Disasters at Sea (2018) s01e03 Episode Script
Four Minutes to Survive
1 MAN: We are losing her! NARRATOR: A massive ship flips over in a Norwegian channel.
MAN: There was a water inrush of about 2,000 tons within minutes.
MAN: What was the deck is now rapidly becoming the ceiling.
NARRATOR: The desperate search for survivors DIVER: I heard knocking.
MAN: Show me.
NARRATOR: Becomes a race against time MAN: Someone is alive.
Someone is trapped.
NARRATOR: And sparks one of the most challenging investigations in Norwegian history.
MAN: Abandon ship! WOMAN: Ah! MAN: Go! NARRATOR: Norway's west coast.
Every day, hundreds of ships navigate these fjords and channels.
They're a crucial gateway to some of the busiest waterways in the world.
They're also extremely treacherous.
HANS-JOACHIM MOÃLLER: It's not so easy to navigate in these kind of waters.
You have the fjords, and very often you have very, very narrow passages so that you must navigate very carefully.
NARRATOR: January 19, 2004.
The massive cargo ship rocknes is traveling through the winding channel from Eikefet, Norway, en route to the open ocean.
Captain Jan Juvik is in command of the ship and all 30 people on board.
JAN JUVIK: How's our progress, pilot? NARRATOR: His ship is loaded with state-of-the-art equipment.
But to safely navigate these waters, the Captain is relying on a local pilot, 41-year-old Vermund Halhjem.
VERMUND HALHJEM: Yeah, all good.
So far still on schedule, too.
NARRATOR: Captain Barry Lusk is an expert in marine navigation, and he knows just how crucial the pilot's role is.
BARRY LUSK: The pilot knows that area like the back of his hand, and most captains often turn the entire ship over to the pilot knowing full well that he knows a lot more about the journey that is going to be undertaken than the Captain does.
HALHJEM: Steady as she goes.
NARRATOR: Halhjem will be in charge of navigation till they clear the hazardous channels and reach the open sea.
It's something he's done almost a thousand times before.
But the rocknes is no ordinary ship.
544 feet long, this is the world's largest flexible fall pipe ship, also known as a rock dumper.
CHRIS HEARN: She carried the rock on board in her cargo holds, and then she was able to, through a conveyor system and a pipe system that would extend out below the hull, to funnel rock very specifically in a very small area.
And this is really good for securing subsea pipelines and laying protective rock in close to civil engineering projects.
NARRATOR: All that heavy equipment is great for moving gravel, but it makes this ship tricky to steer.
Captain Jan Magne Fosse has piloted the rocknes and knows just how demanding it could be.
JAN MAGNE FOSSE: The important challenges for piloting that ship was the quite poor visibility from the bridge.
If you tried to look what's ahead of the ship, you could actually not see anything else than the superstructure.
NARRATOR: The pilot needs to walk more than 80 feet from one side of the bridge to the other just to see what's ahead.
HALHJEM: Getting my exercise today.
JUVIK: For sure.
HEARN: Imagine you're driving down a road and there's an enormous block right down the center line of the hood of your vehicle.
NARRATOR: They're just minutes away from entering the channel that will take them to the open sea at a place called Vatlestraumen.
MOÃLLER: The channel is very narrow.
So they must keep the center line of this channel in order to be safe.
NARRATOR: That's easier said than done.
Currents here are unpredictable.
FOSSE: The current in Vatlestraumen is running in different directions.
So, it can be quite challenging just to keep the ship steady on a course.
NARRATOR: Eight stories below the bridge, the ship's crew monitors massive 7,300-kilowatt engines.
ENGINEER: Oil pressure looks good.
ELECTRICIAN: Okay! NARRATOR: They know the pilot could need more power at any moment.
Among them is Hubert Manginsay, the ship's electrician.
NARRATOR: Like Manginsay, most of the crew are from the Philippines.
LUSK: They're half a world away, and they spend six, eight, ten months away from their family, working aboard those ships.
NARRATOR: The enormous ship catches the attention of Gisle Mellum and his wife.
They watch from shore as it passes their home.
GISLE MELLUM: My wife and I had just eaten dinner, saw rocknes.
Wow, look at the size of that thing.
It's absolutely massive.
