Crew forced to leave ship on Xmas Day

PENGERANG: The nine crewmen of a cargo ship which sank off Tanjung Sepang only had a couple of minutes to save their lives.

Captain Nizam Ulhaque, 30, from Bangladesh, said they almost reached their destination from Belungkor towards Desaru when the incident happened on Christmas Day.

The vessel was ferrying rocks.

“We had another nine miles (14.4km) to go in our trip when the generator lost power. Because of that, I could not control the ship’s steering.

“The vessel was still moving and I tried to lower the anchor hoping to make it stop. But the choppy seas and strong waves made it more difficult,” he said yesterday.

He and his crewmen tried to save the ship from going down, but lost to Mother Nature.

“The waves, four to five metres high, kept on coming and hitting us from different directions and pushed the ship further away.

“Water entered the ship and we could not save it anymore. I shouted to the crew to abandon ship,” he said.

Meanwhile, Malaysian Maritime Enforcement Agency Johor Maritime director First Admiral Maritime Aminuddin Abdul said two bodies were recovered near the sunken Palau-registered cargo ship at Tanjung Sepang.

The bodies of a Chinese and a Bangladeshi national were discovered at the location where the vessel had sank at about 7.45pm on Tuesday.