A Tragic End for Day Trippers

By Michael S. Serrill

The North Sea harbor was calm but cold at 7:50 p.m. as the ferry Herald of Free Enterprise pulled out of the slip at Zeebrugge, Belgium, to begin its regular 85-mile run to the British port of Dover. Darkness had just fallen, and the 543 passengers and crew, most of them British, were settling in for the 4 1/2-hour journey. Some were day trippers returning to Dover after a promotional tour sponsored by the Sun, a London tabloid. Others were British soldiers on leave from their units in West Germany. The ferry was about three- fourths of a mile from the harbor when something went very wrong. "All of a sudden there was the shock of the boat shaking and listing," recalled Passenger Rosina Summerfield. "It continued to fall over until it was completely flat on its side. The people were screaming."

As the vessel rolled over, hundreds of passengers were hurled about interior waiting rooms, restaurants, bars and duty-free shops. "We were trying to find things to hang on to," said Maureen Bennett of Sussex. "It was so frightening." Said Clifford Byrnes of Coventry: "It all happened in a minute. Glasses started sliding on the tops of tables and then smashing. People began falling down. You could see the water through the portholes. Then the lights went out. Everyone started shouting."

The ferry capsized so suddenly that the crew did not even have time to send out an SOS. Crewmen from a nearby dredging tug sounded the alarm, then scrambled aboard the upturned starboard side of the disabled Herald. They hacked holes through the double-glazed porthole windows and began lowering ropes to pull passengers out of the maze of inner compartments, which were quickly filling with ice-cold sea water. A flotilla of small boats soon surrounded the upended ship, and seamen searched for passengers who had been hurled into the water from open upper decks. Susan Hames of Coventry, who was pitched overboard, said a little girl was in the water with her. The terrified youngster cried, "I'm going to die, and I've been ever such a good girl. I've never told any lies." The girl survived.

Within the first hours of the accident, more than 400 passengers and crew members were pulled to safety in an exceptional rescue operation. The bodies of 51 people were recovered, but 84 others are missing and presumed dead. The toll made the mishap the worst peacetime ship disaster in the history of English Channel shipping.

For the first couple of hours of the frantic rescue effort, officials held out hope that passengers might still be alive in air pockets inside the vessel. But doctors pointed out that potentially deadly hypothermia sets in soon after submersion in icy water, and by the time the rescue operation was suspended early Saturday morning, no real hope remained for those who had not been found.

Survivors told tales of heroism and almost miraculous rescues. William Cardwell was trapped on an upper deck when he saw a man carrying a baby to safety. "I saw one man climbing up seats with a small baby in his teeth," he recounted. "It was unbelievable." Cardwell had been trying to break through a window to escape when the man with the baby came up along with two other children. "It was pitch dark and freezing cold," he said. "We took turns rubbing the baby to keep it warm." Finally a helicopter dropped them a line, pulled up the man and child and took them to the hospital.

Dozens of ambulances, their blue lights flashing, lined up at the quays nearest the ferry, waiting for survivors to be pulled out. The injured were transported to nearby hospitals, some in critical condition. There they were consoled by Belgian Prime Minister Wilfried Martens, Belgian King Baudouin and Queen Fabiola and, on Saturday, by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who helicoptered to Zeebrugge. Said she: "The rescue effort was highly professional, skillful and very, very courageous."

Trying to figure out what had happened, officials speculated that the 7,951-ton ferry, which was built in 1980, struck the Zeebrugge harbor wall or a sandbar as it made its way out of the port. But surviving passengers did not report feeling any sudden impact. Whatever happened, the bow doors of the cavernous vehicle deck, which was holding 88 cars and 36 trucks, suddenly swung open. The car deck flooded, causing the vessel to tip over. Peter Ford, managing director at Townsend Thoresen, the British company that owns the Herald of Free Enterprise, acknowledged that "somehow the doors burst open and the water rushed in."

Some 250 giant ferries carry cargo and passengers between the British coast and half a dozen ports in France, Belgium and Holland. The vessels have sometimes been criticized by safety experts, who say that the open holding bays for cars and trucks make the ships very unstable if they are flooded. Before the Herald disaster, there had been six ferry accidents in the English Channel region in the past five years, causing ten deaths. But British Shipping Minister Lord Brabazon insisted that the "ferries have a very good safety record. There are more than 200 crossings every day with very, very few accidents." Cold comfort indeed for those aboard the doomed Herald.

With reporting by Christopher Ogden/London and B.J. Phillips/Zeebrugge