It's one of the biggest ships we saw pass by in Vatlestraumen.
So we went out and just were taking a nice shot of it.
NARRATOR: On the bridge of the rocknes, the pilot is making his final turn into the channel.
HALHJEM: Helm, give me five degrees port rudder.
NARRATOR: Something doesn't feel right.
HALHJEM: You feel that? It's listing.
HEARN: The pilot noted a slight shift or a list to starboard.
JUVIK: Let's see what we're dealing with.
MELLUM: Does it look like it's, it's leaning over to one side? HEARN: Something is wrong.
Something is definitely not right.
MANGINSAY: Did you feel that? ENGINEER: Yeah.
NARRATOR: The ship is rolling dangerously to starboard.
JUVIK: Sound the general alarm! NARRATOR: And it's not stopping.
MELLUM: I heard the SOS signal and starting to wondering, what the hell is happening? HEARN: The vessel is listing, she's listing quickly.
MELLUM: Oh, my god! The boat is starting to flip over.
So I take up my camera again.
NARRATOR: The farther they roll, the more likely it is they'll capsize completely.
HEARN: There's panic on the bridge.
HALHJEM: Hard aport! NARRATOR: The pilot hopes a sharp turn will level the ship.
But it doesn't work.
FOSSE: The Captain very quickly realized that this is a life-and-death situation.
JUVIK: This is the Captain.
Abandon ship! Abandon ship! NARRATOR: The engine room is at the very bottom of the ship.
JUVIK: We are losing her! Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! We are turning over in the channel! HEARN: Loose equipment is flying around.
They're literally trying to hold on to bits and pieces of equipment.
FOSSE: The pilot realized that it's just a few second, and we will be capsized.
So he just went directly for the door.
NARRATOR: The pilot manages to haul himself out through the bridge wing door, and below decks, the crew races for the exits.
HEARN: What was the deck is now rapidly becoming the ceiling.
NARRATOR: Somehow, the pilot pulls himself over the handrail onto the side of the ship.
FOSSE: He run on the side of the ship to get up to the bottom of the ship before the ship was totally capsized.
HEARN: He finds himself actually standing on what would have been underwater a minute ago The hull of the ship.
NARRATOR: The rocknes is now completely upside down.
There's no sign of the Captain or other officers.
The pilot is the only one who made it off the bridge.
HEARN: Within four minutes, 166 meters of ship with 30 people on board was now completely capsized and upside down.
NARRATOR: Rescuers search the frigid waters looking for survivors.
No one knows Manginsay and two colleagues are trapped inside the ship.
MANGINSAY: Help! NARRATOR: Their oxygen is running out.
Their only hope is that someone will find them before it's too late.
The 544-foot rocknes has capsized in a Norwegian shipping channel.
HEARN: It must have been an unbelievable sight.
An enormous ship upside down in the fjord in front of everybody.
In front of people's houses, they saw this actually go on.
NARRATOR: Within 30 minutes seven survivors are pulled from the icy waters.
Two more, including the pilot, Vermund Halhjem, are air-lifted from the hull.
But 21 of the crew are still missing.
LEIF LINDE: Okay, let's see what we got.
NARRATOR: Leif linde is in charge of the dive rescue team.
He has years of experience, but he's never seen anything like this.
LINDE: It was big, totally unexpected.
This was an event we never planned for.
HEARN: Now they've got to figure out, you know, is anybody trapped in underneath in the hull, can we see anybody? NARRATOR: Rescuers circle the ship listening for sounds, anything that might tell them there are survivors trapped in the ship.
HEARN: They may be hurt, they may be injured, the water is cold.
DIVER: I think we've got survivors.
We heard knocking.
LINDE: Show me.
NARRATOR: A faint sound provides a flicker of hope.
HEARN: Someone is alive.
Someone is trapped.
MANGINSAY: We're here! Help! Help! NARRATOR: Hubert Manginsay and two colleagues are trapped in an air pocket near the engine room.
What was once the bottom of the ship is now the top.
SOLOREN: Help, help, please! HEARN: They've managed to survive flying equipment, and one of them has a broken arm.
And the three of them are clinging on to a ladder.
NARRATOR: They Don't know how long their oxygen supply will last or if the water will continue to rise.
LINDE: Any idea where the sound was coming from? DIVER: I Don't know.
