Soviet Union Disaster At Sea

By James O. Jackson/Moscow

At 10:30 on a mellow summer evening last week, Captain Vadim Markov ordered his aged passenger liner unmoored in the Black Sea port of Novorossisk. The 17,053-ton Admiral Nakhimov steamed out of the harbor, bound for Sochi, 115 miles to the southeast, with 1,234 souls on board: a crew of 350 and 884 tourists, all Soviet citizens, enjoying a late-season coastal cruise. A band was playing on deck, and some of the passengers danced beneath brilliant lights that reflected off the dark waters.

Just 45 minutes after it got under way, the pleasure trip turned to disaster. The 41,000-ton Soviet freighter Pyotr Vasev suddenly loomed out of the darkness. The Admiral Nakhimov's deck officers warned it off by radio, but the big cargo ship bore down steadily and struck the starboard side of the passenger liner. "I was in my cabin when the blow came," said Chief Purser Victor Prosvirnev. "There was a power blackout. The emergency diesel generator came on, but in two or three minutes power failed again as the feeder switchboard was submerged."

According to Soviet spokesmen, who were uncharacteristically prompt in providing details on the disaster, the ships collided at 11:15 p.m. Eight minutes later the liner sank in 155 feet of water. Many passengers managed to make it into the sea, but hundreds were trapped in crushed or flooded staterooms. As the ship slipped under, nearly 400 people went to their death in one of the worst acknowledged shipping disasters in Soviet history.

"The liner sank instantly due to a very unfortunate blow struck by the freighter," Deputy Maritime Fleet Minister Leonid Nedyak told a press conference in Moscow less than 48 hours after the accident. "The point of impact was between the engine room and the boiler room and practically ripped the ship open." There was no time, he said, to launch lifeboats, though many of the survivors, among them Captain Markov, were able to hang on to inflatable rafts deployed from the deck.

Rescue efforts got under way immediately. The damaged Pyotr Vasev, which picked up the first survivors, was joined by coast guard launches, tugboats, helicopters, even rowboats. Stanislav Usanov, a motor-launch crewman, said "the people were often so weak that they could not hold on to the hands of the rescuers, so sailors risked their lives by jumping into the water."

Soviet officials said the rescuers had saved 836 people and recovered 116 bodies; 282 were missing and presumed drowned. Nedyak refused to speculate about the cause of the accident. Both vessels, he said, were equipped with radar, and the Admiral Nakhimov was in sound condition. "Evidently," he said, "the ships are not at fault, people are at fault."

The government daily Izvestia quoted a cruise-ship seaman, identified only as "Helmsman Smirnov," as saying "We saw the bulk carrier in the distance. The duty officer started calling it by radio. We took its bearing and realized that the ship would cross our path. After a few moments came the Pyotr Vasev's answer: 'Don't worry. We shall steer clear of each other. We shall do what is needed.' " Yet the freighter failed to change course. Another newspaper report charged that the Admiral Nakhimov's captain was negligent. Both captains were arrested and are in custody pending the outcome of a government investigation, headed by Politburo Member Geidar Aliev, to determine the cause of the accident.

The Admiral Nakhimov had already survived one sinking in a long career through war and peace. Built in Germany in 1925 as a transatlantic luxury liner, it was sunk by an allied mine in Swinemunde Bay, Poland, in 1945. The Soviets raised the wreck and restored it to use as a cruise ship. Hardly had last week's sinking been announced when the Soviets' new willingness to give details of disasters was tested again. TASS reported that one person had been killed and more than 500 injured in an earthquake that damaged 50,000 homes in the southern republic of Moldavia.