Word: lifeboats
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...before the fire, her new owner, Canadian Jules Sokoloff, put the Castle in a Tampa drydock, spent $278,000 on repairs to her keel, promenade deck and railings, replaced a propeller and some machinery. The Coast Guard examined her in drydock, three weeks later held a dockside fire and lifeboat drill. About all that could be said for the ship was said by Captain Vitus G. Niebergall, Coast Guard safety inspector: "International convention allows one half-hour to get lifeboats into the water. This boat got its lifeboats into the water in eight minutes." When she caught fire, by contrast...
...charges that Captain Byron Voutsinas, the Castle's 33-year-old Greek skipper, disappeared after the order to abandon ship, the skipper explained that the flames had cut him off from the stern of the ship, where most passengers were huddled. So, said Voutsinas, he climbed into a lifeboat intending to reboard her astern, but decided instead to carry injured passengers in the boat to the rescue ship Finnpulp. Another reason for accompanying them, his lawyer maintained, was to ask the Finnpulp to radio an S O S to other ships-which the Finnish freighter had already done. Many...
...burning vessel. How and why may never be known, though a Coast Guard inquiry was expected this week. As always, passengers had a hundred conflicting stories. While many had high praise for the crew, the captain of the Finnpulp said that he had turned back the first lifeboat because it was loaded with seamen, ordered it to return to pick up passengers. Voutsinas blandly accounted for the remarkable survival of his crew-only two of 174 died-by explaining that they were "young and well trained, and many of the passengers were elderly...
...Some facts were all too clear. Unlike modern U.S. ships, which contain almost no wood, the Yarmouth Castle was loaded with in flammable paneling and furniture. The fire, which apparently started three decks down amidships, gutted the passenger quarters with satanic speed. Passengers had not been given a single lifeboat drill or even told where their life jackets were stored...
Spyros Skouras, who as boss of 20th Century-Fox from 1942 to 1962 brought out such sagas as Lifeboat and Titanic, last week took the lead in another kind of sea drama. At a Washington press conference, the 72-year-old argonaut announced that the Prudential Lines, a seven-ship company that he heads, had applied to the Maritime Administration for a subsidy to help build a $250 million fleet of 16 freighters. While new forms of transportation were being devised elsewhere (see WORLD BUSINESS), Skouras showed off designs for vessels intended to cut shipping costs and vastly speed...