Original subtitles

(narrator): Off South Africa's Wild Coast,

a dream voyage descends into crisis.

(worried chatter)

When a violent storm pummels a luxury cruise liner.

- Massive seas.

I'd never seen anything like it.

(narrator): A catastrophic equipment failure...

(electric powering down)

...plunges 571 passengers and crew

into total darkness.

- Suddenly, it was flooding.

When I saw that much water,

I knew that the ship was going to go

to the bottom of the ocean.

(narrator): But the ship's leadership

is nowhere to be found.

- Where the heck is everybody at?

- The bridge was completely abandoned.

- None of the passengers knew what was going on.

(passenger): What is happening?

(narrator): The passengers' lives rest in the hands

of the ship's entertainers.

- I'm a guitarist.

Next thing, I was running a helicopter rescue station.

- There was nobody else to do it.

This was absolute chaos.

(narrator): The Oceanos disaster

is one of the most extraordinary rescue missions

in maritime history.

But according to investigators, it should never have happened.

- I'd never seen a disaster of that nature before.

(theme music)

(rhythmic music)

(narrator): South Africa's East Coast is a magnet for tourists.

And one of the best ways to experience its rugged beauty

is aboard a luxury cruise ship.

- In nice weather, it's gorgeous, stunning.

(narrator): But the 250-kilometre section

known as the Wild Coast

is one of the most treacherous stretches of ocean

on the planet.

- The Wild Coast of South Africa is a graveyard.

Thousands of ships have been lost throughout history

on this coast.

- Probably the craziest bit of ocean

that you'll get anywhere in the world.

- The southeast coast of Africa

is well known for the Agulhas current;

famous strong ocean current

that makes its way down along the Indian Ocean

and the result is quite often rapidly forming storms.

It is an area that requires extreme caution in navigation.

It's not a place for any novice or amateur.

(narrator): On August 3, 1991,

the Greek cruise ship MTS Oceanos

prepares to sail from East London

with 571 people on board.

Once a mixed-use vessel for passengers and cargo,

the 153-metre ship has been refitted as a cruise liner.

- The plan was to head east to Durban

and then up the Mozambique channel to the Indian Ocean.

(narrator): On board is cruise director Lorraine Betts,

who's been working on the Oceanos for five weeks.

- As the cruise director,

I was in charge of the entertainment team.

We'd have dancers, we'd have musicians.

Um, yeah, it was a great job.

(narrator): Providing the entertainment for the guests

is musician Moss Hills and his wife Tracy.

(M.C.): Welcome on stage Moss and Tracy! Yay!

- My wife Tracy and I are musicians

and we were playing as a duo aboard the Oceanos

just to sing in different venues and play music on the pool deck

and in the lounges and just entertain people.

I loved the gig and I love working at sea.

But on that day,

I remember walking across the pier to board the ship

and the winds were really strong.

(dramatic music)

And thinking, "Wow, the ship's really going to be

rocking around a lot tonight."

(indistinct radio chatter)

(narrator): On the bridge,

Captain Yiannis Avranas prepares to leave port.

A mariner with 30 years' experience at sea,

he delays departure, hoping for the heavy weather to break.

- It's ultimately the captain's decision

whether the ship sails or not.

Before the vessel actually leaves,

the captain contacts the shore authority

for any information that he can get.

- This is Captain Yannis...

(Chris): And quite often,

depending on the type of ship, such as the Oceanos,

there's a schedule to meet

and there are commercial obligations and requirements.

That still does not preclude or prevent the master

from making his own decision on whether to proceed or not.

And in this case, the captain of the Oceanos

decided that it was fit to proceed.

- 10-4.

(narrator): Before the voyage,

Cruise Director Lorraine Betts raises a concern on board.

- I did a walkabout with my staff and I noticed that

the lower decks were smelling of sewage.

So I told the chief engineer that he needed to fix it

and that was it.

- Okay, thank you.

(narrator): Late afternoon,

the Oceanos sets sail from East London,

bound for Durban.

(Moss): When the ship's sailing away from a port,

quite often we'll play music on the pool deck

and have a sail away party and it's such a great vibe.

