Ally

Displacement: 10,742 net registered tons, 20,027 gross tons
Builders: V.E.B. Mathias-Thesen Werft, Wismar, in the former German Democratic Republic
Launched: 18 March, 1972
Length: 155 metres or 578 feet
Beam: 23.6 metres or 77 feet
Draft: 8.3 metres or 27 feet
Machinery: Sulzer Diesels, twin screw
Cruising speed: 21knots.
Owners: Baltic Shipping Company
Port of Registry: Leningrad
Passengers: 700 one class


Under the command of a relief Master; Captain Vladislav Vorobyev, she left Sydney on the 6th of February 1986 for what was billed as a "two week cruise of a lifetime". She visited Auckland and Tauranga on the North Island before arriving at the capital city of Wellington on the morning of Saturday, the 15th of February 1986. At midnight she departed to cross the treacherous Cook Strait for Picton at the head of the Queen Charlotte Sound on the Northern coast of the South Island.

Picton had been a regular port of call for cruise liners since P&O's 29,871 ton Arcadia visited in November 1959 and the Mikhail Lermontov berthed at the Waitohi wharf at 8 a.m. the following morning and departed at 3 p.m. for Milford Sound on the South-west coast of the South Island. Captain Don Jamison, a Marlborough Sounds harbour pilot was to remain aboard the vessel instead of leaving her at Long Island, so that he could be available to pilot the vessel into Milford Sound.

743 people were on board. Of the 372 passengers, 327 were Australians including 5 children, 36 British, 6 Americans, 2 Germans, and one New Zealander. Of the 348 crew members, 330 were Russian and 18 British staff. Another 9 were Australians and 13 were British CTC staff members in transit. The weather was overcast with heavy rain and a 25 knot Southerly wind.

Most passengers were not interested in peering through the murk at the beached hulk of the Edwin Fox, the last surviving Australian convict ship and reported hearing an announcement shortly before 6 pm that the pilot had handed over his responsibility to the Captain.

Passengers reported that the ship had gone between the Light-house and the end of Cape Jackson (above) instead of clearing the rocky reef which extended past Walker Rock and was clearly shown on the charts. The vessel was drawing about 27 feet and Captain Jamison claimed his understanding of the depth in the channel to be 35 to 40 feet. It can be seen from the above chart that there was ample room for the Mikhail Lermontov to have passed through the channel had she missed the major rock pinnacles. However it would have been a very foolhardy course to take for anyone aware of the presence of the rocks.

About 5.37 p.m. there was a thud and the ship started to list as the sea flooded through a 40 foot long gash in the hull, penetrating three water-tight bulkheads. The water short-circuited the electrical system, thereby stopping the engines. It is reputed that at 6.03 pm a Mayday call was broadcast, but this is disputed by local VHF operators. Presumably, because of language problems, no announcements were made to passengers to advise them of the position and tell them what to do, although many passengers were alerted to the problem by the fact that the crew were wearing life-jackets. In the meantime there was an announcement that dinner would be delayed an hour and the wine tasting session that was in progress would be extended. The band continued to play, but the wine tasting stopped when the list sent glasses sliding off the tables.

The L.P.G. Tanker Tarihiko turned towards the scene on receiving the Mayday call, but a signal that no further assistance would be required was received. Nevertheless Captain Reedman decided to press on. In gathering darkness the Tarihiko arrived as passengers were being evacuated into rafts and ship's boats from 8.45 p.m. Many elderly people were hurt in their leap from the ship to the lifeboats.

The Russian captain had endeavoured to beach his ship, but without the assistance of engines this manoeuvre was unsuccessful, and the ship, by now down at the bow and listing, floated towards Gannet Point in Port Gore. The sea was choppy but not rough and the Tarihiko was able to get her boats to the stricken ship. 356 passengers and 164 Russian crew crowded every inch of space in the LPG ships quarters, eventually to be deposited at the Overseas Passenger Terminal at Wellington in the early hours of the following morning.

In the meantime the locals declared a Mayday situation and twenty-three Marlborough Sounds small craft had arrived and were patrolling the area in the gathering darkness. The Wellington to Picton vehicular ferry Arahura of 9,000 tons under the command of Captain Brew, had been diverted to the scene and arrived at 9.30 p.m. Many of the ship's passengers were transferred from rafts and boats to the ferry. HMNZS Taupo commanded by Lieutenant Batcheler, arrived in time to check out the area and arrange for the shoreline to be searched. It was dark and raining heavily and there was great difficulty in penetrating the darkness with the ship's search-lights. Nevertheless they struggled through the night, searching the area to locate lost people in the water, on rafts or in lifeboats that may have been swept away in the wind and with the tide.

