150 rescued as ship hits iceberg
Foreign Desk Report

BUENOS AIRES—One hundred passengers and crew escaped unhurt after their cruise ship hit an iceberg in the Antarctic and started sinking, an Argentine coast guard official and the ship’s owner said on Friday.
A Norwegian passenger boat in the area picked up the occupants of the M/S Explorer from the lifeboats they used to escape the ship, which ran into problems off King George Island in Antarctica at 0524 GMT, the company running the ship said.
Captain Arnvid Hansen of the Norwegian cruise ship the Nordnorge, said he had successfully picked up all the passengers and crew from the stricken liner in lifeboats, and that they appeared to be in good health.“All are aboard my vessel,” he told Britain’s BBC television. “There are no afraid passengers or anything like that.” “Apparently they crashed into an iceberg,” Pedro Tuhay, of the Argentine coast guard, told local radio as operations continued to save the vessel. “The boat’s got a 23-degree list, but it’s keeping steady very well.”
Susan Hayes, a spokeswoman for Canada-based travel company Gap Adventures which owns the vessel, told CNN: “The ship was traveling out of Ushuaia in Argentina, traveling southbound to Antarctica, and off King George Island it hit some ice and began taking on some water,”
In a statement, the company said a total of 100 passengers and crew were on board the ship. Earlier reports had put the number at 154, but a spokesman said that was the ship’s maximum capacity.
It said the passengers included Americans, British, Canadians, Australians, Dutch, Japanese, Argentines and other nationalities. The ship, built in 1969, was carrying 85 passengers and 15 crew on a cruise that was due to end by November 26, a company spokesman said. The Explorer usually makes two-week cruises around the Antarctic, costing around 4,000 pounds ($8,000) per cabin. Smaller than most cruise ships, the ship is able to enter narrower bays off the barren continent.
King George Island lies about 700 miles south of Cape Horn, the tip of South America, and is the largest of the South Shetland islands. Cruise trip travel has grown in Antarctica in recent years and Tuhay said 52 cruises were expected at the southern port of Ushuaia during this year’s peak season from October to April. A Norwegian cruise ship ran aground in the Antarctic earlier this year in the region and its passengers were carried to Argentina on another ship.
A Canadian cruise ship struck submerged ice off Antarctica and began taking on water, but all 154 passengers and crew took to lifeboats and were rescued safely Friday by a passing Norwegian liner, officials said.
On calm seas, the Explorer passengers and crew were safely moved from rubber boats in subfreezing temperatures to the Nordnorge, a Norwegian cruise ship that was nearby and responded to the distress call, said Susan Hayes of G.A.P. Adventures of Toronto, which owns the stricken vessel. The 91 passengers from 14 countries included at least 13 Americans, 22 Britons, 17 Dutch and 10 Canadians, officials said. In addition to the passengers, there were nine expedition staff members and a crew of 54, Hayes said. “The ship ran into some ice. It was submerged ice and the result was a hole about the size of a fist in the side of the hull so it began taking on water ... but quite slowly,” she said. “The passengers are absolutely fine. They’re all accounted for, no injuries whatsoever.”
She called the evacuation process “calm,” and said pumps were able to deal with incoming water until the Nordnorge arrived.
The Explorer was completing an ecological tour of Antarctica when it struck the ice, Hayes said.
She said the ship was listing at about 40 degrees and is in danger of sinking. “There is a possibility we may lose the ship,” she said. The British coast guard said it was told at 12:24 a.m. EST of the incident involving the 2,646-ton Explorer near the South Shetland Islands and Graham Land, an Antarctic peninsula.