But because the weather was really rough,

it was decided to move that sail away party indoors

into one of the lounges.

We had a little conga line going,

but the winds just got stronger and stronger.

A lot of guests were feeling the motion

and as the ship was rolling around,

they were feeling a little seasick.

So we had the sail away party.

It wasn't great, but we did it.

(winds whooshing)

(narrator): By nightfall,

conditions have deteriorated further.

The Oceanos is battling nearly 30-foot swells

and gale-force winds.

(radar beeping)

- It's looking a little rough there, captain.

- A little.

(suspenseful music)

- That evening, we could feel the ship

really rolling around a lot,

and we could hear guests sort of shrieking

as the ship was rolling

and a couple of trays being dropped,

which is very unusual.

I can't stand in front of the microphone.

I was concerned that we would not be able

to perform that night,

so I found some rope

and managed to tie the microphone

to something that was fixed on the wall

so I knew it wouldn't fall over.

This is really getting rough.

This is going to be a bad night.

(narrator): Deep below deck,

the first signs of disaster appear.

(alarm beeps)

In the generator room,

engineers discover seawater where it should never be;

violently flooding towards the machinery

that supplies power to the ship.

The ship's sea chest has ruptured.

- The sea chest provides an inlet for salt water

to be pumped in to provide cooling for the generator.

The generator room is what provides

electrical power for the ship.

You never want uncontrolled salt water

flowing around in the vessel

because it can move to other compartments

and it can start a chain reaction of flooding.

(narrator): Without immediate action,

a leak of this size can be catastrophic.

- Close the watertight doors...

(narrator): The ship's crew must act quickly.

- As a part of the response,

the engineers shut down the generator

and they secure the watertight doors.

Ships are designed with subdivision,

so that the exposure or the breaching of a hull in one part

does not necessarily mean

the whole of the ship is going to sink.

(narrator): Upstairs, the passengers remain unaware

of the crisis unfolding below deck.

- After dinner, we could still feel

the ship swaying and rolling around.

We weren't concerned. We just thought,

"Wow, this is going to be a rough night."

Suddenly...

(powering down)

(passengers gasp)

- What's going on? - What's happening?

- All the lights went off.

(suspenseful music)

- The lights just went out.

(worried chatter)

- The emergency lights come on...

but they don't give you much light, so it's difficult to see.

- We waited and then it was kind of eerie

because no lights came back on immediately

and that was weird.

- What's happening? - Help!

- But you know the minutes ticked by,

tension was building and I had an acoustic guitar,

so I thought I'll do a couple of songs on the acoustic guitar.

And we were just singing a few sing-along songs

just to prevent panic.

(worried chatter)

- Eventually, it doesn't matter how much you sing

or how much you try to make light of it,

people are starting to get scared.

(worried chatter)

- I'm really scared, we should do something.

(suspenseful music)

(narrator): Back on the bridge,

Captain Avranas and his officers try to keep control

as the crisis deepens around them.

(alarms beeping)

Despite the watertight doors being closed,

the ship begins listing to starboard.

- Mayday, mayday, mayday. This is the MTS Oceanos.

- Why is the power still out? What is going on?

- Is there anyone that can help us?

- Mayday, mayday, mayday!

(narrator): Off South Africa's wild eastern coast,

the Oceanos is taking on water.

And now the ship's main power has failed.

- The ship's rolling around wildly in the storm

and suddenly we're plunged into darkness.

(dramatic boom)

(narrator): 571 passengers and crew are in the dark,

waiting for answers.

- Is the ship sinking? What's going on?

- We kept expecting there to be

an announcement from the captain,

give us some information.

But nothing was happening.

- None of the passengers knew what was going on.

There was no communication,

no clarity and no direction

from the officers on board.

(worried chatter)

- Everybody was, like, "What is going on?"

So I ran up the flights of stairs to the deck...

and went into the bridge to ask the Captain for instructions

on what should we do.

Captain?

And there was Captain Avranas

just standing there, staring.

(alarm beeping)

He didn't say anything. I said, "Do you want me to get

the passenger's life jackets?"

He just vacantly glanced sideways at me and said,

"Yes, yes, get their life jackets."

He was not functioning.

