Original subtitles

NARRATOR: A shipwreck in the Greek islands, hundreds

fight for survival in a swirling storm.

WOMAN: We need to help this man!

NARRATOR: With their lives on the line,

some people become heroes.

Don't let go!

NARRATOR: Others do whatever it takes to stay alive.

MAN: Keep her away!

She'll kill us both!

MAN: Mayday, mayday, we're doing 90 miles an hour

out of control.

WOMAN: Take a life jacket!

COAST GUARD: We're the Coast Guard.

WOMAN: Don't let go!

MAN: It's going to crash!

NARRATOR: A passenger ferry pushes its way through a storm.

WOMAN: What is that?

Whoa!

Oh, my God.

NARRATOR: Within sight of land, this Greek islands ferry

is sinking in high winds and stormy seas.

HEIDI HART: There was a hole, and it was going to sink,

and it was going to sink fast, but I had enough time to think,

OK, well, this is the part where I die.

MAN: It was, like, a catastrophe.

It was as if it was coming at the end

of the world for this island.

NARRATOR: For the people of Greece,

it's a national disaster, the worst of its kind in 30 years.

Discovering why it happened will take months of detective work

and raise this question-- how safe are the ships we sail on?

The Greek capital, Athens.

This great metropolis has a 3,000-year history,

a history built around its easy access to the Mediterranean.

The Harbor District of Athens has called Piraeus.

Ferry boats fly back and forth between here and more than 200

islands in the Aegean Sea.

For island hoppers, this is where the adventure begins.

HEIDI HART: It's here, somewhere.

It has to be.

Heidi, today would be good.

I'm hurrying.

Are you sure you don't--

NARRATOR: Tuesday, September 26, 2000.

Christine Shannon, and Heidi Hart from Seattle

are close friends.

CHRISTINE SHANNON: Come on, which one's our boat?

Hey!

NARRATOR: They bought tickets for a ferry ride

to the island of Paros, 100 miles to the Southeast.

It's been a crazy kind of day.

They planned to go to the island of Santorini, farther South.

CHRISTINE SHANNON: OK, let's go.

HEIDI HART: We have to hurry.

CHRISTINE SHANNON: We'd been enjoying Athens the night

before a little too much, and we overslept

and missed our Santorini boat.

HEIDI HART: I had never heard of Paros.

I even asked them, well, show me on a map where the island is,

and then I said, never mind, it doesn't matter.

Let's just go. It's the next boat.

Let's go somewhere.

So it was a fluke that we were on that boat.

NARRATOR: Here's where chance is steering them.

It could be a whole lot worse.

If you dream of a Greek getaway, Paros is just

what the guidebooks promise.

Life is laid back, and the backdrop is enchanting.

Tourist season brings 100,000 visitors.

Ferries from Athens dock in the main town, Parikia.

Traffic back and forth to the mainland is constant.

As one boat's leaving, another one shows up, bringing

hundreds more eager visitors.

Christine and Heidi are among 472 passengers who

board the Express Samina today.

As they get ready to embark, one thing is clear.

Some of the ferries leaving Athens are newly built,

but the Samina comes from a different era.

It's been cruising the Mediterranean since 1966.

The Samina was launched before these two were born,

and though they don't know it, Greek safety laws

say that, in a little over a year,

the Samina will end its service life and head to the scrapyard.

HEIDI HART: I made a few jokes to Christine about,

the lifeboats don't look very safe.

If we get into trouble out here, I said, we'll be screwed.

And I said, well, there's no icebergs in the Aegean

so we should be OK.

Cheese.

Cheese.

NARRATOR: The Samina can carry more than 1,000 passengers,

along with its 61 crew members.

Today, the ship's less than half full.

Katrina Stark and her cousin Sarah Davis,

both from New Zealand, are backpacking.

So that means we have to be headed south.

NARRATOR: Like Heidi and Christine,

they're literally sailing into the unknown.

