PUNTA ARENAS, Chile — While bobbing in a cruise ship’s life raft on the frigid sea, Dutch citizen Jan Henkel, 42, and his girlfriend Mette Larsen, 28, said they decided to speed up wedding plans.
“There were some very frightening moments but the crew was very professional and the captain very good and had everything under control,” Henkel said.
The last group of survivors from the Antarctic cruise ship that struck an iceberg Friday and slipped into the icy sea were flown back to the South American mainland Sunday.
A Chilean military transport plane ferried the final 77 of the 154 passengers and crew of the MS Explorer to Punta Arenas, a jumping-off point for Antarctica travel. Fourteen Americans were on the ships passenger lists.
“Everything is fine, very fine,” said Argentine crew member Andrea Salas as she climbed from the plane.
The MS Explorer, operated by the Canadian tour company G.A.P. Adventures, smashed into submerged sea ice in Antarctic waters before dawn Friday. The ship took on water and sank about 15 hours later.
“At first I thought that we had collided with a whale,” the Explorer’s captain, Bengt Wiman, said Saturday via satellite phone with media in his home country of Sweden.
Salas said she was in the bar with colleagues and passengers when someone came in and yelled, “There’s water!” After being briefed by Wiman, the passengers noticed that the ship began to list toward its starboard side as water filled the decks below.
Officials said that six passengers were treated for mild hypothermia, a Chilean newspaper La Tercera reported.
On Sunday, many still toted the life vests they wore while shivering for hours in the bobbing rafts while awaiting rescue.
Some carried plastic bags with a few belongings, heading for medical checkups and visits with consular officials from a host of countries on hand to help them get home.
The Explorer had been on a 19-day tour of Antarctica and the Falkland Islands, taking passengers to observe penguins, whales and other wildlife.
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