That's all I can say.

(dramatic music)

(narrator): In the lounge,

Moss decides to investigate for himself.

- I said to my wife, Tracy, "I'm going to go down below.

I'm going to see if I can see what's going on."

I decide to take my video camera.

Went right down into the engine room area.

(indistinct)

Yeah, I take a bit of the camera down.

Yeah, I keep the camera everywhere.

It's very dark. Although there's these emergency lights on,

it's hard to see.

(water lapping)

We could hear water crashing about from side to side.

It seemed to be coming from behind

a set of watertight doors that were closed.

(water lapping)

And I thought, "It sounds like water behind there."

Maybe the ship is taking on water,

but we just didn't know for sure.

So I thought, "I've better keep going

to see what's going on."

(indistinct chatter) - What is happening? Please!

- I was helping the guests put life jackets on.

And then one of my staff came to say to me,

the officers were all on the back deck

with their suitcases

trying to get into one of those lifeboats.

So I ran up the flights of stairs to the deck.

- Let's go.

(Lorraine): I see the captain

and all his officers were leaving the ship,

and abandoning their passengers,

their crew, and the staff.

It was shocking.

My staff member held him back

by the straps of his life jacket.

So he had to stay on board the ship.

The captain is always the one who gives the orders.

And in the absence of that,

I was thinking, "Who's going to take over?"

You know? "Who's going to orchestrate...

an evacuation?"

(dramatic music)

- I got down to an area called D Deck.

I'm right down below now.

I could hear the water before I could see it.

You could feel this tension

and kind of fear in your stomach.

You can feel it.

But then suddenly there was flooding.

(water rushing)

Hard to believe that's the bottom of the stairway.

When I saw that much water,

I realized, "We're really in trouble."

(narrator): On the Oceanos, the emergency is spiralling.

The ship is disabled and taking on water.

- What is happening? Please.

(narrator): With some of its senior command

abandoning ship,

and no clear communication from the bridge,

entertainer Moss Hills heads below deck.

- You can see the emergency lights

just kind of glittering on the water a little bit.

There's water everywhere.

It looks like it's flowing in reasonably fast

and it's sloshing about from side to side.

As the water's going,

it's sloshing from one side to the other,

and I could see it coming down the guest corridor.

When I saw that much water,

I knew that we were definitely sinking.

So, I guess we're going down.

So we went back up as quick as we could

and reported back to our cruise director, Lorraine.

- Get us out of here! - We gotta do something here.

- I'm really scared, I feel like we should... Should we leave?

(Lorraine): Moss tells me where the water level was,

and it was rising fast.

- Oh, my God.

(Lorraine): I realized that we were in a dire situation.

We needed to take matters into our own hands

and we needed to start getting people off the ship.

- This is scary. - Are you serious?

- Is this okay? Are we safe?

(Lorraine): There was nobody else to do it.

I was trembling and my knees were visibly shaking.

And then I felt myself go completely calm

and a sense of, "There's no messing around here.

Let's just get on with it."

(suspenseful music)

So we started loading lifeboats.

- We could feel that the ship was tipping over

very much onto its starboard side.

We started loading people into the lifeboats,

it was really, really difficult.

The people in the lifeboats

starting to sort of squeal in fear

as the lifeboat was smacking the sides of the ship.

(metallic clanging)

- There were no officers around

who were supposed to manage this.

I was thinking,

"This is not what we're trained to do."

This was absolute chaos.

(panicked chatter)

(narrator): The Oceanos is equipped with enough lifeboats

for everyone on board.

But as the ship lists at an extreme angle,

Lorraine and remaining crew members

find that some are impossible to launch safely.

(Lorraine): We managed to launch some of the lifeboats

with people in them.

But when we had only two lifeboats left,

I sent staff out to count how many people were left...

and there was 200 and some.

We were not putting enough people in those boats.

You know?

It became apparent to me

that we didn't have enough boats.

- Well, we've still got lots of people on board.

The ship is in the middle of sinking,

it's tipping over on its side.

We've got no more lifeboats left.

Now getting really concerned that the ship would tip over

and trap us all inside.

We thought, "We'd better go to the bridge

and let's just find out what else we can do."