KATRINA STARK: We had no plans.

We went to get on the very first ferry that was leaving,

going wherever it was going to take us,

and that happened to be first stop, Paros.

NARRATOR: At 7:15, two hours into the journey, the sun

is setting.

There are still three hours to kill before the Samina arrives.

The sports fans on board, passengers and crew,

know just how they'd like to spend the time.

There's a major soccer game live on TV.

Athens star team Panathinaikos are

up against their German rivals Hamburg.

KATRINA STARK: The reception wasn't very good,

and so they had various staff come along trying to fix

the TV, and everyone was putting suggestions

for how to fix the TV.

And it seemed to be quite important to everybody on board

that they get to see this game.

NARRATOR: At 8:00 PM, the Samina passes the island of Kythnos.

They're on schedule to reach Paros at around 10:15.

The wind is rising, the sea is growing rougher,

but these northerly winds, known as the Maltami,

are frequent at this time of year.

The Samina has weathered conditions much worse

than this over the past three decades.

I'm going to take a nap.

NARRATOR: Heidi and Christine are

the only people left outside.

They think their tickets don't allow them to go in.

Wake me when we're there.

HEIDI HART: I said, we have third class tickets.

We have to stay out on the deck.

It's going to be a cold, wet, terrible night,

but I didn't even think to go downstairs, where most

of the people on the boat were.

NARRATOR: For the Samina's crew, the nighttime journey

is routine.

Hazards, such as reefs and rocks,

are all clearly marked on their charts.

Many have warning lights.

Two jagged outcrops rise from the sea

within sight of the main harbor on Paros, Parikia Bay.

Known as the Portes, or the Gates,

they sit 3 and 1/2 miles from the town.

For Mariners of these waters, the Gates of Paros

are a familiar landmark.

They're welcoming, but dangerous, too.

The rocks rise 82 feet out of the sea.

Every passing ship must give them a wide clearance.

At night, a beacon light on the taller of the two rocks

sends a clear warning.

Venture too close to the Gates of Paros and disaster

will follow.

Paros is still two hours away, but the Samina is

sailing into a gathering storm.

Despite the weather, Christine and Heidi

are still out in the open.

CHRISTINE SHANNON: Had I known we could go to any other part

of the boat, at that point in time, I would have,

but I didn't know.

And actually, being in that part of the boat,

I think was very fortuitous for us

because we were able to be aware of what was going on later.

NARRATOR: Their location on the deck

will help save their lives when everyone else on board

is fighting for survival.

On the evening of September 26, 2000,

the passenger ferry Express Samina

leaves Athens harbor Piraeus heading southeast.

It's making for the island of Paros, five hours away

in the Aegean Sea.

As the sun sets, the weather deteriorates

until, by nightfall, the ship is being

buffeted by a northerly gale, but the crew

is used to these conditions.

Their ship is big enough, tough enough to survive far worse.

The Samina is 377 feet long, more than a soccer field,

and almost 60 feet wide.

Passengers are widely dispersed.

Heidi and Christine are on the open deck.

Katrina and Sarah are inside the main passenger lounge.

The nerve center is here--

the engine room.

It's below the waterline, but is protected by a series

of watertight doors.

The crew can move about, but the ship

is safe, as long as they lock the doors tight behind them.

To reduce the rolling effect on rough seas,

the ship also has stabilizers that, like small wings,

extend out into the water.

Tonight, It's a bumpy ride, but passengers are able to move

about when they want to.

KATRINA STARK: As we got further away and night began to fall,

the seas got rougher, and it became stormy,

until it got to the point where you

couldn't even walk on board.

You had to kind of stumble sideways.

People were kind of laughing.

It was kind of funny at the time.

NARRATOR: It's 10:00 PM.

The wind has now risen to nearly 30 miles an hour.

Waves are cresting at 6.5 feet.

Despite the gale, visibility is good.

Those are the lights of Paros.

