Rescued cruiseliner passengers spend night in Antarctica

Rescued passengers from a Canadian-chartered passenger ship received the rare opportunity to spend the night in Antarctica Saturday after their cruiseliner slammed into an iceberg and sank off the frozen continent.
All 154 passengers and crew were loaded into lifeboats and taken by another ship to nearby Chilean and Uruguayan military bases in Antarctica. They are expected to be flown to southern Chile or Argentina later on Saturday. The Canadian GAP Adventures company that ran the ill-fated cruise said it was making arrangements to fly the 100 passengers, among them Australians, Britons, Canadians and Americans, to their respective homes.
"Their families have been contacted and they have been able to contact their families. They're all in good spirits," GAP Adventures spokeswoman Marie-Anne MacRae told AFP.
"We're going to work out arrangements for flying them back home," she added.
The Explorer, a Liberian-registered cruiseliner that was chartered by a Canadian tour company, struck an iceberg off near the island of San Carlos early Friday and sank at about 1830 GMT that same day, according to Chilean military officials. "There was wind, and it was very cold, and we were wet because of the waves," crew member Andrea Salas, 38, told Argentina's radio Continental.
She said the passengers and crew spent three to four hours on lifeboats before they were rescued by a Norwegian cruise ship, the Nordnorge, that happened to be nearby. "They are in good condition. There is no hypothermia, they all have food and clothes. Everything is OK," Nordnorge captain Arnvid Hansen told AFP by phone after the Titanic-style accident.
Chilean Navy and Air Force personnel then ferried 84 people to Chile's Frei military base, and the remaining 70 to Uruguay's Artigas military bases, both in Antartica, for an overnight stay. The captain of the Explorer and another senior officer stayed on board the 2,400-tonne Liberian-registered Explorer until it became clear it would sink.
Susan Hayes, GAP's vice president of marketing, said the night-time evacuation went smoothly. "They actually had several hours while the pumps were pumping the water from the bilge."
All passengers onboard received evacuation training the first day they arrived on the ship, the company said. The National Geographic Endeavour ship also helped in the rescue effort, officials said.