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On 26 September 2000, waves push the MS Express Samina off course, causing it to hit a group of rocks off Paros and sink, killing 80 people. The subsequent investigation showed that the ferry was on autopilot, with the crew not monitoring the ship's course. They were instead watching a soccer match.
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00:00A shipwreck in the Greek islands.
00:03Hundreds of people fight for survival in a swirling storm.
00:08We need to help this man!
00:09With their lives on the line, some people become heroes.
00:13Don't let go!
00:15Others do whatever it takes to stay alive.
00:18Keep her away! She'll kill us both!
00:23Investigators uncover an extraordinary chain of events.
00:26Small mistakes which have deadly consequences.
00:52A passenger ferry pushes its way through a storm.
00:55What is that?
00:56Whoa!
00:57Oh, my God!
01:03Within sight of land, this Greek islands ferry is sinking in high winds and stormy seas.
01:09There was a hole, and it was gonna sink, and it was gonna sink fast.
01:14A huge rescue operation kicks in.
01:16Rescuers must risk their own lives.
01:19I never want to be in that situation ever again, because it was terrifying.
01:26But I had enough time to think, okay, well this is the part where I die.
01:31It was like a catastrophe.
01:32It was as if it was coming the end of the world for this island.
01:37For the people of Greece, it's a national disaster, the worst of its kind in 30 years.
01:44Discovering why it happened will take months of detective work, and raise this question.
01:48How safe are the ships we sail on?
02:02The Greek capital, Athens.
02:04This great metropolis has a 3,000 year history.
02:07A history built around the city's easy access to the Mediterranean.
02:17The harbour district of Athens is called Piraeus.
02:21Ferry boats ply back and forth between here and the more than 200 islands scattered throughout the Aegean Sea.
02:27For island hoppers, this is where the adventure begins.
02:37It's here somewhere. It has to be.
02:39I think today would be good.
02:41I'm hurrying.
02:43Are you sure you don't go?
02:44Tuesday, September the 26th, 2000.
02:47Christine Shannon and Heidi Hart from Seattle are close friends.
02:51They've bought tickets for a ferry ride to the island of Paros, 166 kilometres to the southeast.
03:05Christine's 32 and teaches preschool.
03:08Heidi's 26 and just graduated from college.
03:11She wants to go into business management.
03:14It's been a crazy kind of day.
03:16They'd planned on going to the island of Santorini, further south.
03:19Oh, it's huge.
03:20I have it. Okay, let's go.
03:22Oh, we have to hurry.
03:23Now, I have the tickets.
03:26Let's go.
03:26Oh, it's rushing me.
03:27We'd been enjoying Athens the night before a little too much, and we overslept and missed our Santorini boat.
03:35I had never heard of Paros.
03:37I even asked them, well, show me on a map where the island is, and then I said, never mind,
03:41it doesn't matter.
03:41Let's just go. It's the next boat. Let's go somewhere.
03:44So it was a fluke that we were on that boat.
03:49Here's where chance is steering them.
03:52It could be a whole lot worse.
03:54If you dream of a Greek getaway, Paros is just what the guidebooks promise.
04:07Life is laid back, and the backdrop is enchanting.
04:11Around 12,000 people live on Paros year-round.
04:19In tourist season, add to that 100,000 visitors.
04:24Ferries from Athens head for the harbour in the main town, Parikia.
04:28There's constant traffic back and forth to the mainland.
04:31As one boat's leaving, another one shows up, bringing hundreds more eager visitors.
04:43Christine and Heidi are among 472 passengers who board the Samina today.
04:57As they get ready to embark, one thing becomes clear.
05:01Some of the boats on the island's run are modern, newly built.
05:04But the Samina comes from a different era.
05:08She's been criss-crossing the Mediterranean since 1966.
05:12The Samina was launched before these two were born.
05:15And though they don't realize it, Greek safety laws say that in little over a year,
05:20the Samina will be pulled out of service and sent to the scrapyard.
05:25I made a few jokes to Christine about the lifeboats don't look very safe if we get into trouble out
05:32here.
05:32I said, we'll be screwed.
05:34And I said, well, there's no icebergs in the Aegean, so we should be okay.
