Soviet cruise liner sinks with Putin on board in NZ - MS Mikhail Lermontov 1986

[Music] the Mel Lov a Soviet ship 1986 in our Waters John this is a fascinating story because we can know so much about it but we're left with so many wise with a lot of significant incidents or accidents in human history there's always been just a kernel of mystery lying at the middle of it and this is an example of that I think it's safe to say that human Folly was to blame here shipwrecks I suppose can be divided into three kinds there's the sort that happened due to an act of God when God stirs up the weather a bit or puts rocks in the wrong places or that kind of thing there are those arising from human error and there are those arising just from Human foolishness we've seen an example of that in recent times with Costa Concordia just one Sea Captain's desire to impress another sea captain by sailing his ship really close to the beach went horribly wrong the M Lov on the face of it and I'm not sure we'll ever know any more than what's on the face of it is very similar to the Costa Concordia one doesn't usually associate cruise liners with the Soviet regime but there we are yes they had them yeah they did they they were pretty good ship Builders back in the day there were five of these things absolutely beautiful vessel too she was originally commissioned as a passenger liner as opposed to a cruise liner a passenger liner was there as a mode of transport to get people from one place to another and her intended role was to carry people from Leningrad as it was then to New York it soon occurred to the Soviet government that they were sitting on a gold mine with this beautiful ship if they turned her into a pleasure boat a big ship one and a half football fields long 20,000 tons she dwarfs the inter island fairies which Cruise in the same bit of water as she was cruising on the fateful day because she's a cruise liner she's only got one class and that is luxury she's catering to the well to-do and she was appointed accordingly absolutely glorious her cabins and her bars and all her facilities were perfectly Sumptuous she was going to skirt the coast of New Zealand starting up in the north and then making a way down touching at Wellington bit of a cruise in the sounds and then out and down the west coast to mil sound whereupon she'd then crossed the tasmin to Australia and complete her Voyage over there she had been to Wellington and she left at midnight on the 15th of February 1986 uh she headed across the street and instead of going in the top of Queen Charlotte sound which was usual for a large vessel it was decided that she would go through Tory Channel this is the first remarkable thing about what she did in that fateful 24 hours it's a very very narrow piece of ocean you have to to sort of maneuver the ship very tightly to get around the dog leg anyone who's been aboard the inter island fairies will have been impressed by how big the ship looks and how small the channel looks as you go through there needless to say the ma Lov is much bigger it was going to take quite a feet of seamanship just to get her through there safely why they did it is again one of these little Mysteries it's believed that they did it so that there was a bit of a photo opportunity for the ship's agents stopped at picked in the passengers of more than 700 there were 408 passengers but together with the crew it made for a total of 738 people I'm not clear whether that 738 people aboard includes the two locals who were aboard Captain Don Jamerson who becomes Infamous in this account and his assistant GF Neil the deputy Harbor Master jamson himself was the malur Harbor Master and he was the picked in Pilot and they were both aboard for the purposes of piloting the boat out Neil was learning the business of piloting he was due to get off the ship in New Zealand Waters and go back to his home Port of pton jamson was staying AB board and heading on to Sydney the captain a very important figure in this Captain vladislav vov he was 48 and he was pretty experienced he wasn't the Mel lov's regular Captain uh that man was on leave but he had previously commanded her as a relieving captain and he was perfectly competent to do it he had beneath them a very experienced and competent set of officers in particular on the bridge when all the action takes place there's a man named Sergey gurv the second mate and appears to have been a very competent officer very experienced compliment of officers and the crew seem to have been pretty good at their jobs as well Don Jameson is the pilot what does he have to do for people that don't understand the work of Pilots the pilot is the expert in local Waters when a foreign goinging vessel enters Foreign Waters they should take aboard a pilot who being an expert in what's going on where everything is the local conditions that kind of thing will bring the ship safely into Port he isn't in command of the vessel he works in consultation with the ship's officers to ensure that the correct courses are steered and the correct courses of action are taken so that's really Don jamson's job he's not there to boss everyone around aboard this vessel he's there to give them expert advice on how to handle their ship in these Waters he boarded sometime during the day and in fact attended a small function that was held aboard where alcohol was served this may or may not be significant he