The Samina's on time and still pushing

forward at 20 miles an hour.

Then, suddenly--

--the ship lurches sharply to the left.

What's that?

I don't know.

HEIDI HART: The boat turned enough

that it startled me awake, and I woke up and was

kind of dazed a little bit.

NARRATOR: The lights of Parikia, even car headlights,

are clearly visible, just 3 and 1/2 miles away,

but then another light cuts through the darkness.

What the?

Oh, my God.

Oh, my God.

This rock just comes out of nowhere,

just out of the black night, and I'll never forget

what it looks like in my mind.

It was this brown, kind of craggly, sandish-looking rock

that had lights on top of it shining

down so it illuminated it.

And it just, it made it look like a movie set.

The side of the boat scraped along the side.

I could have walked over and touched it.

And you could hear down in the lower decks of the boat

that the metal was just ripping apart.

NARRATOR: The unthinkable has happened.

The Samina has crashed against the Gates of Paros.

Its 1,100 tons grind against the rocks.

It was the worst sound and it was the loudest sound

I've ever heard in my life.

It sounded, like, fingernails on a chalkboard, just Gods

fingernail on the biggest chalkboard in the world.

There was a hole, and it was going to sink,

and it was going to sink fast.

NARRATOR: The shock wave reverberates through the ship.

KATRINA STARK: Suddenly, there was a big lurch

to the right side of the boat, and people who were sitting up

got thrown off their feet.

Everything in the bar smashed.

I looked out the window and there were two large rocks

went past that looked white, lit up by the light inside

the ship.

I don't know what that was.

Oh, man, it just doesn't sound good.

HEIDI HART: In a situation like this,

the time frame is so hard to put back together,

but it seemed, like, maybe a minute or two until the boat

started to noticeably lilt to the side and tip,

and that's kind of when the chaos started.

--get out of this place.

Where are we supposed to run to?

WOMAN 1: Where are these doors?

WOMAN 2: Here's the doors.

Here's the doors.

Lots of people were crying.

Lots of people were praying, holding on to each other,

yelling.

There was no alarm or siren.

There was no one to tell us what we were supposed to do.

We need to get off this boat, and we need to leave right now.

We don't have to panic.

Christine said to me, "The Titanic took hours to sink."

And I said, "We don't have that much time."

In my mind, I thought, this boat's gonna sink,

and we're all gonna die.

WOMAN: Life jackets.

KATRINA STARK: All these people, trying to get life jacket--

being taller, I was able to reach over the heads of most

people who were trying to get hold of life jackets

and grab two.

NARRATOR: The Samina has 261 crew members.

But where are they?

Passengers fend for themselves.

So I yelled to Christine, "Come here!

I think I found life vests!"

Here, just throw them.

Just take them out.

Just take them out anyway.

HEIDI HART: At this point, people

were starting to run past us.

And I was saying, "Here, take these," and throwing them out.

And people were just panicking.

Take the life jackets!

NARRATOR: Within minutes of the collision,

the ship's lights go out.

Passengers are plunged into darkness until emergency

generators kick in.

And then the first flare went off.

This eerie red glow coming down over the ferry

gave it a whole other feeling of just terror,

that we're out in the night, in the dark,

and the ferry is gonna sink.

MAN: Get out of the way!

NARRATOR: At the harbor, port officials are now

aware of the developing crisis.

Port Authority Vice-Commander Dimitris Malamas

starts to organize a rescue.

He needs all available boats right now.

What vessels do we have in the area?

NARRATOR: Alexis Bisbas runs a yacht

charter business in Parikia.

The first I heard of the disaster

was a phone call that I got from the port police at about 10:15.

Can I get out there with my boat as quickly as possible just

to help with whatever might be necessary?

There was no way that we had any idea that it was going to be

a disaster of that magnitude.

NARRATOR: Paros has a medical center

equipped for the islanders' basic needs, not

a major disaster.

