[QUOTE=cappy208;61782]These twp statements seem to contradict each other, having seen the IR video of HUNDREDS of passengers evacuating the ship down the side, crawling, climbing down the side of the hull on jacobs ladders and shimmying down ropes into lifeboats. It would appear you have the timeline wrong about when, how the evacuation was accomplished.
Personally I believe the crew (whomever ordered it) tried to level the ship with ballast. and free surface increased so much that it caused the ship to capsize to the opposite side of the damage. Time will tell what happened, and VDR or not, soon enough crew will be interviewed to get to the truth. I didn’t think it possible for a vessel to ‘sink herself’ but after the Tug Valor incident, I see it is a real and ever present possibility on ALL vessels when the chain of errors is left to continue for ever.[/QUOTE]
It seems the ship was generally, 99%, abandoned between the first incident (the [B]contact[/B]) and the second incident (ship at anchor, heeling 90° starboard on side = [B]capsize[/B]). It is agreed some persons (crew?) are seen on the IR video walking on the horizontal, port, upper side, (you wonder what time it is) but there are many photos of the ship upright/little starboard list before/after all lifeboats (except 3 on port side) were launched and it seems most pax used the lifeboats. Of the 3200+ pax a 99%+ majority seem to have come ashore without getting wet! Quite good, actually. And note - ship never sank! Weather was very good! No hurry to get off, actually. Master was perfectly right to wait with Mayday, Lifeboat alarm, abandon ship, etc.
Lack of VDR and Voice recordings is very bad. All crew is back in Asia/S.America and can hardly be interviewed.
Hopefully we can agree that the hull [B]contact [/B]damage was very severe - port side pushed in 3 meter over 35 meter leaving a 50-100 m² opening and that affected hull watertight compartments were flooded at once - minutes. But the ship survived that - it trimmed on the stern and was floating stably and upright. Quite good actually. So maybe only two (or three) w/t compartments were flooded?
Then it took several hours for the ship to trim more on the stern - watertight doors opened, bilge pumps not running? - but the ship was still upright and then capsized to starboard onto the shore (how many w/t compartments were then flooded), superstrucure came under water and flooding from above could take place, list was 90°/port side a floor and the ship sank on the shallow sea floor - 60% of the ship still above water and list became 45°.
So it was clearly two separate incidents - first [B]contact,[/B] later [B]capsize[/B]. Had the ship remained afloat, it would have been easy to tow it away for repairs.
Maybe one of the flooded compartments contained crew cabins and that crew, when leaving, opened w/t doors allowing more w/t compartments to be flooded causing the [B]capsize[/B]? I assume at least 300 crew were asleep to start working early next morning, etc.