was bored for most of the afternoon she had arrived at pikon at 6:45 in the morning and she was due to leave in later part of the afternoon the weather forecast not too bad there was a bit of a blow in [ __ ] state it was blowing up to around 25 knots which isn't that significant in terms of [ __ ] straight there was rain in the forecast so visibility was expected to shut down every now and again in the showers but all in all not a bad forecast either and this thing has been described as bristling with Aerials because she had lots of radar depth Sounders you name it she was pretty good at finding her position even in the worst of conditions a very modern well equipped ship and an experienced pilot although he does become infamous doesn't he he'd been serving as the malor Harbor Master since 1970 he had even worked with Soviet vessels and crew and he worked with the sistership of the ma Lov Alexander Pushkin had had experience both with Soviet people and with Soviet ships in these Waters he was claimed to know this place like the back of his hand he' contributed to a cruising guide which had very detailed information for boties on exactly what was going on around Queen charlott sound Cape Jackson the whole area that this trip traverses well the Pilot's guidance of this ship ends up being most he was a Harbor Master for of pikon he was the person with local knowledge he should have experience and trusted him according to his testimony before the inquiry and there seems to have been a bit of corroborating evidence as well he had had three standard alcoholic drinks in the course of this function which was 3 hours before the maau Lov sailed at 3:00 in the afternoon and many hours before the crucial decision- making takes place so it's reasonably safe to assume that unless all parties are lying he wasn't influenced by alcohol he claimed that he was very tired that he'd been overworked prior to this uh but there's been evidence uced to show that that was not necessarily the case uh in fact the presence of this man GF Neil aboard his Deputy had greatly alleviated the work stress on jamson so while he had been overworked in the past the period for roughly a month leading up to this Mish Jameson was actually less hardw worked from some passengers testimony almost immediately this huge liner left pikon they were saying it was lurching they were very very close to the fena on some occasions have you heard this yeah it's pretty well documented there seems to have been a policy agreed between both jamson and the captain that they should sail very close into Shore in order to give the passengers a real treat in terms of a closeup View the scenery now the sounds are very deep it's a drowned River Valley so they very of steep Bush clad walls dropping into the water they mostly continue to drop straight down there are a few exceptions to that of course and these prove to be critical as the story progresses but on the whole the impression that you can get is that you're right on the shoreline when you're sailing along in the sounds you may be quite close but you're actually in very deep water jamson seems to have decided that he would really treat the passengers by sailing as close to the shore as he felt felt comfortable doing they began this right away no sooner had they left Picton than they went to Shakespeare Bay which is quite close by to have a look at the Edwin Fox which was a celebrity shipwreck in the course of that he discovered that Mel Lov didn't maneuver that well her bow thruster didn't answer his command he actually came pretty close to running the shiper ground even there he reckoned he was only about 30 m offshore and at right angles to it when one of his Maneuvers there went slightly wrong that should have been a bit of a you would have thought that he might not be that well advised to take liberties with the handling of this vessel he was also giving a running commentary to the passengers almost like a tour guide he was very proud of this spit of water and the Landscapes around it he was on the PA as they were cruising very close to the Shoreline up Queen Charlotte sound and telling the passengers about SS of Interest yeah he was playing the tour bus driver and meanwhile the captain had left the deck the captain obviously trusted him intimately the officers apparently were very impressed with the way he' handled the ship so they clearly decided this bloke knows what he's doing and that explains a lot about the amount of trust that was placed in him by the officers as they were going along Queen charlott's Hound that's the deal with ships and Pilots though that's what pilots are for you trust them they are the locals yes but they don't assume command of the vessel jamson was effectively in command of this vessel although there were two senior officers up there with him he had the second mate and he had the chief navigating officer they were basically outside the conversation that was going on between jamson and the Helmsman so jamson was literally in command of this vessel he was telling the Helmsman where to steer and the Helmsman was steering there that is not usual that's abreg of the responsibility of the ship's officers to place quite that amount of control in the hands of the pilot although I'm sure it's not that uncommon if you can going out of one of the malur sounds hugging the coast at the Headland of the sound off the rocky Headland a little