MV Explorer
After Titanic, if people had faith in any ship, it was MV Explorer. It was the world’s first cruise ship, which was made special only to walk in ice. Its performance was so good that it also held the record of rescuing many ships in Antarctica. But on the night of 23 November 2007, such an accident occurred with this ship in the black and desolate Southern Ocean that it became the captain’s compulsion to leave it alone in the middle of the sea.
Once again in the articles of Viksolve, happy Nazreen. In 1960, it was considered almost impossible to travel to Antarctica by sea because the sea there was full of ice and in such circumstances going there on a normal ship was like inviting death, but a Swedish American businessman Eric Lind Blade He accepted this as a challenge and decided to build a ship that could easily travel to Antarctica and those who wanted to see Antarctica could fulfill their dream. For this purpose, a special ship was prepared whose length was 240 meters. Feet and weight was more than 2300 tons.
This ship was named Lind Blood Explorer. If the Explorer is compared with the famous ships of history like Titanic or RMS Olympic, then it was certainly smaller than them but there was no match to it in strength.
This was the first cruise ship built whose purpose was to take the passengers on a tour of the icy waters of Antarctica. Normally, ordinary ships cannot do this work. If ever the ships have to go into the icy sea, then an ice breaker is installed in front of them, but this ice class one.
A ship means it did not need an ice breaker to move in the ice, rather its structure was designed in such a way that the weight of the ship itself broke the ice. This ship had space for 104 passengers and 54 crew members. Along with all the luxury facilities, there was another thing which was adding to the glory of MV Explorer because it was specially made for the journey to Antarctica and to keep it safe from the ice present there, its hull was made in double layer.
As soon as it was launched, this ship became famous all over the world and people started aspiring to go to Antarctica aboard it. Actually earlier it was named Lind Blood Explorer but with time the owners of this ship also changed. And in 2004, for the last time, it was bought by Toronto based travel company Gap Adventures, who named it MV Explorer.
After this, it was not in anyone’s imagination that it would come into the possession of any other owner. Till 2007, MV Explorer Antarctica K250 had made a successful journey but in November of this year, it had to leave on a journey from where it would never return.
This was November 2007. MV Explorer was all set for its 19-day journey. It was sent to Argentina’s city of Ushuaia. It was to start from and reach South Georgia Island via Falkland Islands and then Antarctica. On 11th November 2007, 100 passengers and 54 crew members in MV Explorer once again left for this beautiful journey of Antarctica.
Everything till here Things were going on normally, no one had any idea what kind of trouble their beautiful journey was going to push them into. The captain of MV Explorer was a 49 year old banked man.
He had operated ships on this ice filled sea thousands of times and the reason for this was his experience. Since then, the passengers were considering themselves safe, but no matter how experienced the ship captains of Antarctica are, due to the changing conditions there, they have to face different missiles every time and every time a new challenge is prepared for them in this journey.
At the beginning of the war, Captain Banks Wyman made a surprise decision to divert the ship from the planned route and take a new route because the Captain believed that this would allow him to avoid areas of heavy ice and reach his destination.
The first 10 days were going on normally but on the evening of 22nd November, the sun was setting and the passengers were preparing to go to their respective cabins. Meanwhile, MV Explorer entered an area where there was a lot of traffic.
Ice was present. Captain announced that we are passing through the ice area, hence due to repeated collision of ice, there will be noise and you all will have to tolerate this night. Due to darkness, Captain reduced the speed of the ship to only It was set at five knots, that is, at about 10 km, the ship was slowly moving from the thin ice layer towards the area with thick and old ice layer, but the captain did not realize this because it was 10 o’clock in the night.
And not much was visible. At midnight suddenly the ship stopped with a loud noise. At first no one understood anything but then it was realized that the ship had stopped after hitting a hard ice bank because Captain MV Explorer had already made an announcement, that is why many passengers did not pay attention to this sound and they remained asleep.
After some time, the Captain managed to steer the ship again. Now MV Explorer is again cutting through the ice and moving ahead in the icy sea. It was increasing, but the passengers on board the ship, including the captain, did not know that there was a hole in the hull of the ship and water had slowly started accumulating in the lower part of the ship.
The eyes of the sleeping passengers opened when they woke up. Water had started filling the cabins because the passenger cabins were in the lower part of the ship, hence the water had reached there first. Seeing this, a wave of fear suddenly ran among the passengers.
Everyone started running here and there to save their lives. Now water was entering the ship from every possible place, be it light switches, bent ducts or cracks in the doors. By the time the captain came to know about this, many cabins were filled with water.
At first he thought that perhaps there was minor damage, but But it can be controlled, but when the water pressure kept increasing, the captain also understood that things had gone out of control.
The captain immediately ordered to evacuate the ship and deployed all the life boats. It had left the area but due to accumulation of water, it had tilted to one side. The crew members were busy in quickly evacuating the ship and saving human lives.
The ship was 46 kilometers away from its destination and with a damaged ship on the destination. It was impossible to reach. On the other hand, the issue was that this sea of Antarctica was very cold due to ice and due to the cold air here, it was not possible to stay on the lifeboats for long, hence the captain asked other ships present near the Explorer.
These signals were sent to the ships named National Geographic Endeavor and Nord Nerge, but these ships were also very far away and it was not possible for them to reach here immediately. Slowly water started accumulating in the separator room of MV Explorer. It is said that this is the room where all the machinery of the ships is present, that is, power is given to the entire ship from this room only. Due to water filling in this room, now all the electricity of MV Explorer has been shut down in the middle of the icy sea of Antarctica.
Now MV Explorer was standing alone in the dark, its engines had stopped and now the ship was at the mercy of the sea waves. While the captain was worried about evacuation, now another thought was troubling him if the engine of the ship would fire again.
If it was not turned on, strong winds and waves could push the ship back into the ice area. Due to electrical failure, an attempt was made to turn on the engine manually. Luckily, this idea worked and the engine once again started.
The crew members started the process of evacuating the ship. Majid speeded up the process of evacuating the ship. Within a short time, all the people on board the ship boarded four life boats and went into the cold water. For some time, the captain and a few crew members tried to straighten the ship.
They kept trying but eventually the engines stopped once again. Now the MV Explorer was filling with water rapidly and the Captain had to take a decision as soon as possible, hence the Captain and a few crew members also got off the ship and boarded the life boats.
Now more than 150 people present in lifeboats were waiting for help under the open sky in the cold Southern Ocean and the cold wind was making their wait difficult. This wait continued for the next four hours and finally one by one ship It was the Nod Nod ship that reached to save them and the Captain had given an SOS call.
All the people were saved successfully but the MV Explorer was destined to sink. An investigation team was also set up on this accident of MV Explorer, which The result came out that this loss was due to the mistake of Captain Bank Voman because the ice which the Captain thought was the thin ice of the first year and entered the ship in that area was actually a thick layer of ice many years old.
Today MV Explorer The shipwreck is located at a depth of 1300 meters, 25 miles south-east of Penguin Island. We hope that you will like and share this articles of Viksolve. Thank you very much for your loving comments. See you in the next great article.
