Harrowing rescue
Cruise ship limps into port after helicopters winch half of its 915 passengers to shore
STAVANGER, Norway — Rodney Horgen recalled the moment when he thought he was facing the end: when a huge wave crashed through the Viking Sky cruise ship’s glass doors and swept his wife 30 feet across the floor.
Horgen, 62, of Minnesota, was visiting Norway on a dream pilgrimage to his ancestral homeland when the luxury cruise quickly turned into a nightmare.
The Viking Sky was carrying 1,373 passengers and crew members, sailing from Norway’s Arctic north to the southern city of Stavanger, when it had engine trouble along the rough, frigid western coast. Struggling in heavy seas to avoid being dashed on the rocky coast, the ship issued a mayday call Saturday afternoon.
Horgan said he knew something was badly amiss when the guests on the heaving ship were summoned to the vessel’s muster points.
“When the windows and door flew open and the 2 meters (6 feet) of water swept people and tables 20 to 30 feet, that was the breaker. I said to myself, ‘This is it,’” Horgen told The Associated Press. “I grabbed my wife, but I couldn’t hold on. And she was thrown across the room. And then she got thrown back again by the wave coming back.”
Photos posted on social media showed the ship listing from side to side and furniture smashing violently into the ship’s walls. The hands and faces of fellow passengers were cut and bleeding from the shattered glass, he said.
An experienced fisherman, Horgen said he had never before encountered such rough boating conditions.
“I did not have a lot of hope. I knew how cold that water was and where we were and the waves and everything. You would not last very long,” he said. “That was very, very frightening.”
And yet, the scariest part was to come.
That was when hundreds of passengers, including Horgen, were winched off the heaving ship by helicopter, one by one, as winds howled around them in the dark of night, by rescue workers trying to evacuate everyone on board.
Waves up to 26 feet high were smacking into the ship, making it impossible to evacuate anyone by boat.
John Curry, an American passenger, told Norwegian public broadcaster NRK that he’d “rather not think about” the helicopter ride from ship to shore. “It wasn’t nice,” he said.
The ship was within 300 feet of striking rocks under the water and slightly more than half a mile from shore when it stopped and anchored in Hustadvika Bay so that passengers could be evacuated, Coast Guard official Emil Heggelund told Norway’s VG newspaper.
Norway’s Joint Rescue Coordination Center stepped in, sending in five helicopters.
Passenger Alexus Sheppard told the AP that people with injuries or disabilities were winched off the cruise ship first.
“It was frightening at first. And when the general alarm sounded, it became VERY real,” she wrote in a text.
The airlift evacuation went all through the night and into Sunday morning, slowing for a bit when two of the five rescue helicopters had to be diverted to save nine crew members from an ailing cargo ship nearby.
Viking Ocean Cruises, the company that owns and operates the ship, said 479 passengers were airlifted to land, leaving 436 passengers and 458 crew members onboard. The company said 20 people were injured and received treatment at medical centers.
Einar Knudsen of Norway’s Joint Rescue Coordination Center said the airlift was halted when the captain decided before noon Sunday to try to sail the cruise ship to the nearby port of Molde with three of its four engines working. A tug boat and two other vessels assisted the Viking Sky, and it docked at the port late Sunday afternoon, the cruise company said.
The passengers were mostly an English-speaking mix of American, British, Canadian, New Zealand and Australian citizens.