05:42The Samina can carry more than 1,000 passengers, along with her 61 crew.
05:47So today, the ship's less than half full.
05:55Katrina Stark and her cousin Sarah Davis, both from New Zealand, are backpacking.
06:01Like Heidi and Christine, they're literally sailing into the unknown.
06:06We had no plans.
06:08We went to get on the very first ferry that was leaving, going wherever it was going to take us.
06:13And that happened to be first stop Paris.
06:19At 7.15, two hours into the journey, the sun is setting.
06:23There are still three hours to kill before the Samina arrives.
06:31The sports fans on board, passengers and crew, know just how they'd like to spend the time.
06:38There's a major soccer game playing live on TV.
06:41Athens star side Panatanaikos are up against their German rivals, Hamburg.
06:49The reception wasn't very good, and so they had various staff come along trying to fix the TV, and everyone
06:57was putting suggestions on how to fix the TV, and it seemed to be quite important to everybody on board
07:02that they get to see this game.
07:11At 8pm, the Samina passes the island of Kythnos.
07:14They're on schedule to reach Paros at around a quarter past ten.
07:19The wind is rising, the sea is growing rougher, but these northerly winds, known as the Meltemi, are frequent at
07:26this time of year.
07:27The Samina has weathered conditions much worse than this over the past three decades.
07:34Heidi and Christine are the only people left outside.
07:38They think their tickets don't allow them to go in.
07:42I said, we have third class tickets, we have to stay out on the deck.
07:46It's going to be a cold, wet, terrible night.
07:48But I didn't even think to go downstairs where most of the people on the boat were.
07:58For the crew of the Samina, the night time journey is routine.
08:02Hazards such as reefs and rocks are all clearly marked on their charts.
08:07Many have warning lights.
08:10Two jagged outcrops rise from the sea within sight of the main harbour on Paros, Parikia Bay.
08:17Known as the Portes, or the Gates, they lie five and a half kilometres from the town.
08:22For every mariner sailing these waters, the gates of Paros are a familiar landmark.
08:27They're welcoming, but dangerous too.
08:38The rocks rise 25 metres out of the sea.
08:42Every passing ship must give them a wide clearance.
08:45At night, a beacon light on the taller of the two rocks sends a clear warning to sailors.
08:50Stray too close to the gates of Paros, and disaster will follow.
09:07They're still two hours away.
09:12But they're sailing into a growing storm.
09:16Despite the weather, Christine and Heidi are still out in the open.
09:22Had I known we could go to any other part of the boat at that point in time, I would
09:27have.
09:28But I didn't know, and actually being in that part of the boat, I think, was very fortuitous for us,
09:34because we were able to be aware of what was going on later.
09:41Being out on the deck will help save their lives.
09:45Soon, everyone aboard will be fighting for survival.
09:53On the evening of September the 26th, 2000, the passenger ferry Express Samina leaves Athens' harbour, Piraeus, heading southeast.
10:05She's making for the island of Paros, five hours away in the Aegean Sea.
10:14As the sun sets, the weather deteriorates until, by nightfall, the ship is being buffeted by a northerly gale.
10:21But the crew are used to such conditions.
10:24Their ship is big enough, tough enough, to survive far worse.
10:29The Samina is 115 metres long, more than a soccer field, and 18 metres wide.
10:37Passengers are widely dispersed.
10:39Heidi and Christine are out on the open deck.
10:43Katrina and Sarah are inside the main passenger lounge.
10:51The nerve centre is here, the engine room.
10:56It's below the waterline, but is protected by a series of watertight doors.
11:01The crew need to move about, but the ship is safe so long as they lock the doors tight behind
11:06them.
11:14To reduce the rolling effect of the waves, the ship also has a stabilising system,
11:19like small wings that extend out into the water.
11:24It's still a bumpy ride, but it doesn't stop passengers moving about when they want to.
11:31As we got further away, and night began to fall, the seas got rougher and it became stormy.
11:38Until it got to the point where you couldn't even walk on board, you had to kind of stumble sideways.
11:48People were kind of laughing. It was kind of funny at the time.
11:55Being from a place where we ride ferries quite often,
11:59it wasn't really a concern to us at the time, but it was pretty rough out there.
