of the Lakonia

MARVELOUS CHRISTMAS CRUISE TO SUNNY MADEIRA AND THE CANARY

ISLANDS, proclaimed the Greek Line brochure for the cruise ship Lakonia.

HAVE YOUR HOLIDAY WITH ALL RISK ELIMINATED. ENJOY A HOLIDAY YOU WILL REMEMBER FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE. For the 651 passengers and 390 crewmen and relatives aboard the liner, it was indeed a Christmas they would never forget. In the dead of night, four days out of Southampton last week, the Lakonia was swept by a raging, uncontrollable fire that left the 20,314-ton vessel an abandoned, gutted ruin. Of the 1,041 persons aboard, 91 were known dead and 64 more were missing in the rolling Atlantic swells.

Though the Lakonia was 33 years old, she was on her first voyage under the Greek flag. As the Dutch liner Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, she had for years plied the route from Holland to the Netherlands East Indies, during World War II had served as a British troop ship. Unlike newer ships, her bulkheads below deck were wood-paneled and her wiring system was oldfashioned; three times, under the Dutch, the liner was hit with small fires that were easily brought under control. A year ago, with passenger traffic proving unprofitable, the Dutch owners sold the vessel to the Greek Line. The Greeks reoutfitted the ship from bow to stern and changed her name—which, in the superstitious lore of the sea, is a dread omen of danger.

The Ringing Bells. Tragedy was the farthest thing from anyone’s mind when the Lakonia left Southampton. Most of the passengers were elderly Britishers off to enjoy Christmas in the sun; three honeymoon couples were on board, as well as schoolboys joining their parents in Madeira and a group of five London taxi drivers on holiday. On the first day at sea, Captain Mathios Zarbis, 53, ordered the only boat drill held during the cruise. Only the constant trouble with the Lakonia’s electrical system gave reason to suspect trouble ahead.

Two nights before Christmas, the ship was in a festive mood. In the main lounge, Captain Zarbis was judging costumed contestants at a Tramps’ Ball; first prize—a bottle of white wine—had just been awarded to a 13-year-old girl in beatnik tights when alarm bells started to ring. In the ship’s cinema, where Bob Hope was cavorting on the screen with Anita Ekberg in Call Me Bwana, the audience at first thought that the ringing bells were part of the film’s plot. But the smell of smoke soon convinced them that something was amiss. Other passengers who had gone to bed early were not yet fully aware of the danger. No fire instructions were issued over the loudspeaker, and the alarm bells stopped ringing so quickly that many people thought it was only a drill.

Memory Drums. The first distress message was tapped out at 11:30 p.m. and gave the Lakonia’s position as 180 miles northwest of Madeira. Already, thick, billowing smoke was seeping from under the door of the barbershop, where the fire apparently had started. And by now, the flames had burned their way through the floor. So thick was the smoke that Passenger George Chapman was forced to grab a gas mask as he tried to force his way below to his sleeping three-year-old son Geoffrey. “I thought if I had to die, I wanted to die with our baby,” Chapman says. “Halfway down, I saw an engineer coming up through the smoke with Geoffrey in his arms. That man saved his life.”

At 12:22, shortly after Captain Zarbis gave the order to abandon ship, the last mayday message was flashed: “S O S from Lakonia. Last time. I cannot stay any more in the wireless cabin. We are leaving the ship. Please help immediately.”

More than 3,000 miles away, the distress signals were picked up by a U.S. Coast Guard station. The Lakonia’s position was immediately fed into an AMVER (Atlantic Merchant Vessel Report) computer, which plots the location, course and speed—and records such information as whether a doctor is on board—of some 850 merchant ships in the North Atlantic. Within moments, the computer’s memory drums typed out the names of five vessels within 100 miles of the Lakonia, and urgent messages were flashed to them to proceed to the stricken liner. The five were the Argentine passenger liner Salfa, the Belgian merchant ship Charlesville, the British freighters Montcalm and Stratheden, and the Brazilian freighter Rio Grande. Some were already on the way, having picked up the S O S on their own radios. The R.A.F. at Gibraltar hurriedly organized a flight of rescue planes.