Dr. John Polyzoides was an ER surgeon for 35 years.

Though retired, he helps run the center.

We saw the ship was going down.

And there were a lot of boats and lights and so on.

I personally did not expect anything

tragic to come out of that because they are

so close, also, to the harbor.

NARRATOR: Aboard the Samina, many of the 472 passengers

are in a state of sheer terror.

HEIDI HART: It was chaos.

It was people not knowing what to do

and waiting for a captain or a crew to help us.

There was a woman who went through the door

just before us.

And she-- as soon as she got out onto the deck,

she ain't climbed over the railings and just jumped off--

didn't look back or didn't say anything to anybody,

and just climbed over and threw herself off into the water.

There was people holding children over the railings,

wanting to throw them down to people in the water.

It was quite a terrible scene.

NARRATOR: The wind hampers efforts to abandon ship.

KATRINA STARK: They were releasing

inflatable life rafts.

They weren't attached to the ship.

So as soon as it was released-- it was a big storm--

it would get picked up by the wind

as soon as it was inflated.

And they were just blowing halfway to Athens.

NARRATOR: The rafts blow beyond the reach of passengers who've

already leapt into the sea.

There was some point in time where

I literally felt myself leave my body, and instincts kicked in.

HEIDI HART: Everybody was running

to the rear of the boat.

And Christine just looked at me and said--

Go that way, to the front of the boat.

And she said, "But nobody's up there."

It was the darkest part of the boat.

It was the highest part of the boat.

She said, "Nobody's up there."

I said, "I don't care.

Go."

And luckily for us, that's where

we found a lifeboat hanging over the side of the ship.

NARRATOR: Heidi and Christine escaped the sinking ship.

But they're still at the mercy of the storm.

KATRINA STARK: When we jumped into the lifeboat,

it wasn't orderly, here's your seat.

It was jump.

Where you land is where you are.

And so we were just kind of all pigpiled in this lifeboat

together.

NARRATOR: The battle for survival takes an ugly turn.

Each passenger must decide--

help others or fend for themselves?

HEIDI HART: There was five or six men

in the back of the boat, and they

were fighting with each other.

They were yelling at each other.

As the ferry was sinking, they kept pointing at the ferry

and fighting with each other.

And then, you know, this is when I see the guy

swimming up to the boat.

And so I started getting ready.

I'm thinking, OK, I need a rope.

I got to throw him something.

He has no life vest on.

Ah!

We need help here, somebody.

Get him.

Get him.

CHRISTINE SHANNON: You've got to help us!

Would you-- would you grab him?

The only thing you could see was his eyes and his nose

coming out of the water.

And he was just barely making it, swimming towards us.

Everybody else on the boat was yelling, "No!

No!

We can't take any more people on."

HEIDI HART: I've got you.

Don't worry.

I've got you!

CHRISTINE SHANNON: Then Heidi leaned over and grabbed

this gentleman's hand.

And I reached over and grabbed her by the waist.

And she told me, "I'm not letting go."

And I yelled to the other people, "She's not letting go!"

He had taken off almost all of his clothes.

He was wearing just his underwear.

CHRISTINE SHANNON: Somebody grab him!

HEIDI HART: We need some hands!

We need to help this man!

CHRISTINE SHANNON: Get up!

Get up!

HEIDI HART: I mean, I'm not a very big person.

I'm five feet tall.

Just me trying to pull him in the boat wasn't gonna work.

There we go!

That's it!

NARRATOR: The men in the lifeboat

realize that Heidi won't let go and finally help

haul the drowning man on board.

HEIDI HART: I don't know what they were thinking.

They were panicking.

So, I mean, who am I to judge what

the other-- what other people were thinking and doing?

But there was a lot more that could

have been done that night.

NARRATOR: Of the 533 people who set out on the Samina,

many are now in the sea.

Others are still trapped in the vessel itself.

The ship begins to roll over.

