Guitarist Moss Hills helped evacuate a sinking cruise liner after some of the crew jumped ship
Hanging on to the handrails, Moss and another entertainer, Julian, a magician from Yorkshire, made their way through the darkness below deck. They could hear excited voices speaking many different languages. Officers were running around, some were carrying bags, some had life jackets on, and some were wet.
Back up in the lounge, there had still not been any announcements about what was going on. Moss found the cruise director who said the captain had told her they were going to have to abandon the ship. But each time the ship rolled to starboard, Moss would have to jump back onto the Oceanos before the lifeboat swung away, opening up a gap of a couple of metres, and then swung back, smashing with such force against the ship's hull that bits of it came splintering off.
Instead of being lowered down to the water once loaded up with people, the lifeboats would cling to the side of the ship until the next big wave rolled in, tipping the ship enough to let them dangle freely. "I knew he wouldn't be down below because we were sinking," he says. "I was making regular checks to see where the water level was, and one deck below us was flooded."
He and Tracy had a 15-year-old daughter, Amber, who'd been on board the Oceanos for the holidays and disembarked just days earlier. Amber was now back at boarding school in South Africa. Dangling in mid-air from the helicopter cable, people who Moss was trying to save were being blown against parts of the ship by the strong winds as they were winched into the sky. There was no way of knowing how badly hurt they were and Moss momentarily lost his nerve. But with so many people still on board, he realised he had no choice but to keep going.
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