In February 1986, a shipwreck occurred in the Strait named Cook, off the coast of New Zealand: the Soviet ship Mikhail Lermontov sank, with more than seven hundred and fifty people. Fortunately, the number of victims was small. The catastrophe of the ship "Mikhail Lermontov" claimed the life of only one crew member - refrigeration engineer Pavel Zaglyadimov. He worked in that compartment, which was flooded almost immediately after the accident. Eleven people were injured in varying degrees of severity.
general information
The death of the ship "Mikhail Lermontov" occurred thirty years ago. Investigative measures for this disaster lasted more than one month, they were carried out not only in our country, but also abroad. However, to this day there is no exact picture of what happened. Was the catastrophe of the ship “Mikhail Lermontov” a tragic coincidence of circumstances, or was its wreck still a malicious intent?
This Soviet eight-deck passenger airliner was one of the most successful ships built under project 301. It was designed for seven hundred and fifty passengers. The ship “Mikhail Lermontov” was built at the shipyards in Wismar in 1972. He was named after the great Russian poet.
On this liner in those years, only a few of the then elite traveled. Photos of the ship "Mikhail Lermontov" were often printed in the Western press. It was from him that simple ordinary people abroad judged how people lived in the Soviet Union. However, for most of the population of our country it was impossible to get on board it. However, it turned out that many ordinary residents of the Soviet Union did not even realize that there was such a ship - “Mikhail Lermontov”.
Project 588
Very few people know that this gorgeous liner in the USSR had a "brother" with the same name. It was built as part of the project under the number 588 and was part of the passenger fleet of the Volga River Shipping Company. The motor ship "Mikhail Lermontov", which was first called "Kazbek", traditionally served only Astrakhan tourists, performing multi-day cruises to Moscow and Leningrad. Unlike its more famous colleague, this three-deck river liner went into navigation for the last time in 1993, and in 2000 it was cut into pieces.
Successful propaganda action
In 1962, after the Caribbean crisis, when the international situation became significantly warmer, the Soviet government took several steps aimed at building bridges between the West and the East. Soviet-Canadian relations began to establish the liner "Alexander Pushkin", plying along this line. The ship "Mikhail Lermontov", in turn, was supposed to master the tours of the USSR - USA. He was considered the successful propaganda project of the Soviet government. In fact, the ship carried out diplomatic work, successfully advertising our Soviet life in the West.
In New York, on the day of its arrival, more than five hundred journalists boarded aboard in the morning to write that the ship “Mikhail Lermontov” marked the end of the Cold War with its whistles. The Americans began to actively buy tickets for our ship. The motor ship, which became a serious competitor for many western cruise analogues, soon became known in the international passenger transport market.
The atmosphere on the boat
When the American line was closed due to certain circumstances, the Ministry of Morphlot, drawing attention to the large flows of passengers moving between England and Australia, sent the ship "Mikhail Lermontov" to the Southern Hemisphere. Photos of the ship "Mikhail Lermontov", made seven round-the-world voyages, could be seen in the press of various countries. He sailed from London, visited many of the most beautiful corners of the world and again returned to the English capital, however, on the other hand. They say that the atmosphere on the liner was amazing. The ship seemed to be a small state where ordinary life was flowing; people fell in love with it, married and even died.
Ten days — a tour on Mikhail Lermontov — cost seven hundred American dollars. The British joked that living on this Soviet ship is sometimes cheaper than life on land. And I must say that this fact did not like the Western cruise companies, so they have repeatedly undertaken various kinds of provocations. And therefore, there was not one version that the ship “Mikhail Lermontov” sank off the coast of New Zealand, not at all by chance, but by someone’s malicious intent.
Last Flight: Chronicle
On February 16, 1986, at three o'clock in the afternoon, a Soviet eight-deck chic liner left Picton, New Zealand. The motor ship Mikhail Lermontov, whose last flight was interrupted at the exit from the Queen Charlotte Strait, carried four hundred and eight passengers and three hundred and thirty crew members on board. After about an hour and a half, the captain went down to his cabin. His place on the bridge was taken by the watch navigator, with whom were the second assistant to the captain, a New Zealand pilot and two sailors. On the radio, passengers were told about local attractions. At the request of the New Zealand pilot, the ship's course was laid closer to the coast. At half-past five the ship set out on the open ocean into the open course.
