Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Ship's captain charged after sinking

He and five other Greek crew members are questioned after their vessel hit a reef. Two cruise passengers are missing.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published April 8, 2007

ATHENS, Greece - The captain of a cruise ship that sank off an Aegean Sea island, sending more than 1,500 passengers and crew onto rescue boats, was charged Saturday with causing a shipwreck through negligence.

The 21-year-old Sea Diamond sank into the sea after hitting a well-marked and charted reef on Thursday, in fair weather, inside the Greek island of Santorini's sea-filled volcanic crater.

The ship's Greek captain was also charged with breaching international shipping safety regulations and polluting the environment, a Merchant Marine Ministry spokeswoman said. Another five officers were questioned, but the spokeswoman was unable to confirm a state TV report that they also had been charged.

The ship had been minutes away from docking. It was carrying 1,154 tourists, most from the United States, and 391 crew members.

The stricken vessel was evacuated in a three-hour operation, but Jean-Christophe Allain, 45, and his 16-year-old daughter, Maud, of France were listed as missing, feared to have been trapped in their flooded lower-deck cabin.

A three-day search has found no trace of them; officials said a robot submarine would investigate the hulk - lying more than 330 feet under the water's surface - this week.

The evacuation revived memories of the September 2000 Express Samina ferry shipwreck off the holiday island of Paros, which killed 80 people.

Yiannis Evangelou, the head of Greece's association of travel and tourist agencies, said the Sea Diamond's rescue operation, which he watched from a nearby ferry, was "exemplary."

But some passengers complained of an insufficient supply of life vests and life boats, little guidance from crew members and being forced into a steep climb down rope-ladders to safety.

Claire Chevrier said she and her friends clung to the deck railing as the ship started sinking.

"It was the most horrifying experience in the world. There weren't enough life boats," said Chevrier, an 18-year-old from Boca Raton who returned home on Saturday. "We had to walk a plank from the ship to a ferry boat."

Passengers said water quickly filled the bottom floors and spilled from the pools. Several people had broken arms.

A spokesman for the ship's operator, Louis Cruise Lines of Cyprus, said the company was working closely with Greek investigators.

"We would like to express our deep sorrow over the accident, and our thoughts are with the two missing people and their family," said Giorgos Stathopoulos. "The Sea Diamond was fully up to date with its inspections."

[Last modified April 8, 2007, 01:18:15]