The Story Of The Sea Diamond

major cruise ship accidents are incredibly rare and the full loss of a vessel is almost unheard of today there's been a handful of incidents over the last 20 to 30 years with most of them just forgotten as a kid I remember seeing photos of a large cruise ship listing on its side and slowly sinking with the remarkable backdrop of Greece it was the final moments for a ship which began Life as a fairy then converted into a cruise ship after its accidents in April 2007 the ship very slowly and rather frighteningly sank into the cold Waters of the Aegean Sea so let's find out what it was like on board from the perspective of a Survivor and how a modern day cruise ship sank in one of the most popular tourist destinations in the Mediterranean this is the story of the sea dive The Vessel began its life not as a cruise ship but as a passenger ferry in fact she was the first new build for the burka line a shipping company offering fairy cruises in the Baltic Sea the now named burka princess had been launched and delivered in 1986 to her new owners at the time the vessel was quite modern and tailored fit for Baltic cruising and legitimate Transportation with a small car deck able to fit around 80 passenger vehicles since she was meant to sail the Baltic Sea the hull was reinforced to 1A levels meaning some light ice in the way wouldn't be an issue with pretty nice Interiors the ship was put into service sailing more and more cruises through the 90s the Burke line was now shifting more towards Leisure salines and decided to bring the burqa princess in at the Lloyd Wharf Shipyard for pretty major Renovations over 30 million dollars was spent adding new interior spaces an outdoor pool and expanding the superstructure of the ship by late 1999 the burqa princess had come out looking quite different and and with more passenger cabins added and the cargo deck removed she was now a proper cruise ship burkaline put the ship on very short two nights and even 24-hour cruises between the major cities across the Baltic Sea she operated these routes until the early 2000s with not a ton of success ultimately the burqa lines wasn't seeing the financial results they wanted and ultimately put the burqa princess up for sale in January 2006. a greek-based Lewis cruises took the opportunity and purchased the ship renaming it to the MSC Diamond after some minor refurbishments the ship took to the Seas once again sea Diamond was now around 22 000 tons and 143 meters long or 470 feet for comparison she was almost the same length as the oceanos but nearly doubled it in tonnage in April 2007 the sea Diamond was embarking on a five-day cruise around the islands of Greece visiting ports like Mykonos Patmos and Rhodes and she was now making her way to the final port in their itinerary with 1195 passengers on board the sea Diamond was sailing to the Greek island of Santorini of those 1 200 passengers the majority were actually North American in fact there were a lot of kids on European school trips aboard among those was 16 year old Gabriella de Clemente originally from Montreal Canada who was traveling with her classmates on a two-week high school trip they would do a European trip every year and I got the I was the lucky one they decided to do a grease Cruise the ship I mean for the times was it was definitely small I was surprised how small it was um a little bit more old school um but it was nice uh just the rooms that we were in it was very much like two bunk beds I didn't have a pillow I remember that very vividly I had to sleep on my arm at the Helm of the sea Diamond was 35 year old Captain yayanas moranos who is in command of bringing the vessel into Port that afternoon it was April 5th 2007 and the ship was sailing into the waters near the island of Santorini at around 4 pm though the ship unexpectedly struck a high elevation of an underwater volcanic reef and we went into one of the conference rooms uh with our teachers and the plan was to discuss what the day and how we're going to get up to the island so as we were kind of all having this conversation we felt the boat like uh shake and make a really loud sound and we were like okay that's not normal we've never heard that before so we're walking out the door up like on the hallway and we're noticing that it kind of felt like we're walking uphill and I was like okay this isn't normal and then and we turn the corner and that's where like and you kind of heard like some commotion and and a lot of chatter as you're kind of walking through the hallway to to go back to the stairs but when we got to the stair area that's where we knew that something was obviously wrong because everyone was running freaking out the crew didn't know what to do the ship's Hall was immediately torn open sending enormous amounts of water into four breached watertight compartments and flooding a fifth the watertight doors were not closed while the ship was underway and weren't closed for another three minutes after the impact by the captain substantial damage had been dealt to the Sea diamonds Hull and with compartments flooding The Vessel began to list on her side as much as 12 degrees around 17 minutes after the Collision the captain finally alerted the authorities of the situation while other small boats in the area began making their way to the clearly stricken vessel with the aid of the Coast Guard and the small boats nearby the evacuation of all 1100 and 95 passengers and 400 crew had begun I remember that I'm like okay this is very serious when I saw this older man in just his underwear and none of the shower stomping just running through Paris I'm like okay I started panicking at that point and everything was very very tunnel vision after that yeah so we got our life jacket we ran back upstairs and we went outside to our