It echoed all over.
Couldn't hear a thing.
NARRATOR: Linde needs to figure out where the sound is coming from.
LINDE: The challenge was that knocking reverberates.
HEARN: We have 166 meters of steel.
It's like an echo chamber.
So, somebody banging, we're not sure where they're banging from.
LINDE: Okay, let's make a plan.
I think our best bet is here.
This section.
NARRATOR: Linde knows if there are survivors, they'll likely be near the work areas in the engine room.
But time is running out.
HEARN: They're breathing this stuff in.
So it's critical for the rescue team now to get these people out as soon as possible.
NARRATOR: Linde's men inch their way along the hull, listening for the source of the sounds.
But now there's a new problem.
MAN: [ON RADIO.]
Very unstable, repeat, very unstable.
HEARN: There's anywhere from three to four knots of current moving through the channel.
So the rocknes is actually moving, she's still moving bodily in the water, even though she's upside down.
NARRATOR: The drifting wreck could sink at any moment.
Linde has to make a tough decision.
LINDE: Understood.
Let's get our guys out of there asap.
MAN: [ON RADIO.]
Copy that.
Standing down.
NARRATOR: He puts the rescue on hold.
LINDE: The danger was that the ship was going to sink and take all the rescue workers with it.
We can't do anything until we secure the ship.
It's too dangerous.
NARRATOR: The only choice is to push the 25,000-ton ship ashore to get it out of the current.
It must be done carefully or they risk releasing the air pocket that's keeping the ship afloat and the survivors alive.
The delay is agonizing.
The survivors have no idea what's going on.
MANGINSAY: Get us out! SOLOREN: It stopped.
It stopped.
NARRATOR: After two long hours, the rocknes is secured to shore.
MANGINSAY: Help! We're here! NARRATOR: And linde's team is back in action.
MANGINSAY: Hear that? SOLOREN: I heard that.
MANGINSAY: We're here! MANGINSAY: Help! SOLOREN: Bang louder! MANGINSAY: Okay, okay.
Help! We're here! RESCUER: There! MANGINSAY: Help! We're here! Here, here, here! LINDE: We're coming.
LINDE: We're gonna have to do this nice and careful.
NARRATOR: A layer of steel is all that lies between the survivors and rescue.
But linde needs to proceed carefully.
HEARN: They need to be sure they're not cutting into a fuel tank or a place that could be dangerous.
Are they gonna blow up something? NARRATOR: He needs to cut just the right spot.
LINDE: If we opened the ship in the wrong place, the air from inside would escape, and the ship would sink.
We're gonna drill a hole, then let's take a look.
MAN: Okay.
NARRATOR: Trapped air is the only thing keeping the rocknes afloat and the three men alive.
Cutting a hole might cause the room to flood and drown the men before they can escape.
Pressurized air bursts through the punctured hull.
LINDE: Can anybody hear me? NARRATOR: The howling noise adds a new complication.
MANGINSAY: We're right below! Right below! NARRATOR: Rescuers can't hear what the survivors are saying.
They have to use notes to find out if the area is safe to cut.
LINDE: We're out of time.
We got to go now.
NARRATOR: Linde orders his men to start cutting.
No one is sure what will happen next.
HEARN: All that air, that trapped air, is now pressing up on the, on the deck.
Once they cut this hole, air is going to push out, water may start to increase in terms of flowing up through.
SOLOREN: Hurry! LINDE: Let's get 'em out.
MANGINSAY: Go up.
NARRATOR: All three men are pulled out seconds before the compartment floods with water.
They're the last crew-members of the rocknes found alive.
LINDE: That sight and the look on his face, I'll never forget it.
NARRATOR: After searching all night, 12 crewmen from the rocknes have been saved.
18 others, including the Captain, are dead.
HEARN: For the 18 casualties, there were many open questions on behalf of their family members.
How did this happen? NARRATOR: The pressure is on to find out what caused the deadly capsize of the rocknes.
The day after the tragic capsize of the rocknes, police divers complete a grim task.
They need to recover the remaining bodies of the crew before the ship is towed out of the channel.
18 people died here; Norwegian police want to know why.
Bergen's assistant chief of police, Svein Erik Krogvold, is in charge of the police investigation.