Suddenly, the pilot ordered the team to take the steering wheel ten degrees to the left. The officer on duty duplicated what was said, and the liner, changing course, went into a very narrow strait, located between Jackson Cape and Walkers Rock lighthouse. The second assistant to the captain Gusev was informed that the breakers were visible on the water.
When asked why the course was changed, the New Zealand pilot to watch navigator S. Stepanishchev explained that it gives passengers the opportunity to see the beauty of Cape Jackson.
At seventeen hours and thirty-eight minutes, the ship “Mikhail Lermontov” sailed into the strait at a speed of fifteen knots. Two and a half hours after leaving Port Picton, the ship approached one of the cliffs so much that, according to the stories, one could reach out and reach a tree branch growing on a cliff. But at that moment the helmsman managed to reverse and turn around.
But suddenly the ship crashed into underwater rock at full speed . The ship “Mikhail Lermontov”, the photo from the bottom of which testify to numerous injuries, received a hole twelve meters long. In addition, as a result of the accident, watertight bulkheads were damaged. But by inertia, the ship continued to move forward. Captain Vorobyov, who immediately appeared on the bridge, took control and decided to throw the liner onto a sandbank located in Port Gore Bay.
Anxiety
Passengers at the time of the collision did not suspect anything. They gathered in the music salon of the ship "Mikhail Lermontov". The ship, the accident of which claimed the life of one person, at seventeen forty-five already had a five-degree roll. An alarm was immediately announced. The captain, who was on the bridge, was informed that the watertight doors had been shut up. But it did not help. Water began to flow into the refrigerator compartment, into the sports hall, food pantries, a laundry room and a printing house were sunk. She began to seep through and the poorly locked waterproof doors to the engine room.
At six hours and twenty minutes, when the emergency group tried to close the floodgates, the roll of the ship was already more than ten degrees. The captain had no choice but to give the order to prepare rescue equipment. He received a report on the bridge stating that water had also flooded the main switchboard, which supplies power. As a result, the main engines were urgently stopped, and therefore electricity was lost. At seven hours and ten minutes the ship's roll reached twelve degrees, and therefore the captain ordered everyone to leave the engine room.
The crew immediately began to evacuate all passengers. It was possible to save almost everyone. Many cruise participants, most of whom were old, had to literally carry on hand. Later it turned out that Pavel Zaglyadimov, a refrigerator mechanic, was not among the survivors. According to eyewitnesses, during the accident he was in the bow of a sinking ship and was busy with something at his workplace. A version was put forward that stunned him with a blow, and he died as a result.
Details of the death of the ship
The sixteenth of February 1986 was cloudy. On the bridge in the morning were the captain of the ship V. Vorobyov and the New Zealand pilot Jamison from the port of Picton. The professional qualities of the invited specialist were not in doubt. He was one of the three pilots who was granted a patent authorizing the passage of large vessels along the waterways of the Fjordland - a New Zealand national park, rugged by the fjords that the Tasman Sea is famous for . But after all, it was this experienced and competent specialist who made the strange decision to navigate the eight-decked Soviet ship along the narrow strait between the rocky shallow and Jackson Cape. Later, during the investigation, Jamison said that this happened spontaneously. He allegedly did not want to miss the opportunity to show passengers near the beauty of both Cape Jackson and its lighthouse on the north side from the entrance to the strait.
The technical side of the disaster
The death of the ship "Mikhail Lermontov" caused an ambiguous reaction. Many Western newspapers tried to make money on this tragedy, apparently, fulfilling someone's order. First of all, the reliability of Soviet ships, in particular, their insufficient technical equipment, was called into question.
For example, the British Times claimed that even the rescue boats on Mikhail Lermontov were so rusty that passengers could pierce their bottom with their feet, and warning lights did not burn on vests.