(alarm blaring) - Where the heck is everybody?

- So one of the other entertainers

said he'd come with me.

When we got to the bridge,

the bridge was completely abandoned,

but we wanted to try

and make some kind of radio contact with someone.

We didn't know how to really use the radios.

- Can you get anybody?

(Moss): But I just grabbed it.

Started calling, "Mayday, mayday, mayday."

(indistinct radio chatter)

(narrator): Finally, another ship answers the call.

- Of course, they want to know where we are.

They said, "Well, what's your position?"

We didn't know where we were.

And they said, "Well, you know, what rank are you?"

And I said, "Well, I'm a guitarist."

And I think they were shocked.

You know, what are you doing on the bridge?

And I said, "There's nobody else here.

It's just the entertainers.

(narrator): With the Oceanos now dangerously close

to capsizing, rescue by sea may be impossible.

- They told us if they came alongside,

their ships would be battered into ours,

cause more damage to our ship,

and also cause damage to their own ships.

(overlapping chatter)

- We were in dire straits.

(narrator): As day breaks near the coast of South Africa,

guitarist Moss Hills is still filming

aboard the sinking Oceanos.

Nearby, ships standoff in the heavy swells,

unable to reach those still trapped.

(suspenseful music)

With over 200 people stranded

and no lifeboats left to launch,

time is running out.

- We were just sitting there waiting

and it was just slowly rolling from one side to the other,

but always sinking slightly lower

and tipping slightly more to the one side.

(ship creaking)

- There were no officers left.

There were ships all standing around, standing by,

but I realized they couldn't help us.

It was too rough.

- We didn't have a plan B.

I could see that there's no way that we could survive.

I knew really then for the first time for sure

that the ship was going to go to the bottom of the ocean.

- We were in a bad way.

- Suddenly you could see these helicopters flying towards us.

(helicopter blades whirring)

(narrator): Hope finally arrives in the skies above the Oceanos.

A South African military rescue team deploys

into one of the most dangerous operations of their careers.

(Paul): I've seen a lot of crazy action

up and down the east coast of Africa

and for many years, of course,

but I'd never seen anything like it.

(narrator): Navy rescue diver Paul Whiley

is one of the first to arrive on the scene.

- It was clear that the vessel

was lying hard on its starboard side.

The port side was right out the water

and even with the bilge keel sticking out a little bit,

it was much bigger than it was then reported

and much more treacherous than we expected.

(dramatic music)

We had gusting wind, 150 kilometres an hour,

and massive seas.

It was going to be a long day and no doubt about that.

(Moss): We thought, "At last, rescue."

But, of course, they needed to get the navy divers

onto the ship.

(narrator): Rescue divers must drop on to the rolling ship

to harness and hoist passengers away to safety.

- The hoist operator has got to put the rescue man

right on deck, just perfect.

The rescue man has to get his footing

in order to be able to disconnect from the helicopter

and then do his job on deck.

Every last little bit matters.

(narrator): In conditions like this,

it's a dangerous operation.

(suspenseful music)

- We were quite high up, I guess about 150 metres.

- Imagine what it's like for these guys.

As you're going down, the wind is ripping past your face.

(wind gusting)

You can hear it. The engines of the helicopter over the top.

(Paul): I remember getting picked up by the wind,

just swinging around like a young sapling,

you know, in the breeze, just getting blown away.

- As you get down, the boat's sinking out

from underneath you

and you've got such limited time.

- Once I land on the vessel, I remember being shocked.

There was literally hundreds of people.

I was looking around to find the captain.

I made my way to where I thought he might be

and I didn't recognize him immediately,

but he wasn't doing very well.

So I realized that there's a problem here.

But then I asked this cocktail pianist,

"Well, I mean, who's in charge?"

- She's in charge.

(Paul): And then he pointed at Lorraine.

(Lorraine): I remember thinking,

"Oh, I've never been so happy to see somebody in neoprene

in my entire life."

(Paul): She was clearly in charge.

There wasn't any doubt.

It was actually quite reassuring.

'Cause now you found the woman in charge

and you can get on with it, right?

And we had quite a lot of work to do.

