On 8 March 1963
Johan van Oldenbarnevelt was sold to a Greek company, the Shipping Investment Corporation. Her decks and public rooms were renamed and the aft swimming pool was enlarged. 12 extra cabins were added, and
air conditioning was installed throughout the ship. Her hull was painted white, and her tonnage increased to . She was renamed
TSMS Lakonia. Ormos Shipping Company, also known as the
Greek Line, operated
Lakonia offering cruises from Southampton to the
Canary Islands. She left Southampton on her first voyage as
Lakonia on 24 April 1963. She proved very popular, and Greek Line planned 27 cruises for 1964. From 9–13 December 1963 she underwent another minor upgrade. A new pneumatic
fuel injection system was installed. Cabins were redecorated, and the kitchen and pantry were completely remodelled.
Lakonia was fitted with a number of safety features. She carried 24 lifeboats capable of holding 1,455 people. She had an automatic
fire alarm system and two fire stations with specialist firefighting equipment. She had
lifejackets for every person aboard and an extra 400 stowed on deck.
Fire Lakonia left Southampton on 19 December 1963 for an 11-day Christmas cruise of the Canary Islands. Her first scheduled stop was to be the island of
Madeira. She carried 646 passengers and 376 crew: a total of 1,022 people. All but 21 of the passengers were
British citizens. Most of her crew were Greek or German. The captain of
Lakonia was 53-year-old Mathios Zarbis. The crew had conducted a boat drill a week before, and the ship passed a safety inspection by the British
Ministry of Transport 24 hours before sailing. She carried a Greek certificate of seaworthiness. Passengers took part in a boat drill on 20 December, but one passenger noted that he was the only one at his lifeboat Station. On 22 December, at around 11:00 p.m., a
steward noticed thick smoke seeping under the door of the ship's hairdressing salon. Upon opening the door, he found the room completely ablaze, and the fire rushed into the hallway toward the state rooms. He and another steward tried to fight the flames with fire extinguishers, but the fire spread too fast to be contained. One of the men ran to notify the ship's
purser, Antonio Bogetti. Fire alarms sounded, but too softly to be heard by most passengers. "The fire alarm bell was so weak that it sounded like someone calling the waiter to ask for tea," one survivor later told reporters. An alarm went off on the bridge, showing the fire's location. The ship was about north of Madeira at .
[A] At the time the fire was discovered, most of the passengers were in the ship's
ballroom, called the Lakonia Room, dancing at the "Tropical Tramps' Ball." Passengers began to notice the smell of smoke, but most dismissed it as strong
cigar smoke. Captain Zarbis, who had been notified of the fire, tried to make an announcement on the ship's
public address system, but the fire had disabled it. As smoke began to fill the ballroom at about 11:30, the band stopped playing and
cruise director George Herbert ushered the frightened passengers to the boat deck. The upper deck was ablaze within 10 minutes. Many of the passengers who had been asleep in their cabins found themselves unable to escape the fire. Some passengers were told to go to the main dining room to await instructions, but most ignored this order, since the dining room lay directly in the path of the fire. At 11:30 p.m., the ship's chief radio officer Antonios Kalogridis sent out the first distress call: "Fire spreading up. Prepare evacuation on ship." At midnight, a second distress call was sent out: "We are leaving the ship. Please immediately give us assistance. Please help us." Kalogridis sent out the last call at 12:22 a.m., just before the radio room caught fire: "SOS from
Lakonia, last time. I cannot stay anymore in the radio station. We are leaving the ship. Please immediate assistance. Please help." A six-man fire crew tried to fight the blaze, but the fire spread too quickly to be contained.
Boilers began to explode, filling the rooms and hallways with thick, black smoke, and the suffocating passengers were forced on deck.
Evacuation The ship's purser gave the order to abandon ship shortly before 1:00 a.m. Dazed passengers made their way to the lifeboats, some in their pajamas and others still wearing their jewelry and evening wear. A few crew members went below decks to try to save passengers from their burning cabins. The ship's swimming pool attendant and a steward lowered themselves over the side of the ship, by rope, to pull trapped people from portholes. Evacuation of the ship was very difficult. Some lifeboats burned before they could be lowered. Two of the lifeboats were swamped, spilling their occupants into the sea; one when it was lowered only by one end, and the other when its davits broke off. Chains had rusted in many of the davits, making boats difficult or impossible to move. Only just over half of the lifeboats made it safely away from
Lakonia, and some of them less than half full. Several people who dove overboard struck the side of the ship on the way down, which killed them before they hit the water. Passengers were angered when the radio operator left the ship in a launch, with a nurse and two musicians. Kalogridis later testified that he had left to rescue people from the water. He stated that he did not return to the ship because the current pushed the launch away.
