Minutes after the Herald Of Free Enterprise capsized off the Belgian port of Zeebrugge, bosun Terry Ayling escaped on to its upturned starboard side, its windows pointing towards the night sky.
Beneath him he saw the passengers still trapped inside.
‘It was like a scene out of a horror film, set in an asylum,’ recalled Ayling. ‘We were walking on people’s faces and fists hammering at the windows.’
With the 35th anniversary tomorrow comes a reminder, in a powerful book by Iain Yardley, of the horrors that unfolded on that terrible night of March 6, 1987.
Ninety Seconds At Zeebrugge is so named for the length of time it took the eight-deck, roll-on roll-off ferry to capsize, and is based on harrowing testimony from both survivors and rescuers.
There had been no inkling of what was to come when, after the loading of 36 lorries, the first of 84 cars began boarding at 6.30pm, half an hour ahead of the scheduled departure time.
There was no official passenger list — the ferry’s operator Townsend Thoresen counted only vehicle drivers and not their passengers — but there were an estimated 543 people aboard, including a crew of 80.
Ninety Seconds At Zeebrugge is so named for the length of time it took the eight-deck, roll-on roll-off ferry to capsize, and is based on harrowing testimony from both survivors and rescuers. As assistant bosun, was responsible for closing the huge, watertight doors through which vehicles had entered the front of the ship, but he had returned to his cabin for a rest ahead of the crossing to Dover and fallen asleep
There were cheers from passengers who thought the ferry had simply hit a big wave, but these quickly turned to screams as the Herald listed back to port and the wailing of her siren was accompanied by the crashing of overturned lorries and cars falling into each other below
Among the latter was 29-year-old Mark Stanley. As assistant bosun, he was responsible for closing the huge, watertight doors through which vehicles entered the front of the ship, but he had returned to his cabin for a rest ahead of the crossing to Dover and fallen asleep.
He was still dozing when the Herald backed out of Berth 12 — only five minutes behind schedule but with her bow doors still gaping open.
With no indicator lights on the bridge to alert Captain David Lewry to this catastrophic oversight, the Herald was turned around with the help of a tug and slowly glided out among the pleasure craft and fishing boats in the harbour, her open bow doors now exposed to the waters of the North Sea.
Rosina Summerfield, a 24-year-old warehouse manager from London, had gone back to the vehicle deck to collect some things from her car and remembered looking through the open doors and noticing that the sea was at the same level as the floor.
‘It was like a massive infinity pool,’ she said.
As the ship picked up speed, the waves it created sent water gushing on to the exposed vehicle deck, causing the Herald to sway a few degrees to port and then back to starboard.
There were cheers from passengers who thought the ferry had simply hit a big wave, but these quickly turned to screams as the Herald listed back to port and the wailing of her siren was accompanied by the crashing of overturned lorries and cars falling into each other below.
As the edge of the vehicle deck sank deeper into the sea, approximately 200 tons of water a minute were pouring in, causing the ferry to tilt further to port until the decks were near vertical
As the edge of the vehicle deck sank deeper into the sea, approximately 200 tons of water a minute were pouring in, causing the ferry to tilt further to port until the decks were near vertical.
Rapidly filling, that side of the ship became the bottom of an abyss into which hundreds of people fell, crashing into walls, through windows and into each other on their way down.
I tried to save the boy but he slipped away
As they found themselves plummeting downwards, the terrified passengers tried desperately to cling on to whatever they could, but many had been injured by flying bottles, glasses and furniture or simply did not have the strength to stop themselves slamming down into those who had fallen before them.
In the cafeteria, witnesses saw two women sucked through a smashed window and into the sea. ‘It was like a disaster movie,’ said Irish lorry driver Larry O’Brien. ‘People who went that way had no chance.’
In one of the lounges was Stan Mason, a 26-year-old British Army corporal serving in Germany. He and his wife Cath, 25, were returning to their home near Wigan, Lancashire, for the christening of their four-month-old daughter Kerry.
‘Cath was so excited about the weekend,’ said Stan. ‘She was nattering away about Kerry’s Christening dress, whether it would be OK, looking forward to seeing her dad and all our friends.’
Stan had given the baby her bottle of milk while Cath went off to look around the shops. She had returned with newspapers and a little rag doll for Kerry who by then was being winded by her dad.
As the ferry began to capsize, he and Cath were thrown out of their seats, tumbling downwards.
With the 35th anniversary tomorrow comes a reminder, in a powerful book by Iain Yardley, of the horrors that unfolded on that terrible night of March 6, 1987, as well as some of the brave heroics of passengers helping others. Pictured: Andrew Parker, a 33-year-old bank worker from South London who, with a 6 ft 4 frame, acted as a human stepping stone to allow more than 20 people to pass to safety.
‘I remember hitting a table on the way down, but because I was holding on to Kerry, I clasped her tightly to me instinctively,’ he said. When they hit the bottom, they were plunged into darkness as the ferry’s engines were drowned and the lights went out for good.
Somewhere in the pitch-black, Cath screamed, ‘My baby!’ — the last time Stan ever heard his wife’s voice.