The crippled liner took on a 12° list and drifted into Port Gore where Captain Vorobyev tried to beach his ship. At 10.15 pm she was listing 40° to starboard and at 10.27 pm she foundered in 15 fathoms, sinking by the bow and laying over on her port side by Gannet Point near to Mr. John Harvey's Port Gore property. One unfortunate 33 year old engineer crew member was presumed to have gone down with the ship.

The noise was deafening when the Mikhail Lermontov sank to the bottom of Port Gore, 35 miles from Picton. As the bow gradually sank down in the sea the stern rose higher. The bow hit the seabed, the stern settled and she rolled on her side beneath the surface. Bubbles more than six feet high belched from the sea, and anything loose on the ship shot to the surface, leapt into the air and then smacked down on the surface of the water. The haunting sounds reverberating from the bowels of the ship were never forgotten.

"It was an amazing experience seeing a ship go down. The crashing, banging, hissing, roaring - it was deafening. Then it died. Nothing. Quiet."

All night debris from the ship was being picked up and the next morning nature had dressed Port Gore in a perfect Summer's day. The water above the liner was a seething mass of little bubbles and looked just like Soda water. A scum lay over the surface and hundreds of deck chairs floated around the bay. The surface of the water was covered with anything off the ship that could float, and many homes in the Sounds had wooden-slatted chairs on their sun-decks and balconies for the next few years.

Ally

There was a lot of criticism of the state of the lifesaving equipment carried on the Mikhail Lermontov. Many of the locals towed in lifeboats. They saw for themselves.

It was reported that in many of the lifeboats bilge pumps were inoperative. They were seized up and had handles missing. There was a radio shack in the bow of one, but it had a hole, one and a half inches by three-eighths of an inch, where battery acid had leaked and eaten through the Aluminium. One of the enclosed boats had the exhaust disconnected from the hull and the exhaust discharged into the interior. Many of the life-jackets picked up in Port Gore fell to pieces, the fabric covering them was so rotten. Water containers in the lifeboats had holes in them, and in some of the lifeboats they'd been painted in place. It was hard to find one in good condition."

With all this in front of their eyes, those involved closely in the rescue were stunned when the statement from the Minister of Transport, Richard Prebble, was released. "Allegations made subsequently concerning deficiencies in the Lermontov's lifesaving appliances, have not been borne out by the evidence presented to the inquiry"

Passengers and crew arrived ashore next morning at Wellington, having lost all of their possessions but thankful not to have shared the fate of the Russian engineer. One elderly Australian was lucky to be alive, having fallen from a raft and spent two hours in the water before being discovered by launches towing abandoned lifeboats back to Picton.

Immediately after she sank divers were at work ensuring that any oil leaks were stopped and were then employed to recover the ship's safes and the Gold content of the duty free store for the owners. Shortly thereafter a second crew moved in to remove the environmental threat posed by the oil still on board the wreck and sixteen hundred tonnes of fuel and lubricants were removed.

The mystery as to why the vessel took this narrow and extremely dangerous passage remains to this day. Some people believe that she struck well before reaching Cape Jackson and was taken through that particular passage in a desperate attempt to get her to safety before she sank.

On March 6th 1986, the findings of the New Zealand Government Preliminary Marine Enquiry were released;

1. The New Zealand pilot was responsible for the accident. He was on the bridge and in the absence of the Russian Captain, he took the ship between Cape Jackson and the lighthouse - a route normally only used by small craft.

2. The Russian crew are praised for their efforts in saving all the passengers.

3. The lifesaving equipment on the ship was adequate.

A Marlborough Harbour Board statement declared that the pilot was on leave and was employed by the shipping company's agents at the time of the accident, the Harbour Board's responsibility finishing at Long Island. The Marine Enquiry Chairman however, said that the pilot was employed by the Harbour Board. Insurance payments, costs for raising and disposing of the wreck now appeared to be a matter of considerable litigation with a reported one hundred million dollars at stake.

The Russians conducted their own enquiry and blamed the New Zealand pilot; Captain Don Jamison (the Marlbourough Harbour Master, Pilot and Acting General Manager), for taking a route where there were no indications of depth were shown on the chart. The New Zealand government counter-charged that the charts were more than adequate and that Captain Jamison had returned control of the ship to the Master well before she struck, however a governmental suppression of the enquiry evidence has left many questions unanswered.