Evacuation system for passenger vessels

[Captain Kong]

There really are some GINORMOUS BIG FAT BLUE RINSE American Matrons on those cruise ships. It is unbelievable how BIG they are and how much they can eat. They must add another two feet on the Draft. No way can a lot of them get into the tenders to go ashore so they stay on board eating none stop.

[Captain Kong]

When I was on the GEORGIC, in 1955, we took 3,000 emigrants from Liverpool to Sydney via Cape Town,.and then 3,000 Oz Troops to the war in Malaya. followed by the French Foreign Legion from Viet Nam to france.
In all that time there must have been nearly 4,000 people onboard on each trip.
The Life boats were double banked, one on top of the other..
As we had to run ashore to the beach to rescue the Legionnaires . under attack from the Viet Minh, we had to get the lifeboats ready before we arrived. We ran the falls via snatch blocks to a winch and heaved away, the life boats broke in half. They were stuck , never been tested for a very long time.
We had to dump some of them to get at the lower boats and that was a struggle to get them up as many of those were stuck.
We did eventually get about ten boats out of 34 lifeboats
So we were very lucky we never had to use them in an emergency when we had nearly four Thousand people on if she was sinking. That would have been a major Disaster

GEORGIC in Cape Town 1955

[Shaun Gander]

As a point of interest, i have travelled on the IOW ferries literally hundreds of times, never seen any lifeboat drills carried out, when would they be doing these drills ???, kt

I've seen Red Funnel do drills when they've been at their dock by the NOC.

SDG

[Des Taff Jenkins]

I was on a Union Company ship the Waipori, we had to run out of Port Kembla because of a storm, went back to Sydney, skipper decided on having a boat drill, better late than never. As we lowered the boat one of the Davits collapsed, the swivel bolt the davit moved on had rusted out , one bloke was left clinging to the life line the other in the drink. we lifted the boat out of the water tied it down on the after hatch, and the skipper wanted us to sail, needless to say we didn't.
Cheers Des