12:05It's 10pm. The wind has now risen to nearly 50 kilometres an hour.
12:10Waves are cresting two metres high.
12:15Despite the gale, visibility is good.
12:19Those are the lights of Paros.
12:21The Samina's on time and still pushing forward at 33 kilometres an hour.
12:26Then suddenly...
12:30The ship lurches sharply to the left.
12:32What's that? I don't know.
12:35The boat turned enough that it startled me awake.
12:39And I woke up and was kind of dazed a little bit.
12:43You can't just park a boat like you're parking a car.
12:46And so I thought it was odd that I felt this g-force of the boat turning.
12:50Christine said, hey, there's lights. I see. Sure, we must be getting pretty close to docking.
12:56The lights of Parikia, even car headlights, are clearly visible just five and a half kilometres away.
13:01But then another light cuts through the darkness.
13:05What the?
13:14This rock just comes out of nowhere, just out of the black night.
13:18And I'll never forget what it looks like in my mind.
13:21It was, you know, this brown, kind of craggly, sandish-looking rock that had lights on top of it shining
13:28down so it illuminated it.
13:29And it just, it made it look like a movie set.
13:32The side of the boat scraped along the side.
13:36I could have walked over and touched it.
13:39And you could hear down in the lower decks of the boat that the metal was just ripping apart.
13:44The unthinkable has happened.
13:46The Samina has crashed against the gates of Paros.
13:50One million kilos of ship grind against the rocks.
13:54It was the worst sound and it was the loudest sound I've ever heard in my life.
13:57It sounded like fingernails on a chalkboard, just God's fingernail on the biggest chalkboard in the world.
14:03There was a hole and it was going to sink and it was going to sink fast.
14:10The shockwave reverberates through the ship.
14:13Suddenly there was a big lurch to the right side of the boat and people who were standing up got
14:19thrown off their feet.
14:20Everything in the bar smashed.
14:22I looked out the window and there were two large rocks that went past that looked white, lit up by
14:30the light inside the ship.
14:31I don't know what that was. Oh man, that just doesn't sound good, you know?
14:36In a situation like this, the timeframe is so hard to put back together.
14:43But it seemed like maybe a minute or two until the boat started to noticeably lilt to the side and
14:49tip.
14:50And that's kind of when the chaos started.
15:14Lots of people were crying, lots of people were praying, holding on to each other, yelling.
15:21There was no alarm or siren. There was no one to tell us what we were supposed to do.
15:27We need to get off this boat and we need to leave right now.
15:30We don't have to panic.
15:31Christine said to me, the Titanic took hours to sink. And I said, we don't have that much time.
15:36We don't have hours, Christine. We need to leave now.
15:39Okay, okay, okay.
15:40In my mind, I thought, this boat's going to sink and we're all going to die.
15:49All these people trying to get life jacket.
15:52Being taller, I was able to reach over the heads of most people who were trying to get hold of
15:56life jackets and grab two.
15:59The Samina has 61 crew members, but where are they? Passengers must fend for themselves.
16:05So I yelled to Christine, come here. I think I found life best.
16:09Hey, just don't come out. Just take them out.
16:12At this point, people were starting to run past us.
16:20And I was saying, here, take these, and throwing them out. And people were just panicking.
16:25Take my jacket!
16:26Take my jacket!
16:28One more!
16:33Within minutes of the collision, the ship's lights go out.
16:36Passengers are plunged into darkness until emergency generators kick in.
16:41And then the first flare went off.
16:46This eerie red glow coming down over the ferry gave it a whole other feeling of just terror.
16:54that we're out in the night, in the dark, and the ferry's going to sink.
17:07At the harbor, port officials are now aware of the developing crisis.
17:11Port Authority Vice-Commander Dimitrios Malamas starts to organize a rescue.
17:16He needs all available boats, right now.
17:18What vessels do we have in the area?
17:26Alexis Bisbas runs a yacht charter business in Parachia.
17:31The first I heard of the disaster was a phone call that I got from the port police at about
17:3610.15.
17:37Can I get out there with my boat as quickly as possible just to help with whatever might be necessary?
17:44There was no way that we had any idea that it was going to be a disaster of that magnitude.
17:50Aboard the Samina, many of the 472 passengers are in a state of sheer terror.
