Mikhail Lermontov sinking retains sense of bizarre 34 years on
Friday, 7 August 2020
Russian President Boris Yeltsin once described New Zealand as the only country ever to ever sink a Russian ship and get away with it.
He was talking of course about the Soviet cruise liner Mikhail Lermontov which hit rocks off Cape Jackson in the Marlborough Sounds late in the afternoon on February 16, 1986.
It remains one of our most bizarre maritime accidents ever to happen in this country, and Russia was quite entitled to be annoyed.
Captain Vladislav Vorobyev had turned the ship over to Marlbourough Harbourmaster, pilot and acting general manager Captain Don Jamison, who attempted to navigate the liner through a narrow, shallow passage between Cape Jackson and an offshore light. Here it struck submerged rock pinnacles, tearing a long gash in its port side which caused it to list and eventually sink.
**READ MORE:
* New Zealand shipwrecks you can visit
* Earthquake creates new dive chances on sunken Soviet ship Mikhail Lermontov
* 150 Years of News: Nightmare cruise on the Mikhail Lermontov
**
Jamison never spoke publicly about his decision to take the ship through the passage, and there was criticism at the time that the subsequent inquiry was a whitewash.
Conspiracy theorists had a field day, speculating even that the ship had KGB agents aboard who were collecting evidence about the Five Eyes spy base planned for up the Waihopai Valley, the inference being that we sunk the ship on purpose.
Transport Minister Richard Prebble did nothing to calm speculation either, putting a top secret classification for 50 years on many of the government files about the incident.
It was all a big deal, the Mikhail Lermontov being the pride of the Soviet cruise fleet. Departing Leningrad on its maiden voyage on May 28 1973, it was the first Russian liner to call into New York in 25 years, continuing the Atlantic run until 1980 when President Reagan retaliated against the Russians for invading Afghanistan by banning of all Soviet ships from entering US waters.
A US$15 million refit in 1982 brought the ship up to luxury standard – this including lavish redecoration of all the public areas and the ship repainted white.
She left Sydney on the February 6 1986 for what had been marketed as a 'two week cruise of a lifetime'. Of the 743 people aboard, 372 were passengers - made up of 327 mostly retired Australians, 36 British, 6 Americans, 2 Germans and one Kiwi.
After taking in Auckland, Tauranga and Wellington, she berthed at Picton at 8am on the fateful day, letting the passengers ashore for a stroll before departing for Milford Sound at 3pm.
Aboard now was Captain Don Jamison. Normally he would have left the ship at Long Island, but he had been hired to stay on and take the vessel into Milford Sound as well.
According to passenger reports, Jamison put on quite a show for the passengers, taking the ship close to many a headland as he took the ship out of Queen Charlotte Sound. That was not unusual for someone as locally experienced as Jamison, but he was definitely foolhardy to take the ship between the lighthouse and the end of Cape Jackson.
About 5.37pm the passengers felt a sickening thud as the ship scrapped the reef, tearing a 12m-long gash in the hull and penetrating three water-tight bulkheads. The incoming water not only caused the ship to immediately list, but short-circuited the electrical system and stopped the engines.
A mayday call was broadcast at 6.03pm, but was later rescinded. Passengers couldn’t help but notice crew had donned their lifejackets though as an announcement was made that dinner would be delayed an hour and the wine tasting session that was in progress would be extended.
The band continued to play, but the wine tasting stopped when the growing list sent glasses sliding off the tables.
Ignoring the mayday stand-down, Captain Reedman aboard the LPG tanker Tarihiko pressed on to the scene, arriving as the first passengers were being evacuated into rafts and ship's boats from 8.45 p.m. Many elderly passengers sustained injuries leaping from the ship into the rafts.
Conditions were sloppy but not rough as the Tarihiko was able to get her boats to the stricken ship and begin evacuating passengers back to the deck of the LPG carrier.
In the meantime, locals had declared their own full-scale mayday, some 23 small craft responding to patrol the area in the gathering darkness. These were joined by the interisland ferry Arahura which diverted to the scene along with the HMNZS Taupo which conducted a search of the coastline in the darkness.
At first the crippled liner took on a 12 degree list as it drifted into Port Gore where Captain Vorobyev tried unsuccessfully to beach his ship.
When it did go down at 10.15 pm, she was listing 40 degrees to starboard and at 10.27 pm she foundered in 15 fathoms, sinking by the bow and laying over on her port side off Gannet Point, just offshore from John Harvey's Port Gore property.
It was said by those watching that the ship going down was unforgettable. Bubbles more than six feet across belched from the sea, and anything loose on the ship shot from the surface before smacking down again. The crashing, banging and hissing was deafening, then nothing. Just complete quiet.
Only one person was unaccounted for, a 33-year-old member of the crew, refrigeration engineer Pavel Zaglyadimov, who was presumed to have gone down with the ship. His body was never recovered, presumably still in the ship somewhere.
On March 6 1986, the findings of the New Zealand Government Preliminary Marine Inquiry into the sinking were released, determining that Captain Don Jamison was responsible for the accident. It also praised the efforts of the Russian crew in saving all the passengers.
Much bickering ensued, a statement from the Marlborough Harbour Board declaring Captain Jamison was on leave at the time of the sinking and had been employed directly by the shipping company's agents. Also the harbour board's responsibility always finished at Long Island.
The inquiry chairman disagreed, saying the pilot was still employed overall by the board.
The Russians conducted their own inquiry and also blamed Jamison for taking a route where no indications of depth were shown on the chart. The New Zealand government countered by saying the charts were more than adequate and that Captain Jamison had technically returned control of the ship to the Master well before she struck.
Our government’s suppression of the inquiry evidence left many questions unanswered, but Jamison did in the end accept his mistake, blaming it on mental and physical exhaustion.
The vessel is now considered one of our most premiere wreck dive sites, even if most of the ship’s most collectible fittings have been removed by recreational divers. Along with the missing crewman, three divers have since lost their lives exploring in the wreck, with only one recovered.
During the 2016 Kaikoura earthquake, it was reported by divers that the walls of the ship billowed in and out as the 7,000 tonne ship literally bounced up and down on the seafloor. The shaking caused its three upper decks parted company with the rest of the ship and slide off, literally opening up the ship to further exploration.