Screams in the Air. At Lajes Air Force Base in the Azores, the U.S.’s 57th Air Rescue Squadron also swung into action. Shortly after the Lakonia’s last message was received, four C-54 rescue planes swung out over the Atlantic toward the flaming vessel, 3 hr. 30 min. flying time away. The planes were loaded with 42 life rafts that could carry 600 persons, 400 blankets, food and survival packages, flares of 300,000 candlepower, and six paramedics who could jump into the ocean to help passengers, if necessary.

On board the Lakonia, the nightmare was all too real. With the loudspeaker system not operating, there was near-anarchy on deck. Officers issued contradictory instructions, and crewmen milled around unsure of what to do. Screams filled the air in half a dozen different languages. Unable to comprehend the crew’s cries, passengers took charge of small groups and tried to lead them through the thick smoke to their boat stations. Pressed against the rail were scores of passengers in every variety of dress—nightgowns, pajamas, tramp costumes and evening clothes.

“Here You Are, Luv.” Tying a rope to his feet, the ship’s swimming pool attendant had himself lowered over the side head first, so that he could pull several children through portholes from smoke-filled cabins. Just before going over the side, Susan Redfern opened her pocketbook and gave her husband a gift package. “Here you are, luv,” she said. “Merry Christmas.” The package contained a handsome pair of gold cuff links.

Only three lifeboats had been lost in the flames, but many of the others were all but unusable. Some were without rudders, and others had rusty chains that would not slide down the davits.

No one seemed to know how to lower them properly. The second boat down the side banged heavily against the ship, and then tipped over and spilled its cargo of passengers into the sea. Other boats had no bungs to plug drains, and survivors had to bail frantically, ripping off clothes that they could stuff into the open bung holes. In the panic on deck, most of the boats, each of which had room for 75 passengers and ten crew, were lowered only partly filled. The rest of the passengers went down the side on ropes or simply leaped from the deck into the sea below.

Cognac & Blankets. The water was 64°, but many of the children and the elderly passengers were soon dead nevertheless. As dawn broke, the rescue fleet, now swollen to some 20 vessels, looked out on a vast scene of lifeboat debris and bobbing bodies. Despite the calm seas, it was not easy to pick them up. The rafts and lifeboats kept banging into the windward side of the waiting merchantmen; hour after hour the arduous task continued, until at last all the living and dead were hauled aboard. On the Salta, which picked up 478 people from the sea, cognac and blankets were passed out to the shivering survivors, but the crush was so great that soon there was not enough of either to go around. The British aircraft carrier Centaur picked up 55 bodies, then dispatched a helicopter to the Lakonia to see if anyone was still on board; from the vessel, a British officer reported that the liner was a burnt-out hulk. As the rescue ships sped from the scene toward the port of Funchal in Madeira, the ruined liner was taken into tow by the Norwegian salvage tug Herkules.

Captain’s Retort. In Funchal, many of the survivors bitterly accused the Lakonia’s crew of cowardice, panic and incompetence in the face of the disaster. One woman charged that she found a Greek crewman looting her cabin when she went to get her life jacket, and another claimed that a sailor had made a pass at her. Undoubtedly, many of the accusations were the result of passenger terror and hysteria and the fact that few of the crew spoke English, thus causing their intentions to be misconstrued. But it was evident that the fire-fighting procedures were inadequate and that many of the lifeboats had been lowered in panic with only crewmen aboard, leaving the passengers to fend for themselves on deck.

Captain Zarbis, true to the tradition of the sea, had been the last to leave his ship. Tearfully, he denied charges of misconduct. “There was no panic aboard my ship,” he said, “neither among the crew nor among the passengers. My crew did not try to jump into the lifeboats ahead of the passengers.” But the Greek Line ordered Zarbis and his officers to report immediately to the Lakonia’s home port of Piraeus, where the inquiry will be conducted.