- He said, "We'll take them off the back.

We've got to move fast.

This thing is going down."

I said, "Yeah."

- We decided that the best thing to do

was to send women and children first.

(dramatic music)

(narrator): The mission gets underway.

But as the clock ticks, Whiley encounters an obstacle.

- On every lift, this captain kept on telling me

he needed to go next.

- The captain is the ultimate authority on board a vessel.

With that authority comes responsibility,

and that's responsibility for the passengers,

the crew and the ship.

Then there's the moral requirement

and leaving the ship is not part of that.

- He needed to go next.

He needed to go next.

And eventually on the, I think the fourth lift,

we all decided it was probably going to be faster

to get rid of this guy and then keep going.

(narrator): Avranas is lifted off the ship,

but with critical minutes passing,

Whiley and his team decide to run

two helicopter rescues simultaneously.

- He said to me, "I need you to do

a second helicopter rescue station over the bow.

We need to do that or else we're not going to get everybody off."

He said, "You're going to have to put

the harness over the people,

but it's got to be done properly.

If you get it wrong,

they'll tip upside down,

they'll drop out of the harness

and you'll probably kill someone."

I got no idea how to do that.

I mean, I was a guitarist.

Next thing, I was running a helicopter rescue station.

- Normally, this takes months of training,

but this guy, he learned how to do it in two minutes

on a sinking ship.

(narrator): For the rest of the morning,

Moss Hills and Paul Whiley run airborne lifelines

in a race against the sea.

- The ship was listing very badly.

The bow of the ship kept going in and out

of the water like that.

- I'll tell you that every minute counted.

I was pretty sure, absolutely certain in fact,

that we wouldn't get everybody off.

- My idea was to get people to jump into the sea

and we'd pick them up with the rubber boat

and take them to a lifeboat.

(narrator): It's a dangerous proposition,

but there are no other options.

- I would take the passengers to the edge of the ship.

Ready to jump when we told them to jump.

With a wave coming up, jump,

the wave would take them out

and the Navy seal in the rubber boat would pick them up.

- That operation was just running fairly well.

Suddenly, a helicopter left

and no helicopter came to replace it.

No helicopter came. We're looking around.

What's happening?

Nothing happening.

(Paul): We were sinking really quickly.

We were taking water on much faster.

But the choppers needed fuel.

- We knew we still had people left on board.

(Lorraine): What went through my mind?

"Oh (beep)" went through my mind. You can imagine.

(Moss): There's a real possibility we're gonna go down

with this ship.

(dramatic music)

(news anchor): We have a breaking story now.

We have a late word tonight that a cruise ship is believed

to be sinking off the southern coast of South Africa.

(narrator): Word has gotten out

that the Oceanos is on the verge of sinking.

- Authorities say the military has begun a rescue.

(narrator): In a daring mission,

the South African military has rescued

more than 150 people,

with help from the ship's entertainers.

If it wasn't for the entertainment staff

helping the passengers,

I don't know what would have happened.

Some of our entertainment staff

are still there. They're not back.

(narrator): But many remain trapped on the sinking vessel,

desperately waiting as helicopters refuel on shore.

- I believed that at that point,

they'd never get fuel and be back on time

before that ship sunk.

- We began to get quite scared

and we thought they had forgotten us.

- There were no choppers

and there were no sign of any choppers

and there was no communication

and there was a bunch of folks just staring at us.

- There's just nobody there

and you're just looking out at the ship at this terrible angle.

- All of a sudden, the sky was black with choppers.

- Here it comes again. The rescue's back underway.

- This is critical,

because the ship could sink now at any moment.

(Paul): Then it's guns blazing.

And, of course, the pilots had been doing it all day.

They were quicker. We were quicker.

We were in a screaming rush.

And all the passengers were quicker

because they also knew the story and this was it.

(dramatic music)

- I realized that we were really going down

and I went back to the back deck.

Moss Hills was still there.

I counted 12 people total left.

I said, "That's me. I'm out of here.

I'm out of here. I've had enough."

I was the last one to go off the bow.

(dramatic music)

I hit the water and it was winter.

The water was only three degrees,

but it felt like nothing,

and I was so pleased to be off that ship.