If it goes down, dozens will be dragged down with it.

The passenger ferry Samina has struck rocks near the island

of Paros in the Aegean Sea.

Still aboard, Katrina Stark fears

the ship will sink beneath her.

KATRINA STARK: At that stage, we were on the deck,

trying to figure out whether it was a good idea

to jump overboard as well.

But we were tilting further and further,

and it was getting to the point where we didn't really

have that choice anymore.

NARRATOR: It's 10:50, 40 minutes after the collision.

KATRINA STARK: Sarah!

Are you behind me?

NARRATOR: As the Samina continues to roll,

Katrina Stark has little choice.

She hauls herself over the rail.

The ship has turned completely on its side.

Katrina is sitting on the hull.

Should she try to swim for shore or wait for rescue?

While I was sitting there, thinking about that, all

of a sudden, the ship just sank underneath us

and sucked us down and everything around it.

Like, I don't know how much time we were under the water.

But I had enough time to think, OK, well,

this is the part where I die.

This is the part where I drown.

I kind of thought, well, OK, that's fine, and had

enough time to be OK with that.

Just as we got there, we saw the ferry sinking,

which was an extreme sight.

And to see this entire ship sink beneath the waves,

and to be gone and just leave us in our little lifeboat,

it was amazing.

It was almost beautiful in a sad sort of way.

And then complete blackness, darkness--

huge waves.

NARRATOR: The Samina sinks one and 1/2

miles from the Gates of Paros.

Even without its engines, wind, waves,

and the ship's own momentum carried it closer to shore.

The sea here is 125 feet deep.

As the Samina goes down, huge bubbles of air escape

from the ship, making the water less dense,

making objects in the water sink more quickly.

Katrina Stark sinks 10 feet deep before the buoyancy of her life

jacket pulls her up again.

As suddenly as I had been sucked under,

suddenly, I popped up top!

Sarah!

NARRATOR: Her priority now is to find her cousin Sarah.

In the storm, she can't tell where she is.

Sarah!

Sarah!

Eventually, I just said to her, OK, make sure that you get

on a boat and get back to land.

And I will see you back on shore.

NARRATOR: At 11:15 PM, Dr. Polyzoides

receives his first casualty of the night.

But something doesn't add up.

They brought a man on a stretcher.

He was semiconscious.

And then we started working on him.

He had hardly any blood pressure.

And when we were resuscitating him,

I realized that he was dry, which

meant that he didn't-- actually, he was not from the ship.

Anyway, we got it on.

Eventually, we lost him.

He died in our hands.

And then people came and said, you know who it was?

And I said, no.

NARRATOR: His patient isn't from the Samina.

But the disaster still claims its first victim,

Dimitris Malamas, who had helped to organize the rescue.

In the crisis, he'd suffered a heart attack.

He was 40 years old.

So you can understand, even at this early stage,

although we did not know the number of people

that we were going to lose, there was that sense of tragedy

immediately from the very beginning.

NARRATOR: A local shopkeeper, George Skandalis,

grabs his video camera and captures these images

as survivors begin to appear.

HEIDI HART: As soon as we got close enough to shore,

when I saw this white cathedral with the blue dome

top, that was when I finally knew we made it.

We're gonna get to shore.

We're gonna be alive.

CHRISTINE SHANNON: I felt more alive

than I've ever felt in my life-- giddy, almost giddy.

And actually, afterwards, one of the things that I had

to come to terms with was that people died,

and I felt so alive.

NARRATOR: A local fishing boat appears,

crowded with people who've been pulled from the sea.

Boat owner Alexis Bisbas is part of the rescue flotilla

searching for survivors.

One minute, we were flying across the top of a wave.

The next minute, we were burying the bow of the boat

into the previous wave.

We had water coming across the decks.

I've been sailing all my life.

I've never had a situation like that.

I never want to be in that situation

ever again, because it was terrifying.