Fourteen-year old Nicola Simpson and her friend Cheryl Taylor should have been at school in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire. Instead, they had been to Belgium for the day with Nicola’s father Tony, 41, an engineer for British Aerospace, and mother Patricia, 39, a dental nurse.
They were sitting at a table in the cafeteria when the floor tilted suddenly upwards, sending plates crashing all around them and pitching Nicola and her mother backwards over their seats.
One shouted, ‘I’m drowning! I love you’
Cheryl tried to stop Nicola from falling by grabbing her arms across the table between them but her friend was knocked from her grasp as people falling past hit her on the way down.
Shrieking with fear as the inrush of seawater swept her and her mother along, Nicola realised her boots were dragging her under and kicked them off. In the blackness, she heard people crying out for help and grabbed on to a man’s arm. Someone nearby shouted, ‘I’m drowning! I love you!’
Eight-year-old Martin Hartley, from Cotmanhay, Derbyshire, was in a bar with his father Richard, 31, and 38-year-old mother Hazel, who was wheelchair-bound with severe arthritis.
They had been joined on their jaunt to Belgium by Richard’s parents Joseph and Elsie, both 65, and 40-year-old family friend Patricia Hawley, known to Martin as ‘Auntie’.
First, Martin saw his mother rolling away in her wheelchair and his dad going after her, getting further away in the water. Richard shouted for Martin to swim towards him but, only being able to do the backstroke, the little boy lost sight of him.
While assistant bosun Mark Stanley always accepted the blame for failing to shut the doors, the inquest which opened that September criticised the ‘disease of sloppiness’ at P&O European Ferries, owners of Townsend Thoresen, which allowed one man’s oversight to have such catastrophic consequences
Next, he saw his dad being knocked over by someone else as panicked people scrambled over others in a frantic bid for survival. Then Martin, too, was pushed under water and trodden on.
Someone else in a wheelchair hurtled towards him and he was bowled through a broken window. That was the last thing he remembered about the capsize before waking up in hospital.
He later learned that his parents, his grandparents, and his ‘Auntie’ Patricia, were all dead.
As the filthy waters of the North Sea continued to flood in, there seemed little hope for Martin, Nicola and Stan, or any of the other passengers. But less than a mile from the harbour entrance, the Herald’s port side settled on a sandbank 32 ft below the surface.
She was half-submerged, but the water within her had stopped rising and many of her upright partitions and fixed furniture had become horizontal ledges providing temporary refuge for passengers, even if they were still up to their chests or necks in the water.
I clasped my baby tightly as we went down
The only illumination came from cigarette lighters held aloft by some survivors and, amid what one described as a ‘forest of hands clutching at the air’, Stan Mason called out for his wife Cath.
When there came no reply he focused on getting his baby daughter away from the icy water. Using the tables and chairs bolted to the now vertical floor as a ladder, he grasped her romper suit in his teeth and used both free hands to climb up on to a ledge shared with several others.
The baby was white with cold so they took turns moving her arms and legs and rubbing her body to keep her blood circulating as they huddled together for warmth and waited for help to come.
Rescuers arrived within minutes. The crew of the nearby dredger Sanderus had witnessed the ferry in trouble and radioed the harbour authorities, who put into action a well-rehearsed disaster plan.
First to race to the scene were the Sanderus and other boats in the harbour and within 25 minutes several helicopters were circling over the wreckage, including three Royal Navy Sea Kings called from a Nato mine-sweeping exercise about 12 miles away.
Rescuers arrived within minutes. The crew of the nearby dredger Sanderus had witnessed the ferry in trouble and radioed the harbour authorities, who put into action a well-rehearsed disaster plan
Their powerful searchlights lit up the figures of bosun Terry Ayling and other crew members who had struggled on to the hull by crawling along a corridor, using the wall as the floor, and then through a 2 ft-wide space to reach an exit door above their heads.
They included assistant bosun Mark Stanley, who had leapt from his bunk as the ship capsized. He realised that the cause might be the bow doors he should have closed, but there was no time to dwell on that as he and his colleagues grabbed hammers and axes from the lifeboats.
Smashing through the windows, they began fastening ropes around the waists or arms of those waiting in the dark below.
Most had to be pulled out because their fingers were so numb with cold and they lacked the strength to lift themselves — but not George Lamy, a postal worker from East London.
He had been celebrating his 54th birthday with four generations of his family: his 75-year-old mother Victoria, his wife Frances, 42, his daughter Kim, 20, and 11-month-old grandson Stevie.
Survivors and relatives of the dead were enraged when, even as that inquest was still in progress, it was revealed that P&O was eradicating the name ‘Enterprise’ from its entire Dover-based fleet, in an attempt to distance themselves from the images of the capsized ferry
His other daughter Tracy was also due to go on the trip but she had a five-month-old daughter and, since there was only room for one baby seat in the car, she had suggested that her grandmother Victoria go instead.
Once on board, George was left to look after the pushchair while Frances and Victoria took the baby to the cafeteria to get hot drinks and Kim went to the ladies to freshen up.
When the ferry went over, George used the edge of a table to support himself as he climbed up to the windows and managed to kick one of them through before climbing out on to the hull.