SVEIN ERIK KROGVOLD: The police are concerned about what is the cause of the disaster, is there any criminal issues here concerning the navigation, concerning the cargo handling of the ship or other issues.
NARRATOR: There are many witnesses to the disaster, including Gisle Mellum.
MELLUM: I've got the whole thing on my camera.
NARRATOR: A series of photographs captures the terrifying scene as the massive ship rolls 180 degrees.
Marine investigators from three different countries are assigned to find out what went wrong.
Right away they're struck by the shocking speed of the disaster.
INVESTIGATOR: It's so odd.
How does a ship this big capsize so fast? NARRATOR: Hans-Joachim MoÃller is a marine surveyor and a consultant on the case.
MOÃLLER: I learned that the ship capsized within four minutes.
And this is very seldom.
Normally a ship shouldn't capsize within, within four minutes.
NARRATOR: It's clear rocknes hit something that tore a hole in her side, but it's not clear how this hole could have triggered the disaster.
MOÃLLER: The bottom of the ship, the starboard side of the ship was ripped open for about 20 meters.
NARRATOR: Investigators calculate the 65-foot hole would have let in about 2,400 tons of water.
MOÃLLER: It's a lot of water, but, but for a ship like this, 166 meters long, it's not so much.
NARRATOR: The hole simply isn't big enough to explain the capsize.
There must be more to the story.
MOÃLLER: So at first my idea was that there was something wrong with the stability of the vessel.
NARRATOR: Investigators learn the rocknes was modified and then relaunched just eight months earlier.
MOÃLLER: The ship was a former bulk carrier and redesigned as a rock dumper.
LUSK: When the ship was converted, there was 3,000 tons of iron castings added to the deck of that ship, which is a huge amount of weight.
MOÃLLER: Because of additional structure on board the vessel, they altered the complete stability of the vessel.
NARRATOR: Is it possible her top-heavy design is why she capsized so quickly? The only way to find out is to recover the ship's computers from inside the wrecked ship.
MOÃLLER: I think it was critical to have this information from the computers because they can restart.
NARRATOR: The delicate electronics have been soaked in seawater.
No one knows if the data has survived.
While marine investigators wait for the salvage to begin, Bergen police try to find out if the ship's pilot, Vermund Halhjem, is responsible for the disaster.
KROGVOLD: I want to thank you gentlemen for coming in.
Our interrogation of him was very formal, and we gave him the formal status of, of suspect.
Okay, tell us everything you can remember.
Start when you got on board, right up until the capsize.
Because he was the only survivor from the, the bridge, he could provide some very vital information.
HALHJEM: I knew the area well.
I wasn't worried.
KROGVOLD: How was visibility from the bridge? HALHJEM: The visibility wasn't great, but I could handle it.
NARRATOR: The pilot tells the police the day started out like any other aboard the rocknes.
HALHJEM: Give me five degrees port rudder.
HELMSMAN: Five degrees port.
NARRATOR: But Halhjem says there was one hint of trouble.
Earlier in the voyage, he noticed the rocknes was listing slightly to one side.
HALHJEM: You feel that? JUVIK: Yeah, it could be the cargo.
FOSSE: The conclusion was that it must have been some of the cargo that have slide over to the starboard side and make this list permanent.
NARRATOR: On this trip, rocknes was loaded with more than 23,000 tons of gravel stowed in six cargo holds, each one taller than a four-story house.
If the cargo was loaded unevenly, it might have added too much weight to one side and caused the list.
JUVIK: It's a pretty small list.
We should be okay.
NARRATOR: According to Halhjem, the Captain wasn't worried, and they continued on their journey.
HALHJEM: Steady as she goes.
NARRATOR: For more than six hours, there was no further sign of trouble.
Then the rocknes started its last turn.
HEARN: And all of a sudden they hear scraping.
FOSSE: They could feel some vibrations in the ship.
HEARN: We've hit something.
MANGINSAY: Did you feel that? ENGINEER: Yeah.
JUVIK: I think we hit bottom.
HALHJEM: Yeah, I think we touched bottom.
FOSSE: You never want to hear that as a pilot.
LUSK: Running aground is one of the most serious things a ship can do.
JUVIK: Close watertight doors.