NARRATOR: He plucks 25 people from the sea in three

trips out into the stormy waters.

Many survivors are in a state of shock.

All are cold, wet, and exhausted.

Just a thousand feet away, dozens of people

are still in the water, trying to stay alive.

Katrina Stark and a fellow survivor of the Samina

clinging desperately to a piece of wreckage.

KATRINA STARK: My first surprise about being in the water

was that it was warm.

I was really expecting the water to be cold.

There were big waves, and you just had to cling on

tight to the piece of wreckage.

Not too far away from us was an older

Greek woman who couldn't swim.

And she was panicking and was screaming

and yelling, trying to get someone to come and save her.

Come save her!

KATRINA STARK: And the guy that I was with was saying,

she's gonna want to come over to us.

And if she grabs hold of us, she's gonna drag us down.

MAN: Keep her away!

She'll kill us both!

Forget her!

KATRINA STARK: She had kind of wild eyes

like she was clearly panicking.

And a big wave came and washed over her,

and she didn't come back up out of the water.

She had drowned.

NARRATOR: There are still some signs of hope.

Some people have been pushed south.

Miraculously avoiding being smashed on to the rocks,

they wound up on a sandy beach on the Bay of Santa Irene.

A life raft beaches in the same spot.

They're safe now.

But the terror these children have gone through

is hard to comprehend.

More than 400 survivors have now made it to the dockside.

After their terrifying ordeal in the water,

many are rushed to the Medical Center,

where Dr. Polyzoides has now assembled a team of 15 medics--

some doctors and nurses based on the island, others, tourists

who've come in to assist.

Between 11:30 and 12:00, the first round

was brought in on a stretcher.

And although I worked for 35 years as an accident surgeon,

it was a horrible experience.

And that was the beginning of the horrific feeling which I

had, that this is serious now.

NARRATOR: At midnight, after an hour in the water,

Katrina Stark is brought to shore.

KATRINA STARK: We were the last people that they were

able to bring up onto the boat.

And they headed back for the harbor.

And on the way, they stopped a couple of times

to pick people up.

But they would go to pick them up and realize

that they were dead, and so they'd just

leave them where they were.

NARRATOR: Katrina doesn't know if her cousin made it.

Sarah?

Katrina.

KATRINA STARK (VOICEOVER): I was just--

never been so happy to see anybody in my whole life.

How did you get here?

And I just grabbed hold of her.

And wouldn't leave her side for a second.

I'm so happy to see you.

You, too.

Are you OK?

Are you keeping warm?

Yeah.

HEIDI HART: It was terrifying.

I mean, it's been five years since the accident,

and I still have nightmares.

I still think about it.

It will still make me cry.

MEDIC: You guys have had quite a shock being in the water.

CHRISTINE SHANNON: It was traumatic,

and it was very scary.

But it was also a singularly defining moment in my life

where I was able to use all of the resources I had to survive.

NARRATOR: As victims continue to arrive,

Dr. Polyzoides is overwhelmed.

Do I go to this room and try and save someone?

Do I wait and see whether it's worth saving?

And it was like a catastrophe.

It was as if it was coming, the end of the world,

to this island.

NARRATOR: By 2:30 AM, the number of dead reaches 60.

There's no room for so many bodies in the medical center.

The Church of St. Nicholas on the waterfront

becomes a temporary morgue.

The search for people, alive or dead,

continues right through the night.

Daylight reveals the power of last night's storm--

a lifeboat smashed to pieces on the rocks, the inflated rafts

that blew away empty.

A message board at the harbor front lists who's alive

and who's still missing.

I was so shaken by this that I didn't sleep for two nights.

And on the third night, when I went to sleep,

I dreamt that my son was drowning.

NARRATOR: Very quickly, the grief turns to anger.

Where were the crew when the ship hit the rocks?

Where were they when the passengers needed help?

Rumors spread like wildfire and are picked up by the media.