17:56It was chaos. It was people not knowing what to do and waiting for a captain or a crew to
18:03help us.
18:06There was a woman who went through the door just before us.
18:10And she, as soon as she got out onto the deck, she climbed over the railings and just jumped off.
18:15Like, didn't look back or didn't say anything to anybody and just climbed over and threw herself off into the
18:20water.
18:20There was people holding children over the railings, wanting to throw them down to people in the water.
18:27It was, it was quite a terrible scene.
18:29The wind hampers efforts to abandon ship.
18:32They were releasing inflatable life rafts.
18:35They weren't attached to the ship, so as soon as it was released, it was in a big storm.
18:41It would get picked up by the wind as soon as it was inflated.
18:43And they were just blowing halfway to Athens.
18:51The rafts blow beyond the reach of many passengers who've already leapt into the sea.
18:55The rafts blow.
18:59In the confusion, Heidi Hart is not flying, striking her head.
19:03Look out!
19:04Are you okay?
19:07I kept thinking, if I black out now, you know, I'm done for. This boat's sinking. I have to stay
19:13conscious.
19:14I had this adrenaline rush and there was, I mean, a feeling that I would call terror.
19:21I mean, I knew instantly this was going to be a fight for our lives.
19:26There was some point in time where I literally felt myself leave my body and instincts kicked in.
19:33Everybody was running to the rear of the boat.
19:37And Christine just looked at me and said, go that way to the front of the boat.
19:40And she said, but nobody's up there.
19:43It was the darkest part of the boat. It was very, it was the highest part of the boat.
19:48She said, nobody's up there. I said, I don't care. Go.
19:53And luckily for us, that's where we found a lifeboat hanging over the side of the ship.
20:04The battle for survival takes an ugly turn. Each passenger must decide, help others or fend for themselves.
20:13There was five or six men in the back of the boat and they were fighting with each other.
20:16They were yelling at each other. As the ferry was sinking, they kept pointing at the ferry and fighting with
20:21each other.
20:22And then, you know, this is when I see the guy swimming up to the boat and I started getting
20:26ready.
20:27I'm thinking, okay, I need a rope. I got to throw him something. He has no life vest on.
20:33We need helpers. We're ready.
20:35Get him. Get him.
20:37Would you, would you grab him?
20:40The only thing you could see was his eyes and his nose coming out of the water and he was
20:43just barely making it, swimming towards us.
20:46Everybody else on the boat was yelling, no, no, we can't take any more people on.
20:50I've got you. Don't worry. I've got you.
20:53Now, Heidi leaned over and grabbed this gentleman's hand and I reached over and grabbed her by the waist and
20:59she told me I'm not letting go.
21:01And I yelled to the other people, she's not letting go.
21:04He had taken off almost all of his clothes. He was wearing just his underwear.
21:08Somebody grab him.
21:11We need to help his man.
21:13I mean, I'm not a very big person. I'm five feet tall.
21:18Just me trying to pull him in the boat wasn't going to work.
21:24The men in the lifeboat realized that Heidi won't let go and finally help haul the drowning man on board.
21:32I don't know what they were thinking. They were panicking.
21:36So, I mean, who am I to judge what the other, what other people were thinking and doing, but there
21:43was a lot more that could have been done that night.
21:47Of the 533 people who set out on the Samina, many are now in the sea. Others are still trapped
21:54on the vessel itself.
21:57The ship begins to roll over. If it goes down, dozens of people will be dragged down with it.
22:10The passenger ferry express Samina has struck rocks near the island of Paros in the Aegean Sea.
22:17533 passengers and crew face a battle to survive in high winds and stormy seas.
22:25Some people have managed to clamber into a lifeboat. Others have stayed with the ship and now fear it will
22:31sink beneath them.
22:33At that stage we were on the deck trying to figure out whether it was a good idea to jump
22:38overboard as well.
22:40But we were tilting further and further and it was getting to the point where we didn't really have that
22:45choice anymore.
22:48It's 10.50, 40 minutes after the collision.
22:52Sarah!
22:55Are you looking at me?
22:56As the Samina continues to roll, Katrina Stark has little choice.
23:00She hauls herself over the rail.
