Do you still remember the Titanic , known as the "Never Sinking Freighter", the most luxurious cruise ship in the world at that time failed on its maiden voyage, colliding with an iceberg, causing the hull to break, killing more than 1,500 people, and the death rate is as high as 67%.
The Titanic shipwreck is called the most tragic shipwreck in peacetime, and it is terrifying to mention.
In South Korea in 2014, a cargo ship called Sewol encountered a rapid flow near its coastline, only a few hundred meters away from the nearest island. The coast guard also received a signal for help in a timely manner, but it killed 304 people and the mortality rate was as high as 63.8%.
What happened to the Sewoku, causing such a tragedy.
1. Beautiful travel becomes a nightmare
April 15, 2014, it was a normal day, but for the 311 high school graduates of Tan Won High School in South Korea, they were both excited and excited.
Because, they are about to take a boat to Jeju Island graduation trip, and their long-suppressed mood in the intense study is released, and these big children chirped happily like birds out of the cage.
Just arrived at the port to prepare for boarding, but something unpleasant happened. Due to heavy fog on the sea, the navigation control center issued an alarm prohibiting departure, and the cruise ship that departed at 6:30 is expected to be unable to set off for a long time.
The students were anxious, they were determined to go to the beautiful Jeju Island to see the scenery, and where to care about the bad weather. As anxious as the students, there is also a cruise line.
The cruise ship they were riding was called the Sewol. In addition to carrying passengers, it also loaded with a full ship of cargo, cars, containers and even freighters. Once the delivery is overdue, there may be a penalty for compensation. Cruise companies that are profit-oriented are unwilling to leave early.
At 8 o'clock in the evening, the navigation control center withdrew the alarm, but because the weather at night was unpredictable and difficult to control, the other ships did not set off, only the Seyue, sailed towards the vast sea in panic and disappeared into the night.
That night, everything was beautiful, the sea was calm and the sky was particularly clear. The students watched the fireworks show on the deck. The captain and the second mate of the first mate yawned Liantian, so they handed over the task at the helm to a third female mate named Park Hae-je.
On the morning of April 16, students and other passengers were still immersed in their sleep, and the Sewol arrived at the Menggu Waterway. The Menggu Waterway is located between two highs and lows of the continental shelf. The water flow is turbulent and varied. No matter how skilled the captain is, he will be extremely careful.
According to the general treatment method, when the ship arrives at the Menggu waterway, it will adjust the speed and angle, use the direction of the water flow to appropriately speed up the navigation speed, and sail with the flow.
The third pair Park Hae-jeong also followed the convention and changed the cruise ship from autonomous driving to manual driving, which accelerated the speed. Because the water flow was too fast, Park Hae-je adjusted his course step by step from 135 degrees to 145 degrees.
But at this moment, an accident happened. The Segoyle suddenly tilted suddenly as he turned left, and with a loud bang, it fell on the sea. It was 8:50 in the morning, some students and passengers were still sleeping in, and some were already having breakfast in the restaurant.
After the hull tilted, the things in the cabin flew up, and many people hit the corner and were injured. In an instant, everyone was panicked, and shouted for help were connected.
If rescue starts from this time, it may be another ending. However, the Captain Sejo did the opposite.
Captain Li Junxi was woken up and came to the cab to try to return to the hull. Li Junxi released a large amount of ballast water on the left side of the hull, but it still didn't help. The Sewol was tilting more and more severely, and was pushed to the north by rapids.
At the same time, he sent a help signal to the navigation control center, but did not immediately rescue the passengers. Instead, he played a "stay in place" broadcast, which made many students lock the hatch door and wait in the room. They believed that the captain had a solution.
At 9:30 in the morning, the navigation control center received a signal from the Sewol and sent Coast Guard to rescue. The coast guard immediately sent a lifeboat near Segoyle and rescued the people waiting on the deck.
Incredible, the people on the deck were all crew members including Captain Lee Junxi. In other words, the passengers' life and death were uncertain, so the captain escaped first.
The students who are "confident" in the cabin do not know that their graduation trip will soon become a nightmare.
2. Chaotic rescue and the doomed tragedy
Is the rescue difficult? Not big.
The accident occurred not on the high seas where "no villages are in front and no shops are behind", but near the South Korean coastline, where there are islands a few hundred meters nearby. If the rescue is timely and planned and efficient, the capsizing of the Sewol is just a scary accident.
However, the inefficient and chaotic rescue made the tragedy that should have been avoided a reality.
As mentioned earlier, Captain Lee Junxi was the first to rescue him. After he got ashore, the coast guards knew what was going on in the Sewol.
After receiving the news provided by Li Junxi, the coast guard arranged a rescue team to rescue the passengers and asked the Navy fleet for help. At the same time, the news of the Sewol accident was also reported to the Presidential Palace.
At 10 o'clock in the morning, President Park Geun-hye received news of something that happened to the Sewol. Unexpectedly, she did not make any statement, but then "disappeared" for more than seven hours.
The rescue operation that the coast guard had agreed to have been delayed. Not only that, some civil rescue ships and diving teams surrounding the Sewol were also dismissed and there was no order to approach.
What happened to Sewol while waiting for rescue?
10:1, the hull is inclined at 70 degrees;
10:15, the hull is inclined at 90 degrees;
10:17, the hull is inclined at more than 100 degrees, and the seawater floods the cabin door, and people trapped inside can't come out even if they want to;
10:21, the Sewol directly locks on the sea...
