Ally

The story of Oceanos has gone down in history as one of the most incredible survival stories in recent years. It also went down in history as one of the worst cases of crew abandonment.

The cruise ship Oceanos was launched in 1952. She served many owners until her last owner in 1976 with Epirotiki Lines.

On August 3rd 1991, she sailed out of East London on her way to Durban. This was to be her last voyage.

There had been many rumours about the poor state of repair of her hull and ancilliary equipment, but her 550 passengers and 250 crew had boarded as expected and she left the docks on time without any problems.

At 9.30pm that evening, Oceanos lost all power. She had a leak in her sea chest and that had shorted everything out onboard.

She started taking on water quite rapidly due to the generators being turned off, thus disabling her pumps.

The crew, including the captain, abandoned the ship and her passengers.

Some of the entertainment staff contacted the South African authorities and a joint effort by the South African Navy and several merchant ships in the area along with helicopters managed to get all of the passengers off Oceanos just as she sank at 3.30pm the following day. At first, Oceanos fought the pull of the waves and stood almost upright for many minutes before slowly sliding below the waves.

Her crew were later prosecuted, her captain stripped of his certification for abandoning the passengers at their time of need.