[imagesource: Getty Images]

It was not the captain, crew, engineers, or cruise officials who saved all of the passengers aboard the Oceanos cruise ship that sank off the coast of South Africa in 1991.

Rather it was cruise musician Moss Hills, originally from Zimbabwe, who took responsibility for everyone on board.

Moss and his wife Tracy, both in their 30s at the time, were regular musicians on cruise liners. Along with 579 other guests and crew aboard the ship, they readied themselves to play music as the ship sailed around the coast of South Africa.

The cruise had set out in galeforce winds and heavy rains, which had already delayed sailing for the final trip towards Durban several times.

The conditions didn’t show any signs of improving, and yet, the captain decided to lift anchor anyway.

When the storm began raging ever harder and the Oceanos started taking in gallons of water, that same captain was nowhere to be seen.

After the lights went off and the ship’s officers weren’t advising everyone on what to do, Moss, who his wife describes as “unflappable”, felt incredibly uneasy:

“You’re on a ship in the middle of the ocean, in the dark of night, in a terrible storm,” he says, “I felt this tightening in my stomach.”

The 153-metre Oceanos was soon getting absolutely pummelled by the storm, drifting sideways into the crashing waves, as anxious guests awaited their fates:

About an hour passed, and the mood in the lounge grew tense. Moss grabbed an acoustic guitar and began singing with some of the other entertainers to try to keep people calm. But as time stretched on, Moss noticed that the ship was heeling – no longer coming back to a level position when it was being thrown about in the storm.

“Something bad is happening,” Moss said to Tracy, “I’m going to try and find out what’s going on.”

Nobody was below deck as a “large body of water [sloshed] about behind those watertight doors”. At this moment, Moss realised the ship was sinking.

He eventually found the cruise director who told him that the captain had told her they were going to have to abandon the ship:

Except the captain was nowhere to be found, and would only be seen later, smoking in the darkness right at the back of the ship, forlorn and having completely given up.

It was under these circumstances that Moss became a hero, managing to get passengers on the lifeboats in the most treacherous conditions and without any know-how:

Most notably, he managed to call “Mayday” and get South African authorities on land to send helicopters, which lifted passengers to shore.

Moss and Tracy had a 15-year-old daughter in boarding school in South Africa, who was perhaps the driving force behind their bravery.

“Whatever we do, we’ve got to make sure at least one of us gets off,” Moss remembers saying to his wife.

Thankfully, remarkably, miraculously, all 581 passengers lived to tell the tale – if they weren’t too traumatised to recall events.

Moss, at least, says he finds talking about the horrendous moment in his life cathartic:

You can read the full story here.

[source:bbc]