Andrew Pike

The Oceanos was a cruise ship with 600 passengers that sank in a severe storm off the coast of the then Transkei in 1991. Everyone was rescued (including a dog and a canary). No one died. “Against all odds” is the title of an enthralling book about the disaster by Andrew Pike. He is a lawyer specialising in marine law who represented the owners of the ship. Years later he has added this first hand knowledge to interviews of survivors and newly discovered facts about why the ship sank.
In 2019, I spent a ten day camping holiday a Bulungula - a tourist lodge operated by the local community next to an estuary just 10 km from where the Oceanos sank. Even today, almost 30 years after the Oceanos rescue, this is is an extremely remote place. Deep river gorges mean that the main N2 “coastal highway” is 60 or 100km inland. Rutted, bouldered, unmaintained roads run down steep land spurs to scattered villages along the edge of the ocean. Travel to the metropolis of Mthatha takes 3 hours of jarring, jolting, discomfort - and much longer if roads are wet and rivers flooded. I needed the 10 days of rest before I could face the return drive to the airport. You don’t have to camp - there is a lodge, with a library including the Diaries of Samuel Pepys - and there is solar energy for your cell phone charger.
The Oceanos was on a cruise from East London to Durban. But it was in “foreign” waters of the independent Transkei apartheid "homeland”. The Transkei, then under the rule of General Bantu Holomisa could not consider mounting a sea rescue. It had “no assets, insufficient manpower and no experience”.
The Department of Transport of the apartheid government of the time was responsible for maritime issues, but in the years of tourism boycotts cruise ships had been rare. The government had “never planned fully for the sinking of a passenger ship” (p.192)
The sea was too rough to launch all the lifeboats, as the Oceanos began to list and as night fell. And those in the lifeboats faced a perilous time in the dark ocean, waiting for merchant ships to approach - and then being battered along the sides of these huge vessels as the waves rose and fell. Passengers who could not fit in the lifeboats (some of which were taken away half full by the crew!) were rescued the next morning. One by one, they were lifted into SA defence force helicopters which had been sent 100s of kilometers from Durban and Pretoria. Incredibly, the captain of the ship sat idly by as the entertainment consort - of magicians, singers and musicians - organised the passengers on deck and spoke to rescue vessels on the radio. About 100 of the survivors were dropped by the helicopters at The Haven, a broken down holiday and fishing resort 20km south of Bulungula (as a crow might fly - you can walk it in a day).
One wonders whether a cruise ship in difficulty today off the same part of the Wild Coast would have the same luck. Today we have a sophisticated integrated national disaster coordination task force in place, we have world-class risk management legislation and we have the helicopters bought as part of the 1999 arms deal. But General Holomisa is now in Parliament and has no power to approve helicopter rescues - as he did in 1991. And surely supply chain issues would require 3 independent quotes before any expenditure of disaster funds could be considered for approval. 20 hours would not be enough time. - and it was on a weekend. The last person, a navy diver, was hoisted off the Oceanos barely 90 minutes before it sank - all the deck chairs tumbling in a rush into the waves as the ship suddenly up-ended. Andrew Pike explains how the rescue was done and gives the stories of passengers, rescuers and helpers. And the lawyers and investigators too!… (más)