900 Fle Burning Cruise Ship 50 Miles Off Nassau : Evacuate in Lifeboats; 12 Injured

An explosion sparked a fire aboard the luxury cruise ship Emerald Seas anchored in the Bahamas today, injuring 12 people and forcing nearly 900 passengers to flee the vessel in lifeboats, the Coast Guard said.

The explosion in a storeroom sent flames roaring through parts of the ship off the island of Little Stirrup Cay, about 50 miles north of Nassau.

The ship, carrying a crew of 400, had sailed from Nassau shortly after midnight.

A spokeswoman for Eastern Cruise Lines in Miami said most of the 897 passengers were on deck waiting to be ferried ashore for sailing, windsurfing and snorkeling when the explosion and fire occurred.

The passengers were placed in lifeboats, lowered overboard and taken the few hundred yards to shore as a precautionary measure, Coast Guard Petty Officer Jim Simpson said.

He said the critically injured person suffered burns and had been flown to Nassau by helicopter, then on by jet to the Opa-Locka, Fla., airfield, where another Coast Guard helicopter stood ready to fly him to the Jackson Memorial Hospital burn treatment center in Miami.

5 Still on Island

Six other injured people were being treated at Princess Margaret Hospital in Nassau, and the Coast Guard planned to fly them on to Miami later, he said. Five injured people were still on the privately owned island of Little Stirrup Cay, where all passengers were taken by lifeboat, but there were no details of their condition, Simpson said.

Five Coast Guard helicopters and a jet were at the scene, along with the cutters Farallon and Cape Gull, Simpson added.

The fire was brought under control within three hours of the explosion and the ship was never in danger of sinking, Petty Officer Luis Diaz said. There was no word on what caused the explosion.

“The fire is out and the Coast Guard is now involved in dewatering the ship--removing the water that was used to fight the fire,” Diaz said.

Bernard Chabot, president of Eastern Cruise Lines, said the company is setting up special telephone lines to provide information to relatives of passengers.

“There’s no reason for panic,” he said.

3-Night Cruises

Eastern Cruise Lines has been offering three-night summer cruises from $237 per person aboard the ship. In addition to Little Stirrup Cay, it calls at the Bahamas’ major cities, Nassau and Freeport.

Registered in Panama, the 24,458-ton ship was built in 1944 and has been formerly called the President Roosevelt and Atlantis. It was refurbished in 1985.

Eastern’s sister company, Western Cruise Lines, operates the Azure Seas ship on cruises form Los Angeles to Mexico.

Today’s incident was the first major ship fire from cruise-busy Miami since Aug. 20, 1984, when a 24-year-old music teacher and a Jamaican crewman were killed aboard the Scandinavian Sun. Smoke from a small electrical blaze filled the ship as it returned to Miami from a one-day cruise.