Later, witnesses will testify that the first officer

was watching the soccer game instead of steering the ship.

The captain, 53-year-old Vassilis Giannakis

will receive intense scrutiny.

Altogether, 80 people have died--

75 passengers, five crew members.

It is Greece's worst shipping disaster in more than 30 years,

a national tragedy.

In the bitter aftermath, the spotlight

falls on the company that owned the Samina

and its vice-president, Pandelis Sfinias.

He is charged with criminal negligence

and faces multimillion-dollar compensation claims.

Two months after the sinking, police

surround a body lying on the sidewalk outside company

headquarters in Athens.

Sfinias has jumped out of his sixth-floor window.

NARRATOR: Maritime experts at the National Technical

University of Athens begin an inquiry.

Detailed testimony is gathered from 46 crew

members and 192 passengers.

The Greek authorities want the university

to give them a thorough explanation of what happened.

Professor David Molyneux of the National

Research Center of Canada studied the

Greek investigators' findings.

Three hours into the journey, the crew

switches on the ship's autopilot.

DAVID MOLYNEUX: The autopilot is an electronic link

between the compass and the rudder,

correcting the rudder a little bit one way or the other

to bring you back where you want to be.

NARRATOR: Even on autopilot, a crew member should constantly

monitor the ship's position.

DAVID MOLYNEUX: It's bad practice

to leave an autopilot unattended, particularly

in bad weather, because the wind, the waves,

and the current are all acting to drift

the ship in one direction.

And that kind of steady drift is not

compensated for by the electronics in the autopilot.

NARRATOR: As the weather grows worse,

the crew deploys the ship's stabilizer system to make

the ride more comfortable.

The stabilizer uses two fins to counteract

the roll of the ship.

But something extraordinary happens.

Only the starboard, or right-hand stabilizer fin

extends.

DAVID MOLYNEUX: Very unusual.

Normally, we'd expect both stabilizers

to be working at any one time.

With just one stabilizer, the ship is no longer symmetrical.

So the flow around the ship is unbalanced.

And as a result, the ship will tend to drift one way

rather than go in a straight line.

NARRATOR: With only the starboard stabilizer,

the Samina is pulled slowly but surely to the right.

It's a deadly malfunction.

Captains aim to stay at least half a mile

from the Gates of Paros.

But when the Samina arrives, it's on a collision course.

A crew member makes a last-minute attempt

to steer the ferry to the left.

But the ship can't turn quickly enough.

Whoa!

Whoa!

WOMAN: Life jackets.

MAN: Hey.

I'm out here, too.

NARRATOR: At 12 minutes past 10:00 PM,

the ship strikes the east face of the taller pinnacle.

The collision opens a gash three feet wide and 19 feet long,

as long as a telephone pole.

Oh!

But this hole is well above the water line.

No water should enter the ship.

Moments later, a second impact.

It bends the stabilizer fin backwards.

The fin stabs like a dagger through the ship's side.

This 10-foot gash is below the water line.

Even worse, it's at the engine room.

The main generators are knocked out.

Electric power for the entire ship is cut off.

The investigating team orders divers

to make a detailed survey of the shipwreck.

Inside, they discover the final piece of the puzzle.

Even with two large holes, the ship could have been saved.

One final error sealed the fate of the Samina.

NARRATOR: The passenger ferry Express Samina strikes rocks

near the Greek island of Paros.

With two gaping holes in her starboard side,

it capsizes and sinks in 125 feet of water.

Divers survey the shipwreck and make a startling discovery.

Like all large seagoing ships, the Samina

is divided into separate compartments sealed by

watertight doors like this one.

Safety laws insist they remain locked while the ship's at sea.

On the Samina's last journey, some of the doors

were left open.

If you imagine, in your house, every time you went

through a door from the kitchen, you had to close it, lock

it, move on to the living room, open that door,

close it, lock it, and carry on, it really does

slow down your everyday life.