Then he went along the superstructure, smashing windows in the vain hope of finding his family members.
He helped many others in the process but never came to terms with failing to rescue his loved ones, according to his daughter Tracy. ‘He pulled so many people out but in his eyes he let the family down and he never did enough.’
Sonia Saunders, from Gillingham, Kent, was also marking a birthday, her 48th, by taking a trip to the Continent with her husband Mick, who had been reluctant to go because they were saving for their summer holidays.
Not all of the dead could be found. Some bodies were later washed up on nearby beaches and four victims remained unaccounted for, bringing the final death toll to 193, the worst British loss of life in a single incident since World War II
They were in the C-deck bar when the Herald capsized. ‘One minute we were laughing and joking’, she recalled. ‘The next he slid to his death in the icy water.’
Sonia grabbed hold of a chair but had to let go because she was in mid-air and she too fell into the water, surviving only because she was pulled to safety by a man on a small ledge above her.
‘As they took me out on the helicopter rope, I saw my husband in the water with lots of other bodies.’
Her rescuer was one of many passengers who helped save the lives of others, and none was more heroic than Andrew Parker, a 33-year-old bank worker from South London who was on a family outing with his wife Eleanor and their 12-year-old daughter Janice.
As the family tried to reach a perch above the water level, their way was blocked by a cross-corridor which had led from one side to the ship of the other.
Now upright and partially-filled with water it was too wide to jump, so Andrew spread-eagled his 6 ft 4 in frame across it and acted as a human stepping stone.
First across came Eleanor and Janice and then Andrew remained in place for another half an hour, allowing more than 20 people to pass to safety. Widely nicknamed the Human Bridge, he was later awarded a George Medal for bravery.
Whether or not people lived depended in part on their levels of body fat.
Women tend to have more than men and, while 42-year-old Sheila Perkins from Hastings, East Sussex, survived more than an hour in the water, her two slimly built sons Darren and Simon, aged 21 and 18, both perished.
Lorry driver John Wickham found himself in the water alongside Sheila and Simon, both clinging to him for life.
‘I tried to pull a life-jacket over the boy but he was too tired and cold to help me. I couldn’t save them both — it was one or the other. Without a word, he slipped beneath the water while his mum looked on, crying quietly.’
Still trapped in the cafeteria, Nicola Simpson spent two-and-a-half hours in the icy water, next to the body of her mother.
Unconscious and close to death, she was eventually taken by helicopter to a nearby hospital where she received life-saving treatment and remained for three weeks, the last survivor to be discharged in Belgium.
Her father Tony and schoolfriend Cheryl also survived, but so many others did not make it.
Two hours after the Herald capsized, German navy diver Volkmar Asboe entered the half-submerged vessel in search of survivors.
‘It was a horrible vision, very dark, and you could see bodies of women and children floating past in the middle of the bottles and cigarettes from the duty-free shop,’ he said.
‘I saw the cars in the holds, piled up like toys. I hope I never see anything like this again.’
The last passengers to be rescued, almost seven hours after the vessel had keeled over, were three lorry drivers trapped deep inside the wreckage.
Thereafter, it was a case of recovering bodies and, among the groups given this gruesome task, was a crack team of divers from the Royal Navy. Their commander,
Jack Birkett, later spoke of finding a young couple in their 20s in the cafeteria.
‘They had their arms round each other,’ he said. ‘The last thing they did. So young. I just felt a terrible sorrow.’
Another diver, Paddy Doonan, retrieved the body of a girl aged about 11, clutching a doll, and his colleague, Peter Still, remembered taking out the corpses of two elderly ladies.
‘They had ruined their fingers and fingernails trying to get out of the windows,’ he said. ‘Things like that stick in your mind.’
Not all of the dead could be found. Some bodies were later washed up on nearby beaches and four victims remained unaccounted for, bringing the final death toll to 193, the worst British loss of life in a single incident since World War II.
While assistant bosun Mark Stanley always accepted the blame for failing to shut the doors, the inquest which opened that September criticised the ‘disease of sloppiness’ at P&O European Ferries, owners of Townsend Thoresen, which allowed one man’s oversight to have such catastrophic consequences.
Survivors and relatives of the dead were enraged when, even as that inquest was still in progress, it was revealed that P&O was eradicating the name ‘Enterprise’ from its entire Dover-based fleet, in an attempt to distance themselves from the images of the capsized ferry pictured in newspaper and TV reports across the world.
They felt that P&O just wanted them to go away — but they never have.
Every year they have held a memorial service for the victims at St Mary’s Church in Dover.
This year will be no exception — a chance to remember those who undertook a journey which, in the words of soldier Stan Mason, should have been as routine as ‘taking a bus to the supermarket’.
Instead, they found themselves entombed in the freezing death trap that was the Herald Of Free Enterprise.
Adapted from Ninety Seconds At Zeebrugge: The Herald Of Free Enterprise Story by Iain Yardley, published by The History Press at £20. © Iain Yadley 2018.
To order a copy for £18 50 (offer valid to 19/03/22; UK P&P free on orders over £20), visit www.mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937.
