World : Stricken Soviet Ship’s Speed Cited

ABOARD THE SENJA, Arctic Ocean —  The Norwegian coast guard skipper who rescued hundreds of passengers from a stricken Soviet cruise liner said today that the ship was traveling much too fast when it smashed into a belt of Arctic ice.

“I don’t know the exact speed but I was told by crew on board that it had a speed of between 14 and 17 knots at the time of the accident,” Sigurd Kleiven, commander of the coast guard vessel Senja, told a shipboard news conference.

Asked how fast he would have been going in such foggy conditions with drifting ice around, he replied: “Between two and three knots.”