way out a few hundred meters by the looks there's a lighthouse on a rock now he's going up and says keep turning left he's trying to get in between the lighthouse and the Rocks this does scare people doesn't it and why is he doing it who knows why He's doing it it was clearly his own initiative because under instructions from the captain the navigating officer had chartered a course of 40° to take the ma Lov clear out of the top of Queen Charlotte sound from ship Cove which was their last little sightseeing Port of Call they followed that course mostly they went inside motara Island which is actually pretty close to the land itself and people who saw this done had lived in the area for many years they'd never seen it done by large vessels before let alone a vessel of the maau to's Dimensions probably so impressed with the reactions of people when they went through Tory Channel he thought I can go one better even than that there's a fine line and unfortunately he crossed it they sailed very close to anakata Bay where a family that had lived there for around 20 years watched it Sail by and was so impressed they even radioed the bridge to say Christ that looks amazing ship that size that close in never seen that before and they wish Jameson who was answering this call a very safe and pleasant journey that was at 5:30 in the afternoon jamson seems to have made an impulsive decision as you say to steer between Cape Jackson which is part of the Mainland and this little offshore Rock which has a beacon on it called Jackson's head Beacon he in his testimony said that he hadd been through there many times and he' fished there many times before he knew the bit of water very well it was wide easily wide enough to go through it was about 500 meters wide he recalled and it was much deeper than the draft of the ma Lov at its shallowest points he was tragically wrong about that it was much narrower than 500 M and the reason the beacon was on that offshore Rock was because that was the outer limit of an area of what Mariners know as foul ground it's area that's sort of up and down and it's very close to the surface you can't sail over it three ships had been known to have tried in the past and that' all come to grief there as the captains of the lastingham the Roto and the hippis could attest this was a nasty bit of water very tidal and shallow ground what was he thinking yeah what was he thinking uh I understand one of the things he was thinking was being pretty keen on telling the story of those shipwrecks to the people as they went through what huis I'm sorry to say yeah it's a bad look in light of subsequent events it it really is he was still on the PA although he apparently hung up the PA and said he'd finished just before they headed through this bit of water he told the story of those shipwrecks basically gave them a sneak preview of what they were about to experience he definitely seems to have been Keen to give them a real close encounter with the land those aboard are experienced crew they have a trust in a pilate but there would be a Sean's Instinct wouldn't there about sailing between que a lighthouse and the land yeah it's Unthinkable in many ways all the way up from Picton apparently there had been nervousness on the bridge at how close they were and twice while he himself was on the bridge the captain had asked jeson to maneuver further away from Land jamson had replied on each occasion there's plenty of water there's nothing to worry about as they executed this reasonably sharp turn to port to go between the lighthouse and Cape Jackson the navigating officer and the second officer both questioned the decision and were pretty unhappy at what he was proposing to do but again he reassured them nothing to worry about and this is the captain of the M lto my officer was placed in difficult situation when my officer is my opinion when my officer understood that is some danger situation they have no time and place to abort s 1937 the ship struck and it's described as three big jolts into trembling she began to list to Star it almost immediately and that led the gashes in the hole there are three of them are all on the port side so it seems pretty likely that she failed a rock by the port passengers Apparently one or two of them had seen what was going to happen one of them an Australian guy turned to his wife and said geez if this [ __ ] doesn't hit the Rocks I'm going to eat my hat his hat was safe other passengers had remarked that they could see white water ahead shortly before she struck and immediately after she struck passengers reported seeing seaweed mud sand and rocks in the propeller wash she'd just basically ridden straight over a reef this would have alerted the captain now one of the Mysteries is what the hell the captain was up to he left the bridge at around 4:30 in the afternoon his reason for doing that was that he was cold and wet it was raining he had been out on deck he might have got cold and wet if he hadn't worn as wetes who knows why he wouldn't he was below for well over an hour when the vessel struck and if he meant simply to have a shower and a change of clothes he was pretty slow about it that's one mystery another mystery is that they were at the limit of the Pilot's responsibility each chart of a port has a line drawn on it which shows where the pilot is responsible and where the captain's responsible Kate Jackson lies beyond