Cruise ship rescue: inside the dramatic rescue mission aboard the Viking Sky | 7NEWS Spotlight

oh, the big one, a big one pitching violently at the height of a fierce gale in the North Sea my engine has lost power we are 100 meters from the rocks a frantic call for help from the captain of the huge Viking

cruise

r the sky when he found it is dangerously close to the east coast it's the

viking

sky we have injured and disabled passengers it's like loud explosions um like bombs going off very loud bombs it was hard it was gray and there was white water I wouldn't have survived there tonight terrifying first hand accounts from Australians Aboard the afflicted Viking sky, scared to death, there was certainly a lot of screaming, they assumed they would be safe, but the crews of their dreams almost cost them their lives.

Are you surprised that no lives were lost? It was too close and so close. The tragedy has highlighted the failure of basic safety procedures aboard these floating cities, and we will discover that it is only a matter of time before a major disaster occurs at sea, one as

dramatic

and terrible as the sinking of the Titan, so how bad could it have made you? could have ended up with a thousand heads for Sunshine Coast couple Stephen and Judith Metcalfe. It was supposed to be a trip to help them heal. Steven had lost his sister the month before and a

cruise

to see the Northern Lights was on your and his bucket list.

I could see the lights. We saw the lights. We had a night of seeing the lights. Where were they made? Yes, it was, although for me I didn't see the color. I saw them white while other people saw them green. Yes, I saw them green. and stretched along the horizon between four and five hundred meters since the grounding and disaster john and jan porter of sydney's northern beaches are cruise veterans but this was their first trip to norway what was the landscape like as i traversed the fjords oh amazing amazing but the Norwegian waters can also be incredibly dangerous.

The swell started to pick up Saturday morning and it was very windy. We also had a lot of freezing rain and hail. We were really going up, climbing the waves and coming back down again, so it was very, very wild. The rough weather was enough to worry you. I did not like. I did not like. I thought, oh, if it's as bad as it can be, it'll be fine, but it was a little disconcerting because it was getting bad pretty quickly. and it got worse yeah it got a lot worse at lunch time with the boat listing dangerously the engine suddenly went out we're in the cafe um and I noticed that suddenly there was a loss of power so the lights on the pizza oven went out and suddenly The pizza shot out of the oven almost directly at me, the windows are open, don't fall out, I didn't realize at the time that we had lost all four engines, but we were on the side of the surf and that's when we really started to think. that this was very unusual something is happening people started to panic so yes, I was very scared we were on level seven and the furniture started to move the dishes were falling be careful with the window open all the bottles were falling the noise was horrendous a lady, an American lady was injured and it was quite traumatic, they thought they were going to lose their lives, there was a very large mass of water that was splashing back and forth with the rocking of the boat and finally it broke that door and you got the water meter that came in and flood that restaurant, so a lot of people were submerged and there was nothing to hold on to, you have no control and you have the right to be very, very scared, so suddenly that safety drill that you did at the beginning yes yes that is siren are you really listening to it really no, my God, this is this, this is this, this is real.

Stephen and Judith were given life jackets and joined hundreds of people at one of the

ship

's restaurants on the first water. They burst through that door They pulled some people out What none of the passengers knew at the time was that the Viking sky was sinking in just 10 meters of water The crew dropped an anchor and finally restarted one of the

ship

's engines It was enough to stop it crashing against the rocky coast how close were you to the rock islands one report said a hundred meters but whatever it was it was too close so how bad could it have gone?

You could have ended up with a thousand dead on a maritime disaster scale where that would be described as almost titanic proportions retired cruise captain michael lloyd says it is nothing short of a miracle that there was no loss of life in the worst case scenario the anchors didn't hold blown against the rocks so you would have If there had been a lot of people dead, I could have been on the rocks in about 20 minutes, it wouldn't have gotten many people out. The elderly would not have had many opportunities on board and you also have to think about the hypothermia of the water.

It's very cold, I think you have something like 15 minutes 20 minutes in the water. Would it be fair to say that these passengers were very lucky? yes yes yes no luck you always need a little luck you know in any emergency I wasn't sure how long they could hold the anchor and one engine running the captain gave the order to abandon the ship's stations it was an incredibly slow process just there were five helicopters for the more than 1,300 passengers as Stephen and Judith huddled together and texted their children at home. What did you say to them, Houston?

We have a problem, so I thought before you see it on the news, we are going to be evacuated from the Viking sky by helicopter, since an engine stopped and the sea is huge, eventually 12 hours after the emergency siren. First it rang Stephen and Judith were led to the upper deck. Describe the scene from you. At four in the morning, in complete darkness, all you could hear was the helicopter. It's noisy. It was windy. The boat rocked more because we were at the top. and then one by one they were lining us up, hooking us up and getting us on in the blink of an eye, it must be important to you that you are together too, yes, that's right, yes, because we didn't.

We realized they were doing it, we were deciding who was going up first, we weren't going to split up and go first, yeah, so it was a surprise and they said, "Oh, you're going up two at a time." I thought, "Oh my God, that's a lot of weight." It's now 4:30 a.m. m. still waiting to board the helicopter to leave, the cruise industry is booming, but maritime experts warn that, while ships are getting bigger and more plentiful, their staff are not experienced enough to handle crisis situations, we're ok. "So far we're fine, we're fine, you think it's only a matter of time before a liner sinks.

Many of you saw that Poseidon movie that I never saw, that could never happen if you look at some of the sizes of these ships nowadays". They're run by entertainment companies, they're not really shipping companies and they're not very strict shadows and there's so much money involved, right? Captains may feel more inclined to sail today than in the past. Big business, big business, big money, right? I was shocked that lives were lost. Nearly 500 passengers were airlifted from Viking heaven before a lull in the weather allowed the ship to be towed back to port. It's quite a story to tell the grandchildren.

Was it scary? Oh, that's a great question, very scary. I'm not the bravest monkey in the jungle. What would have happened if you fell into the ocean? I would have drowned, darling, I couldn't have been saved in that big angry sea. You have gone through a great experience together. Yeah, how did that affect you as a couple? in 50 years you have ups and downs in life and you manage, you manage uh as I say he promised me everything including a helicopter ride in the north sea yeah no complaints meanwhile Judith is celebrating her 60th birthday, cheers, cheers, happy birthday, we did it. surviving the Vikings is a milestone she wasn't always sure she'd be able to see, so if we're in the pub in 10 years, how would you describe this experience?

Oh, the most amazing life experience. I think our kids are surprised that yeah, yeah, managing the helicopter lift, that's exactly right, yeah, oh yeah, I think we'd look back and say, "Wow, that excited you."