muster station um and uh I remember like we were looking out and we just see we were seeing the mountains all around us and the boat was like swaying passengers had quickly made their way to the muster stations and soon populated the decks lifeboats and survival rafts were then launched with Gabriella on one of them so we got on the Lifeboat and that was I would say that was actually probably out of everything like all the scaredness that was the most scary just because the boat was um tilted so the light bulb actually can't go down straight right they had like maybe a little hole for a window but you couldn't really see much because you're kind of like inside really piled in as it's going down it's also swinging and like slamming into the boat and it would go down slowly and then like go down fast and then some points it's like this and other point just like that so that part was pretty scary because I'm like okay I don't know what's going on what if they like cut us down into the water [Applause] passengers and crew were also escaping the listing ship through the shell doors lower down climbing down rope platters to the water level where Boats were staged to assist the former vehicle bay door from when the ship was a cargo fairy was also opened up and hundreds of people were able to climb down the ramp to a small car ferry as passengers made their way back to shore the incredible disaster scene of what they had just gone off of was unfolding in real time the sea Diamond's bow was very slowly sinking into the water Not only was it an incredible sight for passengers but for everyone on land as well sea Diamond was now sinking in one of the busiest tourist spots in all of Greece and people watched from the top of the beautiful Cliffs as the ship slowly drifted out of control in fact during the evacuation the ship had drifted towards the Towering Cliffs ultimately making contact with one right next to the delenda Tower Castle it was pretty uh it was pretty surreal and it was pretty traumatizing to kind of go through and experience in just a few hours nearly all passengers and crew had been safely evacuated off the ship while around 30 Crews stayed behind to try and facilitate an attempted Salvage of the diamond with the assistance of tugboats the cruise ship was brought down the coast and left in a bay while the company sorted out who would be in charge to salvage the ship the whole point of bringing it down the coast was to try and Beach it on the shores of the new Bay by this point the flooding had largely been contained as the sea Diamond looked to be in a salvageable State however as night fell and no meaningful attempts to save the ship were made water continued to slowly penetrate the compartments now it's not entirely publicly known how this happened but the rolling of the vessel likely allowed the sea to enter non-watertight areas one Stacks within the superstructure began to flood and water reached the former car deck there was likely no stopping it through the night the sea Diamond took on more and more water and ultimately rolled further on her starboard side in the pitch black these rather terrifying images captured the moment this began to happen once the water reached non-watertight areas of the superstructure the weight of all of it pulled her further down in a matter of hours the ship had fully capsized and by first light only the bulbous bow was now above water finally at around 7 am the sea Diamond had made her final plunge nearly everyone on board had been safely evacuated the total number of people on board has changed basically between every publication but in total at least 1 600 people were saved however two French passengers a father and daughter were unaccounted for and presumed dead their cabin was on the lowest passenger deck and according to the mother who actually did survive their cabin rapidly filled with water several attempts were made to cover their bodies but they were never found with the death of two passengers and the loss of an entire cruise ship questions were obviously asked about how this all happened blame was almost immediately put on the captain since the underwater Reef that the ship struck was very well mapped on the bridge the captain testified that he did review their course and through the investigation it was found that the nautical charts being used were showing the wrong information in fact the maps were displaying The Reef around 73 meters away from where it actually was there were also reports of a navigator not being present on the bridge at the time of the accident and even the passengers had some negative suspicions we did have a captain's mate the the night before it happened and he was partying with a lot of the passengers like he was he was really there that it was very much Captain tonight and he got really drunk so when it happened the next day and then we heard that he was drunk or he kind of like was and didn't take accountability like the past like we weren't surprised the ship was unknowingly and according to investigators recklessly placed in the worst position possible sailing a course that would seal a critical fate for the vessel ultimately 14 people were charged 10 of which made it to trial the captain was one of them and received the harshest sentence of 12 years and two months sent to jail with causing a cruise ship accidents negligence resulting in manslaughter and marine pollution indeed pollution was a big issue immediately following the accidents sea diamonds still had another day worth of a cruise and she was filled with fuel due to the collision at least one of the fuel tanks were ruptured and allowed petroleum to leak out around 300 tons worth but that wasn't the only environmental concern despite the ship sinking in whole it was potentially allowing hazardous materials to leak