the Pilot's responsibility although it seems to have been agreed that Jameson would hand over to the captain after they passed Cape Jackson but yes as you say there is no clearer signal to a sea captain that his vessel is in trouble than the sound of his vessel hitting the bricks as uh boties tend to say the captain arrived on the bridge pretty smartly he apparently asked what happened several times and jamson replied on each occasion he was white and shaking I don't know I don't know oh dear oh dear just a thought what the result may have been if the captain or the crew had acted on their instincts took over from the pilot whom they thought might have been taking too big a risk steered it to starboard instead of port and hit the rocks on the starboard side they would be completely lambasted as being irresponsible and not letting the pilot do the job that is a good thought and it's true as well I guess the person calling the shots was always going to be the one in the gun and Jameson was indisputably in charge here because the captain wasn't even on the bridge it's a tantalizing what might have been in many ways the result for the ship would have been a little different she was in an area where she probably couldn't help but hit something because the pilot had got her into that position Captain vladislav Moro of the maau liov when I came out the bridge Captain Jameson tried to give command to Hellman 10° for I said stop and and start to and hand over the command The Vessel my myself there was loss of life almost immediately apparently tons and tons of water coming aboard very quickly and a man in the refrigeration compartment she struck absolutely adjacent to the area where the refrigeration equipment was housed the 33-year-old Refrigeration engineer paval zadov was on station there and he was never seen again he probably died more or less instantly because the breach in the hle was right there and very shortly after the hull was breached the watertight doors were closed so if he didn't die instantly he would have died very shortly afterwards the effect of this is to tear a big hole in the hole and is so often the way with these modern hulls they're divided into watertight compartments the ship will retain buoyancy so long as a certain number of watertight compartments are uncompromised is this so often the way you hit a sh in the right way against the right thing and you overcome that safety measure as reports became available to the captain it was clear that this ship was not going to float for much longer he estimated he had 2 hours it was pretty certain at that point that the ship was going to go down he immediately not immediately actually it took half an hour but half an hour after she struck at 1 minute past 6 he issued a Mayday which indicated that he believed that the life of those aboard the Mel Lov was in immediate danger he therefore requested assistance I asked him to help me to send the May Day and he carry out it I did not canel he was having difficulty establishing radio contact it's very high land down in the sounds that can cause all sorts of problems for radio telephones he was having trouble getting Wellington radio or pton radio for that matter and in fact he ended up establishing his most Rel contact with the baker family who had a farm nearby in fact right on Cape Jackson that merrily watched the ma Lov Sail by and then heard on their radio that she was issuing a Mayday very shortly afterwards they buzzed to the top of the rid line on their trail bikes and they could actually see her just offshore with a significant list to starboard developing and going down by the head so they were no doubt that this F was an enormous danger the m has been issued and fair enough you're on the side of safety with so many passengers aboard and we should also mention their average age about 70 as well yeah apparently the average age was 70 and that's really long in the tooth in many ways when you suddenly rely on people's agility to save themselves we've often mentioned just how difficult it is to launch and navigate lifeboats and then even to get into the damn things it's so much worse when people are not capable and reasonably agile May Day at 6:00 there are these other ships that are in the area and they do what is the duty of the sea they they come to Aid immediately don't they that's right there were two reasonably handy there was the tariko which is a LPG tanker she was full of LPG so didn't really want to get too tangled up with sticky situations she was about 17 miles away but she responded immediately and began heading in that direction the arura which is one of the inter island fairies was in Tory Channel at that point and she immediately declared her intention to divert to the seen as well but then inexplicably to me this is almost worse than what got the ship into trouble in the first place the MayDay was cancelled I don't know whether this was a decision taken by the captain in consultation with Don jamson or whether it was Don jamson himself who seems to have been handling the comms but either way jamson cancelled the MayDay at 1819 less than 20 minutes after it was issued so in other words we're not in immediate danger of losing life here we're in trouble but we're not in immediate danger so as far as anyone was concerned as the M Lov had had a spot of bother that overreacted but now they were okay in the meantime her best option