Vancouver whaling boat tragedy which killed five Britons was 'caused by freak wave'

Tragedy: the aftermath of the incident, which is thought to have been caused by a freak wave
Facebook
Robin de Peyer27 October 2015

A freak wave caused the whaling boat disaster in which five British people died, a survivor said.

An 18-year-old man and a 76-year-old were among four men who died alongside a woman in the tragedy near Vancouver Island off the west coast of Canada on Sunday.

Twenty-one people were rescued from the stricken vessel, Leviathan II, which was carrying 24 passengers and three crew. A 27-year-old man from Sydney is still missing.

Investigators from Canada’s Transportation Safety Board were working to establish what happened to the vessel, which was run by local company Jamie’s Whaling Station.

The company's owner Jamie Bray said people were "traumatised" and in "disbelief" at what had happened.

He said: "This vessel has operated for 20 years with an absolutely perfect safety record. This is something just totally out of the blue.

"We just don't understand and we won't know the answers until the Transportation Safety Board finishes their investigations."

A fisherman whose friend saw a flare in the sky said he rushed to the scene and described seeing people in life rafts, in the water and on the rocks.

Clarence Smith said they were able to help rescue a number of people, including a pregnant woman and a woman with a broken leg.

Mr Smith said: "The lady was saying that a wave just capsized them. That's why there weren't any communications on the radio, no mayday."

Corene Inouye, director of operations for Jamie's Whaling Station said the incident appeared to have happened so quickly that no mayday call was sent, but flares were lit.

The TSB said the boat began to take on water around two hours and fifteen minutes after it took off on its whale watching tour.

During its investigations the team will interview crew members and passengers, examine the wreckage of the vessel, its maintenance history and how the equipment was operated, and look at meteorological conditions.

The company suffered a previous fatal accident, with a boat becoming swamped and rolling to an angle in 1998, killing the captain and a tourist, and an incident two years earlier when a captain suffered head injuries, but survived, after falling asleep and running a boat aground.

Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said his thoughts are with the family and friends of those affected by Sunday's accident.

Greg Louie, chief councillor of the Ahousaht First Nation Elected Council, told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme: "Our people found out by a distress call. A mayday was put out about a boat that had gone down.

"We are a fishing community, we are right at the ocean, so every home in our community has a marine radio inside the house, so we can communicate with our fishermen and our boats that are on the water.

"So when there's a distress call, every household in the community hears it. So when it came out, our people said 'We've got to go and help', so they ran down to the dock and got into the boats. There was about three or four to each boat and seven boats went out."

Mr Louie said one boat which was already at sea arrived at the scene of the disaster within a few minutes and the others about 20-25 minutes after the distress call.

"They pulled people out of the water when they got there," he said. "Some were hurt and others were deceased."

Had they not arrived so quickly "possibly everyone could have died, either drowned or died of hypothermia", he added.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in