Of course, all this hype had nothing to do with reality. Based on the Paris Memorandum, established in 1982 to coordinate the actions of European countries to monitor the implementation by international ships of international safety standards for navigation, just a year before the death of the ship, in June 1985, in Hammerfest it was checked by an international commission whose conclusion was unambiguous. Experts found that the ship is in good condition and issued him a certificate. Moreover, in December of the same 1985, the liner passed another test, but already in Australia. The captain received a document on hand that there were no comments on the technical equipment.
And one more thing: according to the same Paris memorandum, the corresponding port services simply would not have launched a single faulty vessel, including the ship “Mikhail Lermontov”. As for the rusty boats and faulty signal lights, the ship was attended by a full set of boats made of fiberglass or metal alloys of very high strength. Therefore, rumors of leaky lifeboats were not true. The signal lights did not light up, because they begin to glow only when they are in the water. Based on this, we can conclude that the version of the technical malfunction of the ship disappears.
Dangerous competition
In the German Democratic Republic at the shipyards in the city of Wismar, “Mikhail Lermontov” was built for several years - a motor ship under which you can still read: “Home port - the city of Leningrad and the Baltic Shipping Company.” Equipped with modern equipment, this cruise ship immediately found itself in the forefront among all the passenger ships of the Soviet Minmorflot.
The captain of the liner was appointed the most experienced sailor Aram Mikhailovich Oganov, who did not go on that fateful voyage for a good reason. The ship sailed around the world more than once. It was quite in demand among foreign tourists who willingly bought tours to travel on this Soviet ship. The reason was not only the cheaper ticket prices than Western companies, but also the high level of service.
The version related to competition was also considered by the investigation, not only in our country, but also abroad. The captain of "Mikhail Lermontov" at the trial said that he had received verbal and written threats more than once, and besides, strange incidents had happened to the ship more than once until it was detected on the bottom of a magnetic mine without a fuse.
During the last flight, Oganov was on vacation. He believes that the death of the liner occurred through the fault of the pilot. The place of death of the ship "Mikhail Lermontov" for many years, working specialist should have been familiar. In addition, according to the captain, the ship sank at a distance of eight hundred meters from the coast at a depth of only thirty-three meters. And such a death, according to Oganov, cannot be accidental.
Riddle of the pilot
Jamison disappeared from the field of view of the press immediately after he was brought ashore on a rescue ship. And he appeared only at the very beginning of the investigation, organized by the New Zealand Ministry of Transport. He said that on that day he was very tired, because he had not rested for several days. In addition, as the investigation found out, the pilot only drank vodka and beer just an hour and a half before the Mikhail Lermontov went to sea. It was not possible to prove his direct fault, and today Jamison is the captain of a small vessel transporting livestock from Wellington to Picton and vice versa.
Homecoming
After the death of the ship “Mikhail Lermontov”, the Russians abandoned passenger traffic in this region forever. Moreover, not a single cruise ship appeared on the coast of New Zealand for five whole years.
Sailors, who managed to save more than four hundred drowning passengers, were not expected with open arms at home. Exhausted people went to the Soviet Union almost under guard.
"Mikhail Lermontov": the punishment of looters
A few months after the disaster, one of the masts of the ship sticking out of the waters of the Cook Strait resembled a hand asking for help. And although the rise of this expensive ship from the water could well be carried out, perestroika began in the USSR, and therefore it was not until the ship sank far in the other hemisphere. But divers got to him. The ship "Mikhail Lermontov" is still robbed. Although it must be said that work was carried out at the state level: first, fuel was downloaded from its tanks, and then, like from the Titanic, a ship safe was removed from it, which contained the jewelry of wealthy foreign passengers. Gold and diamonds were returned to the owners, and a ship bell was sent to Leningrad, which was cut off by scuba divers.
A luxury liner that sank off the coast at a fairly shallow depth, a year later, locals began to rob. Interestingly, rumors are circulating that the ship brutally punishes uninvited marauders. Over the past few decades, three scuba divers, whose bodies were never found, were killed near Mikhail Lermontov ...