So there is a tendency sometimes to leave these doors open.

WOMAN: One more.

NARRATOR: Because they're left open,

water is no longer confined to the engine room.

And when the power goes out, the crew

can't close the doors remotely.

29 of the crew return for a second grilling

by investigators.

This testimony provides an exact picture

of the ship's last moments, data which

is built into a computer model.

At 10:15, Three minutes after the collision,

the ship is listing five degrees to the right

but filling fast through the gash in the engine room.

By 10:25, the ship is listing 14 degrees.

Now the 19-foot gash, which was above the water line,

is exposed to the sea.

At this point, the Samina and 80 passengers are doomed.

The ship can't withstand this much damage.

The Samina is what's called a roro ferry.

It stands for "roll on, roll off."

This is a modern roro ship.

Vehicles simply reverse in the stern

and then drive out at their destination.

It's a cost-effective design with a potentially fatal flaw.

The worst shipping disasters in recent times

have involved vessels built this way.

The Herald of Free Enterprise went

down with a loss of 193 lives at Zeebrugge in Belgium in 1987.

850 were drowned aboard the roro ferry Estonia

in the Baltic Sea in 1994.

Unlike a cruise ship or a cargo vessel, which are divided

into many smaller compartments, the vehicle deck of a roro ship

is one large, open area, highly vulnerable to rapid flooding.

Imagine comparing flooding an egg box with flooding just

an empty cardboard shoebox.

The shoebox would tend to fill up very, very quickly,

whereas an egg box would tend to fill

up each compartment at a time.

And so the egg box would stay afloat,

whereas the shoebox wouldn't.

NARRATOR: This open space is especially vulnerable

because it's so close to the water line.

DAVID MOLYNEUX: The car deck on the roro ferry

is low to make driving the vehicles on and off easy.

As a result, you're relying on those watertight compartments

to keep the ship afloat in the event of damage.

NARRATOR: By 10:29, the Samina is listing 23 degrees.

It's now tilting so much that it's impossible to launch

more lifeboats.

Only three of the eight on board get away.

Three minutes later, at 10:32, it's listing 33 degrees.

At around 10:50, the ship turns completely on its side.

We know the exact time that the ship sank

because the clock on the bridge was stopped at two minutes

past 11:00.

NARRATOR: Divers surveying the wreck make

their most important discovery.

Of the ship's 11 watertight doors, nine were left open.

And the most important aspect of this accident

was leaving the watertight doors open.

As a result, the ship flooded, lost all its reserve of

buoyancy, and eventually sank.

NARRATOR: If the doors had been locked,

despite the navigational error, which sent the ship

onto the rocks, despite the hole in the engine room,

this would probably have been a survivable accident.

Four years after the disaster, the captain,

Vassilis Giannakis goes on trial and receives

a 16-year prison sentence.

The sinking of the Samina led to safety improvements.

Greece cut the maximum working life of passenger ferries

from 35 to 30 years.

The tragedy also helped speed the introduction

of voyage recorders, like an airplane black box.

They're now mandatory in all passenger ferries.

Some good came out of bad.

For the first time since those dramatic events,

Katrina Stark has come back to Paros.

It's an emotional return.

KATRINA STARK (VOICEOVER): It was a pretty traumatic thing

to go through, but it's quite a character-building experience.

And I think it plays a large part in who I am today.

NARRATOR: For their role in helping to save lives,

Heidi Hart and Christine Shannon were given an award for heroism

by the city of Seattle.

CHRISTINE SHANNON (VOICEOVER): I understand

my strength a lot more.

And I can live freely without the restraints

of being scared of what's unknown,

because life is an unknown.

NARRATOR: Even for a heroine, it's tough to look back.

HEIDI HART: Christine and I, we always

say we were the lucky ones.

We were in the right place at the right time.

And that is the only thing I can think

of why we made it and so many other people didn't.

And it breaks my heart.