The night-walkers of Uganda

Find the answer
2
Look in the text and find the answers to these questions as quickly as possible.
1. How many people were on the ship in total? 
2. How British people were on the ship?
3. How many hours did they spend in the life rafts?
4. How much did the holiday cost?
5. Where were most of the crew from?
6. Where is Punta Arenas?
253

---

Happy to be heading home: iceberg 
survivors tell of fear in darkness
One of the last to leave the Antarctic cruise 
ship as it started listing believed they were all 
going to die.
Karen McVeigh
November 26, 2007
Last week a cruise ship called the Explorer hit 
an iceberg in the Antarctic and sank. All the 
passengers are safe now but they were very 
afraid when the accident happened. One of the 
survivors has talked about the terrifying hours the 
passengers spent in the darkness in a lifeboat in 
the freezing cold. They did not know if a rescue 
boat would come before they died from the cold. 
The wife of Bob Flood, 52, who worked on the 
ship, said that her husband thought they would 
all die.
“When they were in the life raft, they didn’t know 
if a boat would come to rescue them,” Mandy 
Flood said. “He didn’t know how long it would be 
before he became ill from the cold. They didn’t 
have any information. He said that he thought 
they would die.”
Last night, Mr Flood arrived in Punta Arenas, 
Chile, on an army plane, along with the other 
tourists and the crew from the ship. Eleven 
passengers and 66 staff had to stay on a military 
base in the Antarctic for two nights because of 
bad weather. Then they arrived in Chile and 
joined the 75 passengers and two staff members 
who arrived on Saturday night.
The Explorer began to sink after the ship hit 
an iceberg just before midnight on Friday. The 
iceberg made a large hole in the side of the 
ship. All 154 holidaymakers and crew on board 
escaped on life rafts and then had to spend 
five hours in sub-zero temperatures before a 
Norwegian ship found them and took them to two 
military bases on King George Island.
Passengers in the first group of survivors to 
arrive in Chile talked about their feelings when 
they got off the plane. “I feel wonderful, very 
pleased to be alive,” Danish tourist Jan Henkel, 
42, said. “Everybody was afraid they would die.” 
When they reached Chile, Mr Henkel asked his 
girlfriend to marry him.
“I’m so happy that everyone got off the ship, 
because it was nearly a terrible disaster,” said 
Eli Charne, 38, from California. Charne, who felt 
the ship hit the iceberg, said: “I thought the ship 
was sinking. We were on the lowest deck of the 
ship, so we all ran out of the room and pressed 
the emergency button as the water came in. It’s 
certainly nice to be on the way home now. I’m 
just really glad to be alive” he said.
The Explorer is owned by a Canadian tour 
company, GAP Adventures. It was near the end 
of a 19-day, £4,000 trip when it hit the iceberg. 
A spokesman for GAP Adventures said that 
after they arrived in Punta Arenas in Chile, the 
passengers could join another cruise or fly home. 
When he was asked about an investigation 
into the accident, the spokesman said: “The 
investigation will begin when all the passengers 
are safe in Chile.”
The passengers included 23 British, 17 Dutch, 
14 Americans, 12 Canadians, 10 Australians, 
four Swiss, four Irish, three Danish, two 
Argentines, two Belgians, two from Hong Kong 
and single passengers from China, France, 
Germany, Japan, Colombia and Sweden. Most 
of the crew were from the Philippines, the 
company said.
Mrs Flood, whose husband worked for GAP 
and gave lectures on the ship, said that Mr 
Flood was one of the last people to leave the 
ship as water lower decks filled with water. 
“It took an hour for everyone to get off and 
by then the ship was listing. He said that was