Divers Recover 123 Bodies in Wrecked Ferry

Divers struggled through mounds of mud and debris Wednesday to recover 123 bodies in the wreckage of the British ferry Herald of Free Enterprise, raising the death toll to 184 in one of Europe’s worst peacetime maritime tragedies.

“The devastation and damage is very severe inside,” said Commander Jack Birkett, a senior British navy diving official directing the British divers.

“There is slime, mud and oil everywhere. The bulkheads have been torn off. It’s horrific.”

Cables Still Attached

About 30 more corpses were still believed inside the ferry, which capsized March 6 and was righted Tuesday by floating cranes and barges in an arduous, eight-hour maneuver.

The ferry’s keel rests on sandy bottom in 30 feet of water about 1,000 yards off the harbor entrance of this North Sea port.

After the ship was righted, a Belgian toxicologist boarded the vessel to check it for chemical and other contamination before divers were allowed to make an initial inspection.

“Skin diving into a chaotic mass of mud and sand and razor-sharp debris from splintered partitions would be suicide,” said one Belgian diver, who indicated that recovering more bodies may have to wait until the lower portion of the vessel was pumped dry.

Such an operation might take two weeks, said salvage director Capt. Hans Walenkemp of the Dutch company Smit Tak, because of the time it would take to make the vessel watertight.

Cause Remains Unclear

Sixty-one bodies were recovered shortly after the disaster, and the final death toll is expected to reach 195. The cause of the accident remains under investigation by Belgian and British authorities. About 348 people survived.

Officials said that up to 20 bodies have been located on upper decks and are to be brought ashore today.

Roger van Ransbeeck, a spokesman at Zeebrugge naval base where the bodies were taken for identification, said 19 British and Belgian divers were “going full speed” in an effort to recover bodies still inside the ferry.

Peter Ford, chairman of Townsend Thoresen, owners of the vessel, said salvage operations have not yielded any information about the cause of the disaster, but it has been established that seawater entered the loading doors as the vessel left the harbor bound for Dover, England.