LUSK: The Captain at that time felt that they might be able to limit the damage to the ship by closing some watertight doors.
It never occurred to the Captain or anyone else on that bridge that a capsizing activity was going to take place.
JUVIK: Let's see what we're dealing with.
NARRATOR: They knew it was serious, but the rocknes is designed with watertight bulkheads.
It should buy them time to deal with the problem.
And according to Halhjem, both he and the Captain took immediate action to try and save the ship.
HEARN: However, she starts to develop a much more pronounced list to starboard.
NARRATOR: Halhjem tried to correct it by turning the ship as hard as possible the other way.
HALHJEM: Hard aport! NARRATOR: It didn't work.
The ship just kept rolling.
FOSSE: For those on board, it must have been a terrifying experience.
The pilot, he realized that there was nothing he could do to save the ship.
JUVIK: Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! FOSSE: So he just went directly for the door.
NARRATOR: That split-second decision saved his life.
Now police want to know if he's responsible for running the ship aground.
KROGVOLD: From your perspective, uh, you were on course? HALHJEM: I was on course.
NARRATOR: Halhjem is adamant he did nothing wrong.
HALHJEM: There was a shoal out there that's not on any chart.
NARRATOR: It's an alarming possibility.
KROGVOLD: We'll look into that.
I'm a policeman and I'm not a pilot, and I'm not a Captain, but I was stunned about this.
Thanks for coming, gentlemen.
So this ended up as the main issue for our investigation.
NARRATOR: Police are faced with trying to prove one of two equally disturbing theories.
Either the pilot is lying about being on course, or the chart for one of Norway's busiest waterways is wrong and many more lives are in danger.
Two months after the capsizing of the rocknes, the upside-down wreckage has been towed to port, and the heavy work of salvage begins.
Was the disaster caused by pilot error? Or was the top-heavy ship simply too unstable? Investigators believe the answers may be recorded on the ship's computers.
Some have been recovered by divers; Others are still inside the hull.
HEARN: The investigative team hopes that even though they've been thrown around, they've been submerged in saltwater, that the information on the hard drives, the critical information about the moments up to the capsizing, that all this information is secured and that they can use it.
NARRATOR: Computer engineer Oyvind Nyland was in charge of the data recovery.
OYVIND NYLAND: This is definitely a race against time.
Salt will start to kind of corrode the drive really hard, and then it gets really difficult to get the data out.
NARRATOR: Before they can board the ship, the rocknes needs to be turned upright in a process known as parbuckling.
NYLAND: It's really a massive operation to turn this big boat around, and it's really dangerous as well.
NARRATOR: Parbuckling has rarely been done on a ship this size.
It will take a fleet of heavy tug boats and a 900-ton floating crane.
And if a cable snaps or a winch jams, it could be a disaster.
HEARN: They Don't want the vessel to keep going and roll back over again.
They Don't want to hurt or kill anybody.
This is a very risky operation.
NARRATOR: It takes two days to roll the big ship over.
Then the next phase of the operation can begin: Recovering the ship's computers.
Each one has a different story to tell.
KROGVOLD: You have the navigation computers and you have your loading computers.
They are very interesting from our point of view as evidence.
NARRATOR: The navigation data should reveal exactly where the ship went off course and whether the pilot is to blame.
And the loading data will have crucial information about the stability of the ship.
It takes repeated trips to the ruined bridge to find all the computers.
Turid Stemre is one of the investigators who went on board.
TURID STEMRE: I felt a bit like I was trespassing.
I knew what had happened in there, and I shouldn't have been there.
NARRATOR: Buried beneath the rubble, the team finds what they're looking for.
NYLAND: We finally found the right computers.
STEMRE: Do you need some more light? NYLAND: It was almost unbelievable how much was left.
NARRATOR: They know this is their best chance to find out what happened in the moments leading up to the disaster, and who, if anyone, is responsible.
The computers are in rough shape.
They're rushed to Nyland's lab, where the delicate job of data recovery can finally begin.
NYLAND: You are trying whatever you can with all your tools and all your knowledge in order to bring this drive back to life.
If we make something wrong, the hard drive may die.
NARRATOR: Nyland's team carefully cleans and dries out the electronics.
Then they start the painstaking process of determining how much data has survived.
