Cruise ship passengers flown out of Antarctica

Shipwrecked vacationers, some still clutching life jackets, boarded a military aircraft Saturday and left Antarctica to begin long journeys home after their cruise ship struck ice and sank.

More than 150 passengers and crew members escaped unhurt after being evacuated into lifeboats Friday from the ship Explorer that hit ice off King George Island in Antarctica.

“I’m so relieved. I’m happy that everyone made it off the ship, because it could have been a big disaster,” said Eli Charne, 38, of Irvine, his voice halting with emotion.

“I thought the ship was going down,” Charne recalled of the moments after he felt the vessel hit the ice. “We were on the lowest deck of the ship, so we rushed out of the room and pressed the emergency button as water rushed in.”

Charne, wearing borrowed clothing and carrying a life jacket, was part of the first group of survivors airlifted from Chile’s Eduardo Frei air base in Antarctica to Punta Arenas in southern Chile. “They arrived around 7:30 p.m. and they are all doing fine,” a Chilean air force spokesman said.

He said the remaining passengers and crew of the Explorer would spend another night in Antarctica before being flown to Punta Arenas today.

The 154 passengers and crew members climbed into lifeboats and drifted about six hours in calm waters before a Norwegian vessel picked them up and took them to the base. There they were fed and clothed as they waited to be flown to Punta Arenas.

The 38-year-old Explorer, owned by Canadian travel company GAP Adventures, was filled with vacationers from the United States, Canada, Australia, Europe, Japan, Argentina and elsewhere. It was a week away from completing a 19-day trip following the 1914-16 expedition undertaken by Anglo-Irish explorer Ernest Henry Shackleton.