Twenty minutes, just when the rescue departments of various governments were ambiguous, the Sewol had lost the best chance of rescue. If they could not be rescued, the passengers trapped at the bottom of the ship still had little hope of survival.
The coast guard became nervous when he learned that the Sewol was completely deducted, and sent a professional rescue team. However, they didn't even bring diving equipment, which was of no use. What's more ironic is that civil divers who wanted to save people were not allowed to enter the accident site to rescue.
Time passed by minute by minute, and the passing fishing boat rescued some passengers who had climbed outside the hull. Those trapped in the water were uncertain about their lives.
At 11 a.m., the South Korean Ministry of Defense reported to the Presidential Office that all passengers of the Sewol were rescued, and no one was injured or killed! As a result, the public's attention to the Sewol accident has dropped a lot. The civilian ships surrounding the Sewol have left one after another and rescued them. Why are they joining in the fun?
However, only the families who were anxious on the shore knew that their families had not yet appeared.
At 2:40 pm, the coast guard sent dozens of divers, but soon stopped rescue, on the grounds that the water flow was too fast and could not be rescued. The passengers and students trapped in the boat are getting closer and closer to death.
The rescue work that could not grasp the key points and was extremely chaotic continued until 5:15 pm, when President Park Geun-hye appeared. "Don't the students all wear life jackets? Is it so difficult to save?" These cold and high-sounding words came from the dignified head of state.
On the one hand, the coast guards failed to rescue, and on the other hand, the civil rescue team was not allowed to approach. Time was passing, and life was slowly disappearing.
It was the third day when the government rescue team made the decision to allow civil rescuers to get close, but it was too late. What the rescue team dived into the water saw were the corpses floating everywhere in the cabin, like hell on earth.
To the end of the rescue, a total of 304 people in Sewol were killed, of which 250 were students from Tan Yuan High School. The parents of students and passengers were filled with righteous indignation and angrily criticized the government for being incompetent and cold-blooded, causing their relatives to die in vain.
However, time is difficult to turn back, and the tragedy has become a reality.
3. The Sewol Accident, who is wrong with
There are many different opinions on the cause of the Sewol Accident. Some people say that the incident between the Sewol was purely a conspiracy, and it was a "blood sacrifice" carefully arranged by President Park Geun-hye for the cult she believed in, so she deliberately refused to let the coast guard rescue;
Some people also say that the Sewol had bumped into the US nuclear submarine . The cowardly South Korean government is waiting for the US arrangement and dare not rescue it easily.
, these are all unfounded speculations. The fundamental cause of the Sewol accident still needs to be analyzed from the hull itself, navigation technology and the execution ability of government departments.
First of all, the Sewol cruise ship is not a simple passenger ship, it is a passenger and cargo. The owner of Sewol is Yu Bingyan, the president of the Cheonghai Town Maritime Transportation Company in South Korea. Sewol was transformed by him after buying an old cargo ship.
After the ship is renovated, in order to have more space, the rear of the hull is raised. Then the passenger cabin on the bottom floor of the ship was converted into a cargo hold, and a four-layer cargo hold was installed on the cargo hold.
At the same time, Yu Bingyan, who loves photography, also built a private gallery at the rear of the ship to store his own photography works. For the luxury of decoration, he spent 37 tons of marble.
hull is arbitrarily raised, and the stern of the ship has artificially increased the weight of dozens of tons, which obviously affects the stability and balance of the ship.
Someone will also ask, will the government department responsible for acceptance and inspection pass, but with the power of money, the Sewol successfully passed the review. At the same time, the former captain Shin Sang-chul, who always reported unstable hull, was suspended and replaced by Lee Jun-seok.
What's even more terrifying is that when he set out the day before the accident, in order to decorate more cargo for profit, the Sewol privately drained more than 1,000 tons of ballast water on the left side of the hull, and replaced it with more than 1,000 tons of cargo overloaded.
Secondly, the day the Seyue accident was responsible for driving the ship was a third female mate with no experience. She had no experience in navigating skills and lacked ability to deal with crises. She was invisibly a time bomb.
In this way, the already unreasonable hull structure and an unqualified driver, it seems inevitable that the Sewol's accident occurred in a rapids and dangerous shoal.
On the other hand, the South Korean government's rescue mechanism has also attracted criticism. Not to mention that Captain Lee Junxiu violated the regulations of "the captain will not abandon the ship", the first one to escape. The South Korean coast guard was ineffective when facing crisis rescue, which wasted great opportunities.
Moreover, as president, Park Geun-hye disappeared for seven hours, which is said to be to discuss the possible political crisis caused by the accident. It is ridiculous to not seize the time to save lives in the face of the first accident of a country, but consider the political impact it brings first. After the
accident, Captain Lee Junxiu and the third deputy Park Hae-jeong were sentenced to imprisonment , the boss of Seyue, Yu Byung-yeon, was wanted, and the public approval rating of President Park Geun-hye dropped sharply.
However, no matter how regretful the pain, the casualties caused by the Sewol accident have become a reality, with a 63.8% mortality rate approaching the 67% mortality rate in the Titanic accident. However, how can the dangers encountered by the Sevy be compared with the Titanic?
The Sewol casualties will always be nailed to the pillar of shame of the South Korean government, and at the same time it will alert future generations that once profit-willed and driven by money, life will become worthless.
Note: Some of the pictures in this article are from the Internet, and the copyright cannot be verified and are not for commercial purposes. If there is any infringement, please contact us.
Author: Xin Xiang Wutong