23:08The ship has turned completely on its side.
23:11Katrina is sitting on the hull.
23:13Should she try to swim for shore or wait for rescue?
23:18While I was sitting there thinking about that,
23:22all of a sudden the ship just sank underneath us and sucked us down and everything around it.
23:33I don't know how much time we were under the water, but I had enough time to think,
23:37OK, well, this is the part where I die. This is the part where I drown.
23:40I kind of thought, well, OK, that's fine.
23:42And had enough time to be OK with that.
23:46Katrina Stark sinks several metres before the buoyancy of her life jacket pulls her up again.
23:52As suddenly as I had been sucked under, suddenly I popped out the top.
23:58Sarah!
23:59Her priority now is to find her cousin, Sarah.
24:02In the storm, she can't tell where she is.
24:06The waves were so big that for one second it sounded like she was over there,
24:11and so I tried to swim that way, and then the next second it sounded like,
24:14oh, she's over there, and I tried to swim that way.
24:16Sarah!
24:17Sarah!
24:20I can hear you, but I can't see you!
24:22Sarah!
24:24Sarah!
24:25Eventually I just said to her, OK, make sure that you get on a boat and get back to land,
24:30and I will see you back on shore.
24:39At 11.15pm, Dr. Polozoides receives his first casualty of the night,
24:44but something doesn't add up.
24:46They brought a man on a stretcher, he was semi-conscious,
24:51and then we started working on him, he had hardly any blood pressure.
24:55And when we were assassinating him, I realised that he was dry,
25:00which it meant that he didn't actually, he was not from the ship.
25:09Anyway, we carried on, eventually we lost him, he died in our hands.
25:13And then people came and he said, you know who it was, and they said no.
25:17His patient isn't from the Samina, but the disaster still claims its first victim.
25:23The man is Dimitrios Malamas, who'd been helping organise the rescue.
25:28In the crisis, he'd suffered a heart attack. He was 40 years old.
25:33So you can understand, even at this early stage, although we did not know the number of people that were
25:39going to lose,
25:40there was that sense of tragedy immediately from the very beginning.
25:46A local shopkeeper, George Scandalis, grabs his video camera and captures these first raw images as survivors begin to appear.
26:05One of the local fishing boats now appears, crowded with people who've been dragged from the sea.
26:12Local boat owner Alexis Bisbas is part of the rescue flotilla, searching for survivors.
26:20One minute we were flying across the top of a wave, the next minute we were burying the bow of
26:25the boat into the previous wave.
26:27We had water coming across the decks.
26:31I've been sailing all my life. I've never had a situation like that.
26:35I never want to be in that situation ever again, because it was terrifying.
26:42He plucks 25 people from the sea in three trips out into the stormy waters.
26:50One of the amazing things in this situation is the way that people behave.
26:54A young man, we pulled out, was still carrying his portable stereo system.
26:58So the one hand was trying to grab hold of the boat, and the other hand, as we realised,
27:02was being hampered by this stereo system that he still had in his other hand.
27:13One of them was an old lady who had tied to her life jacket, her bag.
27:18As we were trying to drag her into the boat, we realised that something was stopping her.
27:23And I went to cut her free of this bag, and she said to us that if we did,
27:30we should throw her back, because that was her entire life in this bag.
27:37Many survivors are in a state of shock. All are cold, wet and exhausted.
27:47Just a few hundred metres away, dozens of people are still in the water,
27:51trying to stay alive until they're spotted by a rescue boat.
27:58Katrina Stark and a fellow survivor, a total stranger, are now clinging desperately to a piece of wreckage.
28:05My first surprise about being in the water was that it was warm.
28:08I was really expecting the water to be cold.
28:13There were big waves, and you just had to cling on tight to the piece of wreckage.
28:26Not too far away from us was an older Greek woman who couldn't swim.
28:31And she was panicking and was screaming and yelling, trying to get someone to come and save her.
28:43And the guy that I was with was saying, she's going to want to come over to us, and if
28:47she grabs hold of us, she's going to drag us down.
28:51Keep her awake! She'll come and throw us together!
28:54Keep her awake!
28:56She had kind of wild eyes, like she was clearly panicking.
29:00And a big wave came and washed over her, and she didn't come back up out of the water.
