Trapped children panicked as ferry sank
BY MICHAEL FIELD
Trapped women and children were piled on top of each other, struggling hopelessly to save themselves, as the Tongan ferry Princess Ashika sank, an inquiry has been told.
A ship's steward, Uokalani Tau'ataina, 25, has given a Royal Commission of Inquiry a vivid account of the August 5 sinking of the 37-year-old ferry, north of Nuku'alofa, with the loss of 74 people.
Tau'ataina, although hired to keep toilets clean, was on bridge watch as the ship sank because the captain was sleeping and the first mate was lying sick on the bridge.
As the vessel listed sharply, the captain came onto the bridge and told Tau'ataina to go down to the passenger deck and get the passengers to a muster station.
"I called out to the people, to the passengers in the passenger cabin and I called out for them to come outside," he told the commission.
"Only a few seconds after that that I noticed the water coming up to where I was standing and I felt something like an electric shock and lights were going on and off. I saw passengers in the passenger accommodation holding on to the seats.
"A lot of noise, people crying inside the passenger accommodation. And I saw water coming up to where I was standing. It was then that I ran back upstairs because I knew at that instant that the vessel is going to sink."
That was about a minute before the vessel sank.
The people he saw inside were women and children. None of them had lifejackets.
"I saw passengers, mostly women.... they were looking out the window and shaking their heads, probably wondering what was happening. I didn't hear .... what they were saying.
"They were holding on to their babies, their children."
Asked how many passengers he saw inside the cabin, he replied "too many".
The lights went out and the ship listed further so he was not aware of what happened to the passengers.
Asked if he saw passengers, more than 50, stacked on each other, he said yes, and agreed they were mainly women and children.
"No hope for them and us and me. I was thinking, probably thinking the same as the passengers in the passenger cabin, that probably there was no hope for myself as well."
Tau'ataina said if he had stayed at the door for another 15 seconds, he too would have been trapped.
Chief mate Semisi Pomale has begun giving his evidence to the commission.
Other witnesses have criticised him for his alleged inaction during the evening as Ashika took on water.
- © Fairfax NZ News