(narrator): Lorraine is successfully picked up

by a rescue boat.

On the stern deck,

just a handful of passengers are still on board.

(Moss): So finally we put the last passenger

into the harness and it's time for us to get rescued.

We put the harness on ourselves.

We kind of looked at each other,

gave the signal and we were hoisted up.

(dramatic music)

And we were on board the helicopter.

(soft string music)

And then, I think, just the sheer scale

of what had happened starts to settle on you.

And you could look out and you could see the ship.

And I could really see then,

"Wow, that's it. This ship is gone."

And it's a sad feeling.

That was my home. We were working there.

(soft music)

And you could just see this thing, nobody could save it.

(narrator): Early in the afternoon on August 4, 1991,

more than 16 hours after the ship started taking on water,

the Oceanos slips beneath the surface of the Indian Ocean.

(soft music) (indistinct chatter)

(Moss): As we landed,

lots of the people and some of the other entertainers

who were already rescued sort of jumped up

and started running towards us

and they were all shouting and cheering.

I could feel myself getting choked up.

- The hero, baby. Absolute hero.

(laughing)

- Good, good. - Bloody heroes.

(narrator): The survivors are taken

to a makeshift rescue centre at a local hotel

aptly named, The Haven.

(Moss): I must've been just feeling overwhelmed

by the whole thing and I ended up kind of collapsing.

I couldn't stand

and they had to take me away in a stretcher

with a drip to let me recover.

Tracy had been through

everything I'd been through as well.

She was cool, calm. She was fine.

Moss, where's your life jacket?

We were back, we were on shore,

and that's when we knew for sure,

"We're safe. It's all over."

I'm just glad to see everyone.

(narrator): But relief gives way to uncertainty.

(dramatic boom)

- Suddenly we started to get doubt.

Did we get everybody off?

It's not like we could check their names off

on a list or a manifest.

I began to think, "Have we left anybody behind?"

(suspenseful music)

(narrator): It will take time to confirm

if all the passengers and crew

have made it off the Oceanos alive.

And authorities must determine how the ship ended up

at the bottom of the sea.

(suspenseful music)

- I'd never seen a disaster of that nature before.

We couldn't believe that such a rescue had actually taken place.

(narrator): Investigator David Fiddler

is assigned to the case.

- Our focus shifted, almost immediately,

to the investigation as to why the ship sank.

- In any accident investigation,

it is imperative that the investigators get to the scene

as quickly as possible,

because people's memories are still fresh as to what occurred.

And that's evidence that is so important

in an accident where a ship has sunk,

because they don't have the ship,

they only have the people.

(narrator): David arrives hours after the Oceanos sinks

to collect evidence and interview key witnesses

from the ship's crew.

- The chief engineer indicated to me

that the sea chest had broken away from the hull plating

and that water was entering the generator room.

To come away like that, just all of a sudden,

can only have been corrosion,

plus the movement of the ship in the water,

in those high waves and steep swells.

(narrator): But the failed sea chest

is only the beginning of the crisis.

In theory, flooding in one compartment of a vessel

should not be enough to sink the ship.

- Chief engineer notified the captain

that they had a problem

and they shut all the watertight doors,

shut down the generators.

(powering down)

(Chris): The generator room watertight doors

have been sealed,

essentially closing off the compartment.

But the Oceanos continues to list

and is now sinking by the head,

indicating that something else is definitely wrong,

as water is still entering the ship.

- But then I discovered that one of the entertainers,

a guitarist, Moss Hills,

had gone down into the lower part of the vessel

with a video camera.

(Moss): Really hard to believe

that's the bottom of the stairway.

(David): As soon as I saw the video,

I knew that we had the cause on why the ship sank.

(Moss): So I guess we're going down.

(narrator): In the aftermath of the Oceanos' sinking,

South African authorities confirm a miracle.

- Navy officials say that all the passengers were saved,

and that the few missing names

are those of people who never boarded.

(narrator): All 571 people are alive and accounted for.

- When I first heard

that every single person had been rescued,

it was a huge, huge sense of relief.

We couldn't believe what we'd all achieved.