NYLAND: If you imagine putting a puzzle together, the number of pieces on the hard drive, it's millions, millions and millions.
NARRATOR: Reconstructing the data takes weeks.
They won't know if they've been successful until the final downloads are complete.
And it works.
NYLAND: That was quite a moment for the team.
Great work.
We then knew that we could provide the data to figure this out.
NARRATOR: With the newly recovered data in hand, the team wastes no time piecing together the evidence.
Pilots rely on special maps or charts that include information about the depth of the water.
It allows them to stay in the safe zone down the center, and avoid any rocky shallows lurking below the surface.
Investigators study every detail of the ship's progress before it ran aground.
Did the pilot steer rocknes dangerously off course? Or will the data confirm his story that whatever he hit, it wasn't marked on his chart.
INVESTIGATOR: Look at all these course changes.
NARRATOR: They immediately notice something unusual.
For some reason, the pilot made many tiny course corrections, instead of a few larger turns.
HALHJEM: Coming up on the shallows.
Let's go five degrees port rudder, please.
NARRATOR: On his final turn into Vatlestraumen passage, his strategy seems to backfire.
INVESTIGATOR: There.
Looks like he started his turn too late.
MOÃLLER: So, if he started too late, the ship comes too much to the south.
That means he came into the red sector.
This is, this is for sure.
NARRATOR: The late turn took the rocknes at least 75 feet outside the safe zone.
What it doesn't explain is why.
Was the pilot being reckless, or was something else going on in the final moments before the disaster? The navigation data has been recovered from the rocknes.
It reveals the ship veered into dangerously shallow water just moments before the disaster.
Investigators want to know why.
STEMRE: You ready? NARRATOR: Turid stemre suspects badly loaded cargo might have played a role.
If it made the ship unstable, it could explain why the pilot was struggling with the turns.
STEMRE: In order to be able to assess the stability of rocknes at the time of the accident, we needed to know exactly how she was loaded.
If the ship was unstable, then there should have been a warning sign for the crew.
We knew that they had procedures whereby they should calculate the stability before they left port.
Stop right there.
NARRATOR: The data shows the crew did receive a stability warning after loading the cargo in port.
STEMRE: The rocknes stability calculator showed us the damage stability.
It said critical.
NARRATOR: The list was serious, about 14 degrees.
MOÃLLER: That means that the ship is, is not, is not correct with the stability.
Then you shouldn't sail with the ship like this.
NARRATOR: Investigators suspect the problem was triggered by a quirk of the conveyor belts used to load the ship, which tended to dump cargo in a lopsided fashion.
HEARN: The problem with the load port was that the conveyor belt arm and the system for delivery wasn't long enough.
So most of the cargo ended up to one side.
NARRATOR: The uneven cargo weighed down one side of the ship, triggering an instability warning for the crew.
It wouldn't have been a problem if they fixed it.
OFFICER: Good to go? LUSK: The first officer aboard the ship should have sent his men out with rakes and shovels and moved this sloping gravel so that it was equally spaced across the entire hold.
That never happened.
NARRATOR: It's a shocking discovery.
Instead of leveling the cargo by hand, investigators believe the crew corrected the list by adding tons of water to the starboard ballast tanks until the ship leveled out.
It was at best a sloppy fix.
HEARN: The danger with this is that when the vessel started to maneuver to the seaway, then the cargo is liable to shift or move to one side towards the other.
NARRATOR: At some point before the rocknes enters Vatlestraumen channel, the unstable cargo does shift, and the ship begins listing to starboard.
HALHJEM: It's listing.
NARRATOR: It makes the naturally top-heavy ship even harder to control.
FOSSE: If you are sailing on a ship that is listing and you are making turns, she will start to turn faster.
You could actually lose control over the, the ship.
NARRATOR: Turning too sharply could cause more cargo to shift and make the list even worse.
The pilot decides it's safer to make a wider turn.
HALHJEM: Five degrees more port rudder.
NARRATOR: He steers the rocknes a mere 75 feet past the boundary of the shipping Lane, likely believing the waters are safe.
KROGVOLD: We'll need all other traffic to stay well back.
NARRATOR: Police divers have scoured the bottom of the channel searching for the scene of the crime, the exact spot the rocknes ran aground.
