More than 400 feared dead after Chinese ferry disaster

China was facing one of the worst shipping disasters in its history, as hundreds were feared dead when a cruise ship capsized on the Yangtze River with 457 mostly elderly tourists, tour guides and crew aboard.

The ferry's captain said the Dongfangzhixing, or "Eastern Star", was hit by a freak tornado and it sank fast on Monday at around 9.30pm local time (2.28pm Irish time) in the Jianli section of the river.

The ship was carrying 405 passengers, five travel agency workers and 47 crew members, according to the Yangtze River navigation administration. As heavy rain fell, many of the passengers may have drifted away from the boat – many of the survivors were rescued more than six nautical miles away from the site where the boat capsized, while rescuers also found a dead body further downstream.

It was heading from Nanjing, capital of east China’s Jiangsu Province, to southwest China’s Chongqing city. Twelve survivors and at least six bodies have been brought to shore, while more than 400 passengers and crew are still missing.

The state news agency Xinhua reported voices coming from inside the ship’s hull, and broadcaster CCTV showed rescuers cutting through the bottom with an angle grinder.

Wang Yangsheng, who works at the Yueyang Maritime Rescue Center, told Xinhua that in more than a decade working there, he had heard of very few cases where a boat does not even have time to send out a distress call before going underwater.

Freak occurrence

China’s weather bureau said that a tornado had buffeted the area where the boat was passing through, a freak occurrence in a country where twisters can happen but are not common.

A 65-year-old woman was rescued from the hulk of the Eastern Star late yesterday, one of five survivors that emergency workers found trapped inside the upturned hull of the ferry.

Premier Li Keqiang, along with vice-premier Ma Kai and state councilor Yang Jing, was at the scene of the disaster and he urged all rescuers to “carry out search and rescue work at all costs and properly handle the aftermath”.

He called for regular and transparent updates on the rescue and investigation, and said authorities must ensure adequate funding and personnel to conduct rescue work.

The Ministry of Transport, the China National Tourism Administration and other departments have been ordered to mobilise all resources available to speed up the search and rescue work and help treat rescued people, Xinhua reported.

Higher death toll

It is looking increasingly likely that the death toll could be higher than the region's last major shipping disaster, the sinking of the South Korean ferry Sewol in April 2014, in which 304 people were killed, most of them secondary school students. According to the testimony of survivor Zhang Hui, a 43-year-old tour guide, the boat sank very fast.

“Wave after wave crashed over me; I swallowed a lot of water,” Mr Zhang told Xinhua. He was wearing a life vest as he is unable to swim.

He spoke of hearing voices calling for help in the water, and of being tossed around by big waves and heavy rain.

“The raindrops hitting my face felt like hailstones. I tried to hold my breath but water was forced into my mouth anyway,” Mr Zhang said. He managed to tie the life jacket to his belt and keep moving, hoping to run into a boat or reach a dock.

In his testimony, Mr Zhang said that he was filled with “regret”. “Life jackets are accessible in all of the cruise’s cabins. If it had not happened so fast, a lot of people could’ve been saved,” he said.

A Yangtze River cruise is one of the great journeys one can take in China, beloved of adventurous foreign travellers and Chinese keen to experience the famous river that divides the country for themselves.

It is particularly popular among retired Chinese, who join large tour groups on enormous ferries that chug up and down the river, most of them six or seven storeys high. They visit sights such as the Three Gorges Dam, the city of Chongqing, White Emperor City, Jingdezhen and Shanghai.