A hundred percent success rate. Everyone was rescued.

- No captain, no officers,

a bunch of amateurs took over

and played a huge part in everybody making it.

I felt a huge sense of relief...

that it was over.

(narrator): But with the Oceanos sunk

and much of the physical evidence gone with it,

David Fiddler must still answer one question:

How did sea water escape the generator room

and sink the ship?

- The watertight doors were closed,

and if everything was intact and sound,

the generator room would have flooded,

but the ship would not have sunk.

(narrator): Video captured by the ship's guitarist

could be key to unlocking how the disaster unfolded.

Pretty hard to believe that's the bottom of the stairway.

(David): In the videotape,

the location where Moss Hills was standing

was fairly low down in the accommodation of the ship,

and the fact that water was flowing down the stairs

suggested that the deck above was already flooding.

(suspenseful music)

It wasn't coming from the generator room.

- During the investigation,

one of the crew members mentioned

that there were modifications made to a four-inch pipe

that was running through the sewage tank.

- I discovered that there were problems, apparently,

with the smell on the lower passenger decks

and so they took the pipe off.

The pipe section was in the generator room.

- So what was happening now

was that water in that flooded generator room

was moving through that open pipe

and into the sewage tank.

Pressure from the wave action

and the ship listing and now sinking

is driving water up through the drainage system

and out into the toilets and the sinks and the drains

and the showers through all the cabins

and compartments in the vessel.

It was a very gradual, slow,

but inevitable process

that water started to flood throughout the compartments...

pulling the ship down by the head.

Ultimately sinking the ship.

- It should never have happened, yeah.

- A four-inch pipe sinking a ship is quite a thing.

But it is not impossible that it occurs.

(narrator): The Oceanos disaster reveals a brutal lesson:

on a ship, even one small change can become catastrophic.

- As a result of the Oceanos casualty,

we recommended to local authorities

that when a ship is ready to sail

from any port in South Africa

that it is fully watertight and safe.

(narrator): And when disaster hits,

crews must be better prepared

to organize and communicate with the passengers

whose lives depend on them.

(news anchor): Many of the passengers complained

the crew did not do enough to ensure their safety.

- And also that the more specific training be given

with regards to operation of communication systems.

Passengers are extremely reliant on the crew

to show competency

with regards to safety of passengers,

safety of life at sea.

(narrator): In the wake of the disaster,

Captain Avranas claimed to have left the vessel

to coordinate the rescue.

A Greek maritime board of inquiry

found Avranas and four officers negligent in the disaster.

Yet, Avranas would go on to command ships at sea once again.

Today, the Oceanos is remembered not for the Captain who left,

but for the heroic entertainers who stayed.

- In this situation,

it was entertainers like Moss Hills and his wife

and the cruise director Lorraine Betts

and her staff who stepped up

and stepped forward to place themselves

in the gap that had been left and made sure that

the remaining passengers on the Oceanos were rescued safely.

- I mean Moss Hills was one of the serious heroes on that ship.

Really. You can tell him that, from me.

- I wouldn't call it a miracle.

I would call it an extraordinary circumstance

where a small group of people just somehow pulled together,

kept focused, and achieved what seems impossible.

- I think the lesson...

is that people can be amazing.

And yes, the captain left.

But you cannot judge people in a situation

because different minds function differently

in these stressful situations.

But it's evident that people will rise to the occasion

and it will bring out the very best in them.

- Lorraine's the bravest woman I've ever met.

I'm absolutely sure of that.

Someone who's acting so selflessly,

without sort of being primed by anyone.

It was expected of the Marine crew,

it was expected of us as military.

That wasn't expected of Lorraine Betts, you know.

I learned a lot about humanity that day, man.

(soft music)

(narrator): For his actions, Paul Whiley received

one of South Africa's highest military awards for bravery.

- If you consider that you're on a boat like that,

on a coast like this, in a storm like that,

and no lives were lost...

It's a massive, massive miracle,

it honestly is, it really is the craziest thing.

(narrator): The Oceanos might be lost,

but the bravery shown that day has become legend.

Disaster struck without warning.

Yet, humanity refused to sink with the ship.

Subtitling: difuze