29:07She had drowned.
29:15There are still some signs of hope. Some people have been pushed south by the wind.
29:21Miraculously avoiding being smashed onto the rocks, they've wound up on a sandy beach, the Bay of St. Irene.
29:28A life raft beaches in the same spot.
29:48They're safe now, but the terror these little children have gone through is hard to comprehend.
29:57More than 400 survivors have now wound up on the dockside.
30:04Many have suffered a terrifying ordeal in the water.
30:07They're rushed to the medical center, where Dr. Polizoides has now assembled a team of 15 medics.
30:13Some doctors and nurses based on the island, others tourists who've come in to assist.
30:22Between 11, 30 and 12, the first drowned was brought in on a stretcher.
30:29And although I worked for 35 years as an accident surgeon, it was a horrible experience.
30:36And that was the beginning of the horrific feeling which I had, that this is serious now.
30:45At midnight, after an hour in the water, Katrina Stark is brought to shore.
30:50We were the last people that they were able to bring up onto the boat.
30:55And they headed back for the harbor.
30:59And on the way, they stopped a couple of times to pick people up.
31:04But they would go to pick them up and realize that they were dead, and so they'd just leave them
31:08where they were.
31:11Katrina doesn't know if her cousin made it.
31:16Sarah? Katrina?
31:19I was just never been so happy to see anybody my whole life.
31:24And I just grabbed hold of her and wouldn't leave her side for a second.
31:29It was terrifying. I mean, it's been five years since the accident, and I still have nightmares.
31:39I still think about it. It will still make me cry.
31:43You guys have had quite a shock being in the water.
31:45It was traumatic, and it was very scary.
31:48But it was also a singularly defining moment in my life where I was able to use all of the
31:55resources I had to survive.
31:58I think we've got... Pull, pull, pull, pull.
32:02I don't think I would have chosen not to live through this.
32:10At half past midnight, more than two hours after the collision, the rescue operation is becoming more and more a
32:17search for bodies.
32:18When you start seeing the bodies in the sea, somebody that I knew that an hour ago they were breathing,
32:24and suddenly they're dead.
32:27And they're... And it was very distressing.
32:33I mean, it took me a very long time to put it out of my mind.
32:38Um... It was very difficult.
32:4025 people are now confirmed dead.
32:43As victims continue to arrive, Dr. Polizoides is overwhelmed.
32:49Do I go to this room and try and save someone?
32:52Do I wait and see whether it's worth saving?
32:56And it was like a catastrophe.
32:58It was as if it was coming the end of the world to this island.
33:02So it was almost like you're seeing a movie. It's not happening to you.
33:07Every half an hour, the number of bodies increased.
33:10By 2.30 a.m., the number of dead reaches 60.
33:13There's no room for so many bodies in the medical centre.
33:17The Church of St. Nicholas on the waterfront now becomes a temporary morgue.
33:24The search for people, alive or dead, continues right through the night.
33:32Very soon, investigators will begin to ask tough questions.
33:36Who's to blame for the sinking?
33:38Why did so many people have to die?
33:45The passenger ferry Express Samina has sunk in a storm in the Aegean Sea.
33:50Already 60 people are confirmed dead.
33:53Many more need medical treatment.
33:58Morning reveals the power of last night's storm.
34:03A lifeboat lies smashed to pieces on the rocks.
34:09Life rafts blew away, empty.
34:14A message board at the harbour front lists who's alive and who's still missing.
34:19Bodies will continue to wash up on the beaches for days to come.
34:25There aren't enough coffins on Paros.
34:27More arrive.
34:29Even the most experienced professionals are touched by the trauma.
34:35I was so shaken by this, that I didn't sleep for two nights.
34:38And on the third night, when I went to sleep, I dreamt that my son was drowning.
34:45Very quickly, the grief turns to anger.
34:48Where were the crew when the ship hit the rocks?
34:51Where were they when the passengers needed help?
34:54Rumours spread like wildfire and are picked up by the media.
35:02Were some members of the crew watching the soccer game on TV when they should have been steering the ship?
35:10The captain, 53-year-old Vasilis Yanakos, is held for questioning by the police.
35:17On Paros, the funerals begin.