seemed to be to try to beach The Vessel so to find a shallow bit of water and ground her so that she wasn't going to sink and everyone could be fed off more or less at everyone's Leisure they were quite handy to Port Gore needless to say and that did have shallow water and so that's where they headed it's gives me a bit of a Qui feeling whatever the motive was from either man whoever decision it was it was Jameson that cancelled the MayDay it just not a good look is it it's like hoping that this isn't going to be so bad let's not alert people to an awful mistake just in case we can get away with it and what follows there seems to have been a definite attempt to try to mitigate the damage they're not going to save the ship they're both convinced of that but they might be able to get her into a position where she can be salvaged but they primary concern is to make sure they can get into a position where they themselves can get the passengers off without any outside assistance and in that way just mitigate the disaster that this is clearly in danger of becoming they seem to have decided this course of action was tenable because Port Gore was close the M Lov could make 15 knots and at the stage she had full power so they began steaming in that direction and they were probably confident that the next thing that would happen is she'd settle gently into the sand and mud and they could set about making things less bad than they could be however a report began reaching the captain that water was coming through a bulkhead behind the switchboard the switchboard comprised two halves each duplicating the other so that if power was lost or anything happened to one half of the switchboard the other half could maintain the function trouble was this crack had opened up right behind the switchboard and was spraying both halves and it was getting worse I tried to to approach to reach this sand beach but when I increase speed increasing penetration the sea water in the engine room it appeared to be getting worse because they were going at 15 knots so they slowed down almost immediately after they performed that the water killed the electrics which killed the motors and killed pretty much everything aboard except emergency lighting and the radios we actually have some recording of Don Jameson's voice from aboard the M [Music] Li um with regards to um you know evacuating these people um do we need to use their boats or ours they're getting people into the boats now um I think I think probably better to keep them alongside and transfer them straight to you when you the captain is now trying to seek the safety of at least kind of beaching her in a difficult place to do it but she's got to be maneuverable to do that advents and the the the level of damage to the ship didn't allow him to do that there's some uncertainty as to whether she actually grounded in Port Gore jamson and the captain both seemed to think that she had actually nosed onto the mud and sand bottom at the head of Port Gore if that's the case then the wise course of action would have been to let the anchors go it's been speculated that the reason this wasn't done was because there was no longer any power which would have been necessary to operate the anchors I don't think that can be true I think the anchors could have been mechanically operated in any case the anchors are still there undeployed with the wreck on the bottom so it clearly wasn't done and if she ever grounded then she soon drifted back out into deeper water and that's where she went down she was at the mercy of the ocean there wasn't she that's right she was just drifting at the mercy of whatever wind and Tide the only bit of good fortune they had in this whole thing really apart from the fact that they were in sheltered Waters is the master of the tariko decided he would ignore the cancellation of the MayDay and just get into the vicinity so he could see for himself what the situation was when he arrived at about 20 to8 in the evening he saw that that ship was going down she was leaning over to the starboard and she was down in the head that ship was sinking he took it upon himself to call for general assistance so despite the fact there's no mday at this point from the ma Lov he requested everyone who floats to get there as quickly as they can to try to save life the effect of that call probably was to save many many lives and also that goes against the code of the sea doesn't it you don't come to assistance if you're not asked there's no obligation to go to anyone's assistance if they're not asking for it and they canceled the MayDay he just went and had a bit of a scr and God bless him absolutely exactly that he was there at 9:00 just far enough away to keep an eye on things and close enough to render assistance if necessary and sure enough one of the lifeboats from the maau Lov arrived alongside with around 80 to 100 elderly and pretty frail people aboard this is a tanker it's not designed for picking people up at Sea so it would have been a difficult operation getting those people out of the water and onto the tariko but he managed it and sent the Lifeboat back the arura in response to the taro's call for assistance arrived at half 9 and she assumed responsibility for coordinating the rescue now the maau Lov is drifting both Yura and the Taho initially considered anchoring the Taho did she was in danger of being run down by the drifting M