David and Edie Brainard of Greenwood, and Bill and Nancy Uber of Woodstock are seasoned shipmates. Together the two couples have cruised off Alaska, as well as on the Rhine, Main, Danube and Amazon rivers.

Late last Wednesday afternoon, they set out on their latest voyage, a planned 1,500-mile cruise along the Norwegian coast, from the port of Bergen, in the south, to Kirkenes, high above the Arctic Circle, near Norway’s border with Russia.

Their ship was the Hurtigruten Line’s MS Nordys, a 450-foot combination cruise ship and working coastal ferry/transport.

But this trip did not go as planned. The cruise ended less than 24 hours from homeport, with the Brainards and Ubers among more than 100 passengers who reached land, under hard rain, by lifeboat.

The trip had begun uneventfully. “We boarded the ship about 5 in the afternoon, had dinner on board, started to unpack, then went to sleep,” David Brainard said.

The Nordlys then set out on the first leg of the cruise – 230 overnight miles to the art nouveau port town of Alesund.

About 9:30 the next morning, after breakfast, Dave Brainard was walking the boat deck. “That’s the easiest deck to walk,” he said, “and I noticed heavy black smoke coming out of the stack. I said: ‘Wow! That’s a dirty diesel.’”

Meanwhile below decks, fire and smoke alarms had begun to go off, Bill Uber said, triggered by a fire that had started in the ship’s engine room.

Topside, Brainard said, “Within five to 10 minutes the smoke was so heavy, it was impossible to stay on the starboard [lee] side of the boat. So I went forward and went over to the port side, and they were beginning the evacuation.”

There had not been time yet on this cruise for the usual evacuation drill.

“There’s always a drill, but never to the extent of lowering boats,” Brainard said. “Usually it’s just an assembly on the boat deck and the assignments of boat stations to various cabin numbers.”

But despite the lack of a drill, both Brainard and Uber said, there was no panic, only smooth execution by the crew of an obviously well practiced exercise.

“The whole thing was handled with very professional people and gear,” Brainard said. “They handled it as well as the situation could possibly be handled.”

The passengers were put in what Brainard described as “not really exposure suits, but probably the latest issue of really, really good life vests.”

It was then into the lifeboats – a first for the Brainards and Ubers.

While there was no formal order, loading was generally “women first,” he said. “There weren’t really any kids.”

The lifeboats davits were than lowered, and the boats set off for the Alesund harbor, about a mile away.

There, too, Brainard said, “it was all highly professional. They drove the lifeboats in, tied them up, offloaded the passengers in orderly fashion.”

There they were bused to the town’s “designated disaster hotel,” where they were fed, provided with rooms and communication, and given approximately $600 in cash and free shopping at a local department store, to purchase clothing, clean underwear and other necessities.

“And they had medical people there in a few hours to issue prescriptions for medications that had been left on board,” Brainard said.

The couples stayed in Aselund for four days, then were bused to Bergen, then flew to Amsterdam and on to Logan Airport in Boston.

According to initial reports, the Nordlys fire began after some form of explosion in the engine room.

It claimed the lives of two crew members there, and injured several other people, most of them crew.

As of Wednesday, two crew members remained hospitalized.

The ship itself limped to port behind its lifeboats, smoking heavily and listing.

The smoke forced the temporary evacuation of portions of Alesund.

At one point while the ship was tied up in port, the Nordlys listed 22 degrees to its port side, raising fear it would capsize.

It was eventually righted.

Copy the Story Link