MV Explorer (1969)

(2006)|left Explorer was commissioned by Lars-Eric Lindblad, the Swedish-American pioneer of "exotic expedition" tours, and built in 1969 at Uudenkaupungin Telakka, a shipyard in Uusikaupunki, Finland. The ship was built to stay afloat with two compartments filled with water. Her original Finnish-Swedish ice class was 1C, which is relatively weak. It is not known when the ice class was uprated to 1A. The vessel was originally named Lindblad Explorer, after Lars-Eric Lindblad, and was the first custom-built expeditionary cruise ship. The first notable incident of the Explorer was when it ran aground near La Plaza Point, Antarctica, on 11 February 1972; her passengers, Lindblad among them, were rescued by the Chilean Navy. She was towed to Buenos Aires, Argentina, and then to Kristiansand, Norway, for repairs. After being renamed the Lindblad Explorer, the ship ran aground off Wiencke Island in the Antarctic on 25 December 1979. The 70 passengers and 34 of the crew were rescued by the Chilean Navy Antarctic transport , leaving the captain and a skeleton crew of 21 on board to await the arrival of a tugboat. Explorer was the first cruise ship to navigate the Northwest Passage in 1984. She was involved in the rescue of the crew of an Argentine supply ship in 1989 that had hit a rock ledge off Anvers Island, Antarctica. In 1998 Explorer was the first ship to circumnavigate James Ross Island; and in the same year, was claimed to be the first ship, as distinct from river boat, to sail above Iquitos, Peru, to the point where the Marañón and Ucayali rivers meet to become the Amazon River. Explorer was depicted on at least two postage stamps issued by South Georgia, and one issued by the Falkland Islands. Explorer was nicknamed "the Little Red Ship". A scale model of Explorer is on display at Canterbury Museum, Christchurch, New Zealand. ==Sinking==

Explorer departed from Ushuaia, Argentina, on 11 November 2007 on a 19-day cruise called Spirit of Shackleton run by Gap Adventures, intended to trace the route of the 20th-century explorer Ernest Shackleton through the Drake Passage (an area typically stormy with rough seas). After visiting the Falkland Islands and South Georgia, she hit an iceberg on 23 November 2007 in the Bransfield Strait, close to King George Island in the Southern Ocean and near the South Shetland Islands. The iceberg struck by Explorer made a gash in the hull which allowed water to enter. The Argentine Navy later said in a statement that it had observed "significant" damage. Some passengers on Explorer reported a loud "bang" at the time of impact, although others reported that there had been no noticeable impact, or at least nothing more than the normal crunching of ice experienced when sailing through icy waters. One passenger reported sea water in their cabin at about 03:00 UTC. Some reports also indicated that the ship had drifted into an iceberg on Explorer starboard side while the crew was assessing damage caused by the original impact, also to the starboard side of the ship. A mayday call was put out by the ship at 04:24 UTC, and rescue operations were quickly coordinated by the DPA Peter Burman in Sweden who made contact with the Prefectura Naval Argentina (the Argentinian equivalent of a coastguard) and the Chilean Navy Center for Search and Rescue. Chile dispatched the icebreaker as well as nearby commercial ships, including the MN Ushuaia, the , and the Norwegian Coastal Express ship which was operating as a passenger cruise ship at the time. By 07:30 UTC all 91 passengers, nine guides and 54 crew, from over 14 countries, had taken to the Explorer lifeboats. They drifted for five hours until they were picked up by the Norwegian ship MS Nordnorge, which arrived on scene at approximately 10:00 UTC. All of those rescued by Nordnorge were taken to the Chilean Frei Montalva Station on King George Island, from where they were subsequently airlifted by C-130 Hercules transport aircraft of the Chilean Air Force to Punta Arenas, Chile, Her wreck lies at . Explorer was designed, like most ships, with compartments which could be sealed off by watertight doors. The ship would not sink if holed and one compartment flooded, but was not safe if more compartments were flooded, either by a gash spanning compartments or imperfect sealing between compartments. Gap Adventures reported that there was a crack in addition to the hole, but it is not clear if it spanned compartments. In an article published on 8 December 2007, Jim Barnes, the executive director of the Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition said that Explorer was "perfect for ice navigation", and stated that the explanation of the sinking "doesn't add up" and that "essential pieces of the story are missing". Sander Calisal, professor emeritus of naval architecture at the University of British Columbia, added that Explorer's ice-reinforced hull ought to have withstood accidental contact with submerged ice. ==Investigation==

, New Zealand. The investigation into the sinking of Explorer was carried out by the Liberian Bureau of Maritime Affairs. The report into the accident was released in April 2009. The report listed the cause of the accident as the decision by Captain Bengt Wiman, age 49, to enter the ice field, stating that, "He was under the mistaken impression that he was encountering first year ice, which in fact, as the Chilean Navy Report indicated, was much harder land ice." The report adds that passengers reported seeing red paint on the passing ice less than thirty minutes prior to when the flooding was reported, another indication that the vessel was passing through compact and hard ice. The report said that while Wiman was very experienced in Baltic waters, he was unfamiliar with the type of ice he encountered in Antarctic waters. The report's investigating officer could not convince Gap Adventures that it was their responsibility to retrieve the ship's voyage data recorder, after the master failed to ensure its transfer from the ship despite being reminded to do so. The report also found that, given that the Gap Adventures staff "served the function of crew members", they should have had "the required safety training and documents as seafarers". The report praised the performance of Wiman and crew in organizing and evacuating the passengers, and notes that lives were likely saved due to their actions. ==Notes==