Lov and had to pull up her anchors and stand clear the arura on the advice of the tariko stood clear here but you've got these three massive shapes in a relatively confined Waterway with these frail little lifeboats plying between them even now that help was at hand it was still a pretty dangerous situation there's a strong Breeze blowing and visibility is very poor it's dark and it's raining by qu 10 the M Lov bow is pretty much underwater and she's listing fully 40° to starboard and that's a big lean anyone who's ever tried climbing a slippery piece of metal on a 40° angle could attest to just how difficult even now they're still evacuating passengers in these situations the life-saving technology becomes difficult to use because it's all dangling well clear of the vessel these poor old people were being asked to climb down rope ladders that were dangling away from the ship's hole there's a sea running and whatever small vessels they're climbing into sometimes they had to drop as much as 2 m to get into them they're itching and rolling in the sea as well it's all pretty dicey nobody knows if everybody's off or anything like that there was an erroneous report of how many were supposedly aboard put about it was thought at one stage that there were up to 990 people aboard that's 200 more than were genuinely aboard despite the fact that within an hour and a half of the vessel going down everyone was aboard a rescue craft or one sort or another there were conflicting reports about how many had been aboard and it was feared for a while that anything between 75 and 200 people were unaccounted for one passenger had been seen being washed off a Lifeboat he apparently been clinging on the outside and they couldn't persuade him to come inside and a wave knocked him off so he was known to be in the water he was lucky enough to be plucked from the Water by the TPO a naval vessel which arrived and he was in the advanced stages of hypothermia there was so much debris in the water life rafts and things had been seen still attached to the Maur of when she went underwater it was by no means certain that they had everyone safe and sound aboard a Ender to the man who was plucked from the water in an advanced state of hypothermia they spotted him because there was a light on the life jacket that's right I actually heard that he was in the water his light didn't work and he took it apart and put it back together and made it work while it was floating in the water that's a remarkable one if it's true yeah yeah okay M Lop sank CAU to 11 at night some testimony from passengers aboard M Lov the noise from the ship was was unbelievable you know the air hissing out of um ventilators and crashing of sounded like glass obviously bulkheads blowing with the pressure it was very very noisy explosions um great gushes of air hissing and squiring and whistling and and then all of a sudden the bubble stopped coming up and everything just went dead silent the headcount is done people make their way to safety and and eventually Wellington it's what happens in the wake of this and so many perplexing things that led to this tragedy was loss of life but remarkably only one man could have been so much worse very expensive ship was lost and that became source of concern and no one was found criminally liable for it all which in itself is quite remarkable there are conspiracy theories over this of course and it would be remiss of us not to Canvas them because they're good fun the moment she struck the captain's first order was to the radio officer and that was basically get me Vlados in other words put me in command with the Soviet headquarters the military headquarters what's more there was a whole lot of strained diplomatic toing and throwing between the New Zealand and Soviet governments longy caed gorbachov as it was then to say very sorry your ship has gone down in New Zealand Waters we'll hold an inquiry and we look forward to your full cooperation apparently the reply was thanks for your expression of sympathy Foreign Affairs noted the lack of a promise to provide full cooperation the ship had been described as bristling with Aerials so maybe she wasn't all that she seemed to be and it was widely believed in those days that of the crew of any Merchant vessel from the Soviet Union fully one quarter with KGB famously when the captain was taken into the inquiry he was photographed along with a man who Bears a striking resemblance to Vladimir Putin who is believed to have worked in the New Zealand Australia region as a KGB officer I think there's more than the grain of Truth to that and man it does look like there are statements by some Russians that the M Lov was sunk deliberately whether by the New Zealander on the orders of the New Zealand government or by the Soviet government they're not sure well the thing with the cold war is that the KGB were everywhere it doesn't matter where you go they were everywhere it was durur not necessarily conspiracy because everything was a conspiracy that's right and it has to be remembered that conspiracies were flavor of the month at that stage too because the rainbow Warrior had changed everything until the Rainbow Warrior no one believed that this kind of thing could happen in New Zealand foreign spy agencies doing strange things in New Zealand Waters after the Rainbow Warrior everything was possible it didn't sound too outlandish that there was some