[B] Passengers also claimed that some of the crewmen took advantage of the chaos to
loot state rooms. When all of the boats were away, there were still people in the water and over 100 people left aboard the burning ship.
Lakonia continued to burn fiercely and was rocked by violent explosions. Those who remained aboard flocked to the glass-enclosed Agora Shopping Centre at the stern of the ship. After several hours, the flames closed in on them, and they were forced to descend ropes and rope ladders into the ocean. The port and starboard gangways were lowered as well, and people walked down the gangways single file into the sea.
Rescue At 3:30 a.m., four hours after the first distress call, the
Argentine passenger ship
Salta arrived on the scene.
Salta, commanded by Captain José Barrere, had been on her way from
Genoa, Italy to
Buenos Aires. The British cargo ship
Montcalm arrived half an hour later at 4:00 a.m. The majority of the survivors were saved by these two ships.
Salta rescued 475 people and took aboard most of
Lakonia's lifeboats. In the hours that followed, the
Belgian ship
Charlesville, the USA freighter
Rio Grande, the British passenger ship
Stratheden and the
Panamanian freighter
Mehdi all arrived to join the rescue. Each rescue ship launched boats to pluck survivors from the water. The
United States Air Force sent four
C-54 aircraft from the
Lajes Field in the
Azores. The planes dropped flares, lifejackets, life rafts and survival kits to people in the water. An
RAF Avro Shackleton from Gibraltar criss-crossed the area, pinpointing boats and survivors and guiding rescuers to them. The rescue was hindered by the fact that
Lakonia drifted for several miles during the evacuation. People in the water were dispersed over a area. Also, rescue ships were reluctant to get too near
Lakonia because of the risk that her 500 tons of
fuel oil could explode.
Charlesville sent a lifeboat shortly after daybreak to rescue Captain Zarbis, who was spotted pacing the decks of his still-burning ship. Zarbis was the last person to leave
Lakonia alive. Most of the survivors were taken to Madeira. Others, including Captain Zarbis, were taken to
Casablanca.
Aftermath The disaster killed a total of 128 people. 95 were passengers and 33 were crew. Only 53 people were killed in the actual fire. The rest died from
exposure,
drowning and injuries sustained while diving overboard. Most of the dead were buried in a Gibraltar cemetery after an autopsy which was carried out in a cavern workshop of 1st Fortress Squadron,
Royal Engineers. One passenger who jumped from the ship cut her throat on her life jacket. After being rescued by
Montcalm, her injuries were treated by another passenger, Alan Leigh. Largely due to this incident, cruise ship passengers are now instructed how to hold their jackets if jumping from a height. Crewmen from the
Royal Navy aircraft carrier boarded
Lakonia on 24 December, once the flames had died down. Most of the bodies were recovered by the crew of
Centaur. By this time
Lakonia was a charred, smoking hulk. Her superstructure had partially collapsed amidships, and the bridge and aft decks had caved in. There were holes blasted near her bow, and she was listing 10 degrees to
starboard. The
Norwegian tugboat Herkules secured a tow line to
Lakonia at 5:30 p.m. on 24 December.
Herkules, along with the Portuguese tugboat
Praia da Adraga and two other tugs, set off for the British base at
Gibraltar with
Lakonia in tow. Her list grew more severe each day, and at about 2:00 p.m. on 29 December,
Lakonia rolled onto her starboard side. She sank stern-first in only three minutes. The ship went down southwest of
Lisbon,
Portugal, west of Gibraltar. The only colour photographs taken of the
Lakonia disaster ran in
Life magazine on 3 January 1964.
Lifes photographic coverage of the event marked only the second time in history that a publication was able to offer hour-by-hour photographic coverage of a disaster at sea. Rita Harris recounted the events on 2 July 1964 on ''
Woman's Hour'' on the
BBC Light Programme.
Investigation The
Greek Merchant Marine Ministry conducted a two-year investigation into
Lakonia disaster. The board of inquiry maintained that
Lakonia should not have passed safety inspections before sailing. Lifeboat davits were rusted and lockers containing lifesaving equipment failed to open. The drain holes in many of the lifeboats lacked stoppers, so that passengers had to constantly bail water. The crew had conducted a lifeboat drill a week before the voyage, but only five of the boats had been lowered. The board argued that all of the boats should have been tested. Charges of looting were dropped after extensive questioning. The crew maintained that they had only broken into cabins to search for lifejackets. The board of inquiry made a number of other charges. The order to abandon ship was given too late. Operations on deck were not supervised by responsible officers. The crew, except for a few acts of self-sacrifice, failed to rescue sleeping passengers from their cabins below decks. Eight of
Lakonia's officers were charged with
negligence. Captain Zarbis, his first officer and the ship's security officer were charged with gross negligence. The other five men were charged with simple negligence. The cause of the fire was ultimately determined to be a
short circuit of faulty
electrical wiring. ==See also==