Pictured right is a "to be" famous ship: The Loch Ard. Commanded by Captain Gibbs it had a deadly collision early yesterday morning into a reef at Mutton Bird Island just off the Shipwreck Coast of Victoria. It was due to the fog that this shipwreck was caused (because Captain Gibbs couldn't see how close he was getting to land), killing fifty three of the fifty five people on board. The two survivors were 18 year old Eva Carmichael and 19 year old Thomas Pearce. To survive Eva had to cling on to a spar for 5 hours whereas Thomas hung on to the hull of an overturned lifeboat. The tragedy could have been softened if the masts and rigging didn't crash down on the ship on impact, preventing the lifeboats from working effectively. Overall, this is a tragedy that we should learn from. One of which should never happen again
We have just caught up with witness 49 year old Vincent Agosto who was the lighthouse keeper on that fateful morning.
"I was asleep in my lighthouse when I was woken up by an extremely loud bang," he accounts." It was so loud and screechy. It scared me out of my skin!
I looked out the window but the fog was too thick to see anything, so I went out and saw the remains of a sailing ship floating around in the ocean. No one could have survived that," I thought to myself. "But somehow two people actually did I hear."
Pictured right is a "to be" famous ship: The Loch Ard. Commanded by Captain Gibbs it had a deadly collision early yesterday morning into a reef at Mutton Bird Island just off the Shipwreck Coast of Victoria. It was due to the fog that this shipwreck was caused (because Captain Gibbs couldn't see how close he was getting to land), killing fifty three of the fifty five people on board. The two survivors were 18 year old Eva Carmichael and 19 year old Thomas Pearce. To survive Eva had to cling on to a spar for 5 hours whereas Thomas hung on to the hull of an overturned lifeboat. The tragedy could have been softened if the masts and rigging didn't crash down on the ship on impact, preventing the lifeboats from working effectively. Overall, this is a tragedy that we should learn from. One of which should never happen again
We have just caught up with witness 49 year old Vincent Agosto who was the lighthouse keeper on that fateful morning.
"I was asleep in my lighthouse when I was woken up by an extremely loud bang," he accounts." It was so loud and screechy. It scared me out of my skin!
I looked out the window but the fog was too thick to see anything, so I went out and saw the remains of a sailing ship floating around in the ocean. No one could have survived that," I thought to myself. "But somehow two people actually did I hear."
By Alexander Closter