35:20Here, a four-year-old boy drowned with his father.
35:26Divers discover ten bodies trapped inside the hull of the Samina.
35:31The last body is found floating two weeks after the sinking, 50 kilometres north of Paros.
35:38Altogether, 80 people have died.
35:4175 passengers, five crew members.
35:44This is Greece's worst shipping disaster in more than 30 years.
35:48A national tragedy.
35:51In the bitter aftermath, the spotlight falls on the company which owned the Samina and its vice president, Pantelis Sphinéas.
35:58He could face criminal charges, as well as multi-million dollar compensation claims.
36:08Two months after the sinking, police surround a body lying on the sidewalk outside company headquarters in Athens.
36:15Sphinéas has jumped out of his sixth-floor window, committing suicide.
36:30Maritime experts at the National Technical University of Athens begin an inquiry.
36:36Detailed testimony is gathered from 46 crew members, as well as 192 passengers.
36:44The Greek legal authorities want the university to give them a thorough explanation of what happened.
36:54Professor David Molyneux of the National Research Centre of Canada is one of the world's leading experts on ferry safety.
37:01He's studied the findings of the Greek investigators, who came up with a startling realisation.
37:09What they found at the inquiry defied some of the initial speculation concerning the age of the ship,
37:14and the accident, in fact, turned out to be caused by something completely different.
37:19Testimony reveals each small but critical factor that together turn a routine ferry crossing into a national disaster.
37:28Three hours into the journey, the crew switch on the ship's autopilot.
37:33The autopilot is an electronic link between the compass and the rudder.
37:37Correcting the rudder a little bit, one way or the other, to bring you back where you want to be.
37:43Even on autopilot, a crew member should constantly monitor the ship's position.
37:48It's bad practice to leave an autopilot unattended, particularly in bad weather,
37:53because the wind, the waves and the current are all acting to drift the ship in one direction.
37:58And that kind of steady drift is not compensated for by the electronics in the autopilot.
38:06As the weather grows worse, the crew deploy the ship's stabiliser system
38:11to make the ride more comfortable for the passengers.
38:13The stabiliser uses two small fins to counteract the roll of the ship.
38:22But something extraordinary has happened.
38:25Only the starboard, or right-hand stabiliser fin, has extended.
38:32Very unusual. Normally we'd expect both stabilisers to be working at any one time.
38:37With just one stabiliser, the ship is no longer symmetrical,
38:41so the flow around the ship is unbalanced,
38:44and as a result, the ship will tend to drift one way rather than go in a straight line.
38:50With only the starboard stabiliser, the Samina is pulled, slowly but surely, to the right.
38:56It's a deadly malfunction.
39:02Captains aim to stay at least 740 metres left of the gates of Paros.
39:07But when the Samina arrives, she's on collision course.
39:10A crew member makes a last-minute attempt to steer the ship to the left.
39:15But the ship can't turn quickly enough.
39:21Whoa!
39:24What am I doing?
39:25Oh, my God!
39:29It was very unfortunate the ship got hold,
39:32but there was really no reason why the ship should have sank.
39:36The damage was within the range that you would normally expect a ship to survive.
39:40Get off there!
39:43The east face of the taller pinnacle is where the ship strikes,
39:46at 12 minutes past 10pm.
39:53There's a six metre lengthways gash, as long as a telephone pole,
39:58and one metre wide.
40:00Oh!
40:04But this hole is well above the waterline.
40:07No water should enter the ship.
40:12Moments later, a second impact.
40:15The stabiliser fin bends backwards.
40:18It stabs like a dagger through the ship's side.
40:21Oh, my God!
40:23Halfway more!
40:24Oh, my God!
40:32The investigating team orders divers to make a detailed survey of the wreck of the Samina.
40:39Inside, they discover the final piece of the puzzle.
40:42Even with two large holes, the ship could have been saved.
40:46One final error sealed the fate of the Samina.
40:50The passenger ferry Express Samina strikes rocks near the Greek island of Paros.
40:56With two gaping holes in her starboard side, she capsizes and sinks in 38 metres of water.
41:04Divers go down to survey the wreck and make a startling discovery.
41:09Like all large seagoing ships, the Samina is divided into separate compartments, sealed by watertight doors like this one.
