Incident Initiation
Suddenly at about 9:45 PM the ship lurched to the port side violently, sending their table contents, china, crystal, utensils hurling off tables. Their chairs sliding and perhaps tipping over. This would have been the result of the Captain ordering, at high speed, "right full rudder", attempting to avoid the rock outcropping suddenly appearing ahead. Applying large rudder angles when at speed, results in a very rapid and dangerous tilt to the opposite side while the ship is in it's turn.
Passengers in other parts of the ship may have fallen or have been hurled into obstructions, because of the violent movement or perhaps injured from loose furniture.
Soon thereafter, they may have been further jolted due to the ship's impact with the rock outcropping.
Within a minute or so, the ship must have lurched to the opposite side because of the Captain's reversing rudder to port. Now, objects will be sliding to the starboard side as speed, although slowed somewhat due to the Captain's reversing engines, was still excessive enough to cause excessive tilting.
Not too soon after returning to an even keel, the lights were lost and darkness pervaded throughout the ship. Passengers must have been totally bewildered by these cascading events.
Loss of lighting would have resulted from the flooding of the engineering spaces resulting in the loss of the main ship's service generators.
Flooding of the engineering spaces, resulting in loss of the main engines was not immediately realized by the Captain and his bridge crew.
Initial Reactions
We now have a situation in which the passengers are in the dark and in a quandary of what to do next.
Passengers have been tossed about and now, mostly are in total darkness. What to do next? What, if any information has been delivered over the public address system? We do not know just when, or what was announced to the passengers.
For those in public spaces, it must have been totally bewildering, taking some time before they could realize the situation and how to proceed.
It has been related, that shortly after loss of lightening, the alarm is sounded: two long whistles and one short, informing the crew of a problem.
Emergency diesel generator sets would have been automatically activated on loss of normal power, resulting in the provision of emergency lightening in critical portions of the ship within 10-15 seconds. The extent of lighting in passenger areas is not known, but assumed to be minimal in passage and stairways. I would believe that passenger rooms remained darkened.
At this time, passengers and crew, alike, were unsure of the ship's plight. It would take some time for them to gather their wits, and initiate individual response.
It seems to me that members of the crew having duties to perform in emergency situations, would have immediately proceeded to their assigned stations. Given the immense size of the ship, this would take some time. One would believe that many would be in possession of hand held radio receivers, HTs in which to communicate.
One might believe, that survival meant proceeding to a lifeboat, but first, returning to their cabins in order to procure their lifejackets.
Passengers soon, very well might have heard, over the PA system, safety instructions, perhaps is several different languages, directing them to return to their cabins.
This starboard side picture shows the 13 starboard side lifeboats and ship's tenders cradled off Deck #4
The port side of the ship contains an identical set of boats which consist of one work boat, three shore side tenders and nine lifeboats.
Below, one also can sense the vast extent of the cabin deck cooridors, over 700 feet in length.
Deck Plans
3rd Belgia 2nd Svezia 1st Orlanda
Consider now, in limited lightening, the mass of passengers starting to file onto the three center line stairways, and the very long narrow cooridors in the cabin decks which stretch well over two football fields in length. With the hugh number of passengers, all moving in different dirctions in rather narrow spaces, boxed in by insufficient space, claustrophobia could be expected to take over resulting in chaos and panic.
One might also consider that not everyone was totally familiar with their way around this floating array of restaurants, bars, swimming pools, etc.
On naval vessels, in emergencies, the convention of movement is that one proceeds in directions, "aft and down to port, forward and up to starboard." This prevents blocking the efficient movment of men to their battle stations. This convention would be immpossible to impose on these large cruise ships, and one would expect hectic traffic obstructions by those hurrying to and fro.
On reaching their individual cabins, finding their way around may have been difficult in the very limited lighting available. Few, if any, may have been in possession of flashlights.
By the time most passengers reached their cabins, crewman having emergency assignments in the cabin spaces, may have arrived at their assigned stations and were now ready to direct passengers where and how to proceed.
Once having received directions from cabin crewman, calm may have removed some of passsengers anxiety.
6th Gran 5th Italia 4th Grecia
Bretagne Boat Deck
Some may have proceeded now to their assigned lifeboat stations on the 4th, Grecia, deck. Here we have been told ship's crew suggested they return to their cabins and await further instructions as conditions were not that serious.
Some may have taken these instructions and returned to cabins, others may have remained at their lifeboats.
Time has not been well defined. However, we might believe that calm and order had been mostly restored, as seems to be attested to by the pictures of passengers in their lifejackets at various lifeboat stations who appear calm and orderly. Unfortunately, we do not know the exact time or situation onboard when these were taken.
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9th Francia 8th Portogallo 7th Irlanda
Bridge Deck
Evacuation
Shortly after her grounding, the ship heeled over about 20° to the starboard. With the command to abandon ship, the ship's Deck Department seaman began the launching of the ship's 26 boats.
As these photographs show, at least 11 of the 13 starboard side boats have been launched, we assume most are loaded with passengers, and are milling about before receiving instructions to land them ashore.
Note, that the starboard side anchor appears to have been deployed as we see anchor chain hanging from the hawsepipe.
On the port side, all but three boats appear to have been launched.
Here we see that perhaps only the number 1 and 13 boats may be still aboard, and all but two lifeboats remaining nearby. Although, the length of time the ship remained in this state is unknown before "turning turtle," I have seen suggestions that she remained in this position for 30 minutes.
