Passengers not given safety information

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Passengers on the doomed Tongan ferry Princess Ashika were given no safety information despite the captain believing being on the ship posed a risk to passengers and crew.

Captain Viliami Tuputupu has told the Commission of Inquiry into the disaster the passengers were given no instructions on what to do in an emergency and were not even told where to find lifejackets.

The Princess Ashika sank on August 5 on a voyage between Nuku'alofa and Ha'afeva with the loss of 74 lives.

Tuputupu told the commission, sitting in Nuku'alofa on Thursday, that passengers did not "understand what [was] going on" as the ferry sank.

"Before I call by the public address to just warn the people to come up, he (a crew member) told me that the people are – when he's calling them – the people are standing and just watching him. They don't make any action to move to where he told."

The captain said the vessel's steward, Filipe, was on watch when the vessel's cargo hold and engine room were filling with water, eventually causing it to tip over. He said he was not woken until five minutes before the ferry sank and had no idea why.

When the chief mate woke him, the water was already thigh deep in the cargo hold. Had the crew punched a hole in the hull to drain the water earlier, when it was half-a-metre deep, the ship could have been saved.

Using the ship's public address system he had immediately told passengers to go to the top of the ship with their lifejackets, but none had obeyed the instruction because too little time was left. He had then made a mayday call.

"The second time I tried to call out the mayday and the ship upside down, and I can feel, still holding the PTG of the radio, the water is coming up to my neck, I still calling."

When the ferry turned over he was still on the bridge and as it filled with water he was able to escape and swim to the surface where a liferaft also came up.

Tuputupu said he did not want to work on the ferry from the first trip when he realised it was unseaworthy and unsafe. On the four trips the ferry did before the sinking, large holes were smashed in the hull by big seas. The cargo hold had also filled with water previously, requiring a hole to be punched in the side to drain water. "The hull was like paper for the waves."

Asked why he carried on, he said his job was "his only hope of getting wages". He also believed he had no authority to stop the ferry because the Tongan Marine Department had let it sail. He admitted much of the cargo had not been lashed down in the hold on the fatal voyage.

The inquiry has been adjourned until December 7.

John Jonesse, the chief executive of the Shipping Corporation of Polynesia, which operated the ferry, will continue his evidence on January 21.

- © Fairfax NZ News