[AMG]

The Santorini webcam is showing a dramatic event right now, where a cruise ship in trouble is being evacuated. http://www.santorin.deu.net/webcam/

[Kevin]

What's the story with the cruise ship Lars?

[AMG]

It is said to be the Sea Diamond with a total of 1600 pax onboard, that has been evacuated because as you can see in the pictures, the ship has some stability problems. Looks like she is taking in water in the bow, but I have no confirmation on this.

Sea Diamond is 414 feet long and was built in 1986 as Birka Princess. She used to cruise here from Stockholm to Mariehamn in Åland/Finland and was taken over a year ago by a Cyprus based company, the Louis Cruise Lines.

EDIT: She grounded close to Santorini and is taking in water, but all 1200 passengers, mainly Americans and Germans, and 400 crew are safely evacuated at 18.00.

[AMG]

The cruise ship Sea Diamond that yesterday afternoon hit a rock outside Santorini with 1200 passengers and 400 crew onboard, sank early this morning. All onboard were evacuated last night by the help of many other boats, also present to assist were several cruise ships and five helicopters. Two passengers are still unaccounted for.

Before she was sold last year, she was cruising out of Stockholm where this picture is from.

[Kevin]

There's an article about her here.

[Francois]

The captain will have a lot to answer there.Very sad thing to read about.I hope they find the two missing guys.I can wait to hear what went wrong.Thanks for the heads up.

Francois

[Kevin]

It's also on the Yahoo.com frontpage right now, with video of the final moments: http://www.yahoo.com/s/550545

[YachtForum]

Brandon found a CNN report...

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe...hip/index.html

[brandonw]

Now the Capt is blaming currents for causing the sinking...

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe...hip/index.html

[techmati]

The real question is why did they not close their watertight doors and prevent the flooding and sinking.......

At least they were able to perform adequate evacuation of the vessel unlike EXPRESS SAMINA in 2000 with 79 deaths.

[CaptTom]

One story I read said the damage accured when the captain tried to back off the rocks. Current or no current, while underway and making way, the captain is responsible.
Does anyone know why he got in so close? Is there something to see below the surface, like the edge of the volcano?

[techmati]

there are many charted rocks near the Greek islands. that was one of them. i doubt it was for tourism reasons.

[el_CAPeeTAN06]

There were actually about 75 students from a school right down the street from me that were on that ship. I guess they won't be going on any more fieldtrips any time soon....