kind of sinister aspect to this tragedy as well there are a whole lot of things that are just weird about it but that weirdness probably just boils down to the inexplicability of the decision that jamson made to take the ship through that narrow Gap we'll never know why he did it he probably doesn't know himself I feel a lot of sympathy for him because lots of people do stupid stuff on mistaken beliefs mistaken sincerely held beliefs and the consequences are far less bad than this he was a bit of a broken man after this never really fronted to explain himself he told the inquiry he was overworked and made an error of judgment he wasn't overworked though was he well he was a tired man he was on leave that's why he was joining the ship to go to Sydney anyway so he was tired and he needed a break whether that accounts for it who knows one thing that fueled conspiracy theories is that there was never a formal inquiry there was only a preliminary inquiry and it found jamson had made a sudden decision to steer through that Gap as it opened up before him the police disputed that they said that there had to have been quite a lot of planning for him to have made the corrections to the course that were made the police thought there was something sinister about this Winston Peters thought there was something sinister about this and for about 10 years or so this thing just didn't go away there were books there were newspaper articles there were Whispers And barrooms the usual stuff all fueling the conspiracy but it seems quite clear that the New Zealand pilot was in control of this ship it was his decisions for whatever reason that's the annoying thing we don't get to the wise really we just know that he steered here into Harm's Way and there's no getting away from that is there no in the end I think you cannot avoid the conclusion that Don jamson was on a telephone call to Mr [ __ ] up at this point the Soviet captain of course CED a bit of Soviet Justice it never goes down well with bosses and and Soviet bosses a different to the ones that you and I know he was demoted and sent to a bit of a rusty wreck in Africa yeah it was standard practice to find someone Soviet responsible so that they could hang them out to dry there's some justice there because he had no right to be off the bridge or at least to be calling the shots so there's no way this pilot should have been allowed to go freelance in the way he was it's the captain's responsibility that he was probably no conspiracy just the Fateful decision of someone what do you reckon was going through Jameson's head when he said let's go between the lighthouse and the mainland I think he sincerely believed he had the water there and he justed believe that he'd give them one last close-up encounter with the New Zealand landscape before she sailed down the West Coast during the night and then arrived in the magnificence of Milford Sound it was his final flourish I think of what he regarded as a spectacular view of a country that he was very fond of and proud of I've never assumed that Pilots would do anything other than what is safe isn't that their job I mean I don't want to be too hard on this guy but he steered the ship to the Rocks I'm sorry the number one thing is safety isn't it's like an air traffic controller you don't do a barrel roll before you come into land it's a bit like a doctor too I guess the rule is first Do no harm you would have to think that safety is the sanon for a pilot and I'm sure that most Pilots stick to their nothing these days it's probably a lesson isn't it you get a little bit overconfident and uh but don't mess with the sea exactly right yeah Jameson is still alive living in malor it must haunt him I suppose yeah he's been retired since 2001 every time he looks out to see he must remember that day I feel very sorry for him I feel very sorry for pretty much everyone involved with us uh but in the end we make mistakes and we live with them do you make anything of the reports from the Soviet crew that he banged his head was feeling woozy was not able to stand upright properly do you remember those descriptions yeah one of the things he said in those defense was that when they had their little bit of maneuvering difficulty in Shakespeare Bay about 2 or 3 hours before this he fell over on the deck and may have struck his head and that may have affected his judgment no I don't believe so he was fully compos mous in providing a tour guide commentary and calling the shots as they ran along the coast it's just consistent with the policy he seems to have been pursuing to go nice and close to give everyone a good view and poor visibility and it did cost the life of a man how awful and a massive ship which is still there today have you dived her I've been on two trips to dive her in bad weathers turned us back both times I'll get there yet yeah dangerous dive apparently it silts up immediately you go inside I don't like going into [ __ ] rcks anyway as soon as you go inside you stir up the silt and you can't see anything anymore including the way out so you've got to know what you're doing John thank you very very much thanks gmee he was a Harbo Master work of pict he was a the person with local knowledge he should have experience this is London [Music] cour

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Length: 39min 19sec (2359 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 26 2024