41:17Safety laws insist they remain locked while the ship's at sea.
41:21On the Samina's last journey, some of the doors were open.
41:25If you imagine in your house, every time you went through a door from the kitchen, you had to close
41:30it, lock it, move on to the living room, open that door, close it, lock it and carry on.
41:36It really does slow down your everyday life.
41:39So there is a tendency sometimes to leave these doors open.
41:45One more!
41:46Because they're left open, water is no longer confined to the engine room.
41:51And now that the power is cut, the crew can't close the doors remotely.
42:0129 of the crew are called back for a second grilling by investigators.
42:06This testimony provides an exact picture of the ship's last moments, data which is now built into a computer model.
42:15At 10.15, three minutes after the collision, the ship is listing only five degrees to the right, but filling
42:22fast through that hole in the engine room.
42:26By 10.25, she's listing 14 degrees.
42:29Now the six-meter gash, which was above the waterline, is exposed to the sea.
42:35This is the point where the Samina and 80 of those on board are doomed.
42:39The ship can't withstand this degree of damage.
42:45The Samina is what's called a row-row ferry.
42:47It stands for roll-on, roll-off.
42:50This is a modern row-row ship.
42:52Vehicles simply reverse in through the stern doors and then drive out at their destination.
42:57It's a cost-effective design, with a potentially fatal flaw.
43:04The worst shipping disasters in recent times have involved vessels designed this way.
43:11The Herald of Free Enterprise went down with the loss of 193 lives at Zeebrugge in Belgium in 1987.
43:19850 were drowned aboard the row-row ferry Estonia in the Baltic Sea in 1994.
43:27Unlike a cruise ship or a cargo vessel, which are divided into many smaller compartments, the vehicle deck of a
43:33row-row ship is one large open area, highly vulnerable to rapid flooding.
43:39Imagine comparing flooding an egg box with flooding just an empty cardboard shoe box.
43:45The shoe box would tend to fill up very, very quickly, whereas an egg box would tend to fill up
43:50each compartment at a time, so the egg box would stay afloat, whereas the shoe box wouldn't.
43:56This open space is especially vulnerable because it's so close to the water line.
44:01The car deck on the row-row ferry is low to make driving the vehicles on and off easy.
44:07As a result, you're relying on those watertight compartments to keep the ship afloat in the event of damage.
44:14By 1029, the Samina is listing 23 degrees.
44:21She's now tilting so much that it's impossible to launch more lifeboats.
44:26Only three of the eight she carried got away.
44:31Three minutes later, at 1032, she's listing 33 degrees.
44:35At around 1050, the ship turns completely on her side.
44:43We know the exact time that the ship sank because the clock on the bridge was stopped at two minutes
44:48past 11.
44:50Divers surveying the wreck make their most important discovery.
44:54Of the ship's 11 watertight doors, nine were left open.
45:02And the most important aspect of this accident was leaving the watertight doors open.
45:08As a result, the ship flooded, lost all its reserve of buoyancy, and eventually sank.
45:17The trial of ship's captain Vassilis Janakos and seven others began in May 2005,
45:23more than four years after the disaster.
45:27The sinking of the Samina led to safety improvements.
45:30Greece cut the maximum working life of passenger ferries from 35 to 30 years.
45:38The tragedy also helped speed the introduction of voyage recorders, like an airplane black box.
45:44They're now mandatory in all passenger ferries.
45:47Some good came out of bad.
45:55For the first time since those dramatic events, Katrina Stark has come back to Paros.
46:01It's an emotional return.
46:04It was a pretty traumatic thing to go through, but it's quite a character-building experience,
46:09and I think it plays a large part in who I am today.
46:13For their role in helping to save lives, Heidi Hart and Christine Shannon were given an award for heroism by
46:20the city of Seattle.
46:24I understand my strength a lot more, and I can live freely without the restraints of being scared of what's
46:36unknown, because life is an unknown.
46:39Even for a heroine, it's tough to look back.
46:44Christine and I, we always say we were the lucky ones.
46:49We were in the right place at the right time, and that is the only thing I can think of
46:54why we made it and so many other people didn't.
47:00And it breaks my heart.
47:15Thank you very much.