out over time by June the ship's owners Lewis cruises was charged over 1 million Euros for the accident and was ordered to clean up the spill and drain the remaining fuel from the tanks it wouldn't be until 2009 when that would actually happen though as the company was waiting for their insurance money from the loss to come in ultimately the survivors were slowly transported back to where they came from most losing everything they had on board and Lewis cruises weren't exactly the most compensating most of my wardrobe was in there and I bought so many gifts I had all my money as well um just thinking about like wow all of that is is lost I literally had nothing on me except for a few items in in my in my purse they gave us some money I think I think it was 200 Euros I'm not a hundred percent sure either 200 or 500 yards if I remember exactly it just wasn't enough to compensate for everything that we lost and also the amount of money that I had on me to kind of get me through the rest of the rest of the trip yeah that was that was what we were uh what we were left with by the conclusion of 2007 the ship would claim the life of one more person a 44 year old diver who was inspecting the wreck for the investigation and had succumbed to decompression sickness initially the Greek government wanted the wreck removed but the sea Diamond was laying on her side and badly damaged by the underwater plunge so this wasn't going to be an easy task at the shallowest point the wreck was around 200 feet underwater while the stern was laying much lower at around 600 feet with all of these factors weighing heavily on the actual cost to remove it the Greek government declared it just too expensive the 150 million euro price tag to remove the 22 000 ton cruise ship was just too great for them and a lengthy Court battle then ensued with the government very rightfully passing the responsibility to the cruise line and their insurers a resolution was never reached though and this was all while the sea Diamond began to corrode underwater releasing harmful chemicals and hazardous substances into the sea a sample of fish caught in the area revealed that traces of concentrated toxic metals like cadmium and Mercury were found inside them these of course were all traced back to the sinking of the sea Diamond as years passed the fight for the Rex removal continued on with complaints filed against Greece to the European Union in 2014 the matter was once again brought to court and was ultimately ruled that it was indeed the responsibility of the cruise line to pay for the Rex removal it was of course appealed by the company and brought the whole lawsuit into further litigation hell this was all while the rec location had surface markers and had a large circle of skimmers to Mark the sights it was the only way you could tell what was below and even years later you can see the visible oil oil surfacing within it for several more years the public demanded action and environmental groups reiterated their fears see Not only was the ship slowly releasing harmful substances as a Decay to where it was but to make matters much worse the sea Diamond was laying on what was essentially an underwater Cliff the fear is that one day the wreck could slide off this cliff and break up on its fall down releasing a devastating amount of pollution into the heavily protected Waters of the Mediterranean so in 2017 the government took action once again forming a committee to find a way to raise the wreck but still time passed and nothing had been done and that brings us to today with the sea Diamond still a very contentious and aggravating topic especially for those who live on Santorini even today community members come together to protest the removal of the wreck which continues to get increasingly more complicated it's now been over 50 15 years since the sea Diamond sank while it was a big news story of the time especially for the local areas where groups of students and passengers were from the story has mostly faded away I know for me it was just a memory of some images with the vessel dramatically sinking it was no doubt a terrifying situation with a harrowing Escape for over a thousand passengers and of course a tragic resting place for the other two but I never considered the long-term issues this might have when you think about it though it makes a lot of sense there's a lot of stuff that's inside cruise ships and when something like that is completely submerged in Open Water it will Decay and corrode over time ultimately that decay enters the water and when it's so close to land and is in a particularly protected part of the world that causes major issues and with the company who actually owns it fighting tooth and nail to absolve themselves of responsibility it falls to the government to figure out this whole mess it also doesn't help that Greece was in a a financial crisis at this time as well while the story has largely faded away the mess it has created is still fresh on everyone's mind who lives on the island so in the end the sinking may not actually be the Legacy this cruise ship leaves behind the sea Diamond might now forever be known as how it affects lives today not for what it was sailing the Mediterranean but for what it is at the bottom [Music] please foreign [Music]

Channel: Bright Sun Films

Views: 1,181,619

Keywords: cruise ship, ship disaster, cruise ship sinking caught on tape, sinking ship, interview, sea dimond, Greece ship sinking, oceanos ship, costa concordia, ship video, documentary, ship photo, rare footage, PG, 4K, new documentary, disaster, real footage, Americans cruise ship, birka princess, bright sun films, Jake williams, bright sun travels, cruise industry, story of

Id: cIELIzvjiWA

Length: 18min 8sec (1088 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 16 2022