MegDesk – The Blog

Most people probably barely remember, but late last November, one of the tourist expedition ships in Antarctica sank.  The crew and passengers were all fine, but they had to abandon the ships and head to the lifeboats while they waited for one of the nearby Hurtigruten ships to come and rescue them.

I remember seeing a bit of the news coverage when it happened, but I had mostly forgotten about it.  It turns out that one of the passengers on our QE2 trip a few weeks ago had actually been on the Explorer when it sank.  I never met them (as far as I know), but since there were only 100 passengers on that ship, it was something of a coincidence and that kind of information gets passed around a ship quickly.

Anyhow, something about traveling on the same ship as someone who had been through this kind of hammered in that it really happened, and since I never heard their firsthand account, I went looking for one and found a link to this photo essay by one of the travelers on Flickr:

Spirit of Shackleton. The last voyage of the MS Explorer

It’s a very interesting read, and if you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to be in that situation, this gives a very detailed description.  And it made me decide that I should pay a bit more attention next time I’m at a ship’s muster drill.

This entry was tagged with arctic, cruise, link and filed under General, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.