KROGVOLD: If you have a murder, you could lock down the, the apartment and secure it that way.
Here we have the crime scene two soccer fields long.
You can't put a police cordon around it.
And so that is a very challenging aspect from the police side of view.
NARRATOR: In less than a week they find what they're looking for.
KROGVOLD: Bingo.
The divers found a rock about 20 kilos, and you had the red paint on it.
It's similar to the red paint on the bottom of the rocknes.
NARRATOR: The rock was found just a short distance from where the rocknes went off course.
It could be the final piece of the puzzle to explain why 18 men died.
KROGVOLD: Let's get this to the lab.
NARRATOR: Lab tests quickly confirm the paint on the rock matches the hull of the ship.
KROGVOLD: So it was evident, here is the point where the ship has struck ground.
NARRATOR: The impact point is 75 feet outside the safe zone.
But according to the pilot, his charts didn't warn him to avoid the rocky shallows.
HALHJEM: There was a shoal out there that's not on any chart.
NARRATOR: Investigators review the charts and make a troubling discovery.
The shoal was added when the map was updated nine years before.
But the change was small and hard to see, and local pilots were never notified.
LUSK: The Norwegian hydrographic office did not produce a notice to mariners that a new shoal has been found and that you are to make a hand correction to your chart to show this danger.
HEARN: It should have been broadcast or made aware to all the pilots who were involved in operation of that area.
It's something that was an oversight.
18 men lost their lives as a result.
NARRATOR: After months of investigation by police and marine investigators, it's clear the wreck of the rocknes was the result of a chain of errors.
FOSSE: I would say more or less, everything that could go wrong did go wrong.
NARRATOR: It begins when the cargo isn't leveled properly.
OFFICER: Good to go? NARRATOR: It shifts while they are at sea.
HALHJEM: You feel that? JUVIK: Could be the cargo.
NARRATOR: The ship begins listing and the pilot can't turn as sharply as he needs to.
HALHJEM: Give me five degrees port rudder.
NARRATOR: Not realizing the danger, he starts his turn late, and strays into the nearby shallows.
Seconds later, the starboard hull is torn open by the rocks.
MOÃLLER: There was a water inrush of about 2,000 tons within minutes.
HALHJEM: Hard to port! NARRATOR: Once the water rushes in, there's no way to stop the capsize of the massive ship.
STEMRE: The moment the rocknes hit the rocks, she was doomed.
NARRATOR: The unusual speed of the disaster also makes it difficult to escape.
18 crew-members are killed.
HEARN: Most shipping accidents that occur are the result of many small things.
In a chain reaction they come together.
NARRATOR: In their final reports, maritime authorities recommend stronger regulations to ensure ships are correctly loaded at port.
Vermund Halhjem is never charged and continues working as a pilot.
KROGVOLD: But, uh, of course, he have to carry it with him for the rest of his life.
NARRATOR: In the wake of the accident, Vatlestraumen passage is dredged to make it safer for larger vessels.
But it is the story of survival that many remember best.
HEARN: The will to survive by these three Filipinos hanging on in the dark, banging and banging and banging till they get a response, and the efforts of the rescue team LINDE: Take my hand.
HEARN: To keep at it till they got these guys out, it's a remarkable story of survival, but also a remarkable story of dedication on the part of the rescue team.
MANGINSAY: When I think about rocknes, my tears fall for the 18 men who are my colleagues, who, who lost their lives.
I Miss them and I pray for their souls.
MAN: There was a water inrush of about 2,000 tons within minutes.
MAN: What was the deck is now rapidly becoming the ceiling.
NARRATOR: The desperate search for survivors DIVER: I heard knocking.
MAN: Show me.
NARRATOR: Becomes a race against time MAN: Someone is alive.
Someone is trapped.
NARRATOR: And sparks one of the most challenging investigations in Norwegian history.
MAN: Abandon ship! WOMAN: Ah! MAN: Go! NARRATOR: Norway's west coast.
Every day, hundreds of ships navigate these fjords and channels.
They're a crucial gateway to some of the busiest waterways in the world.
They're also extremely treacherous.
HANS-JOACHIM MOÃLLER: It's not so easy to navigate in these kind of waters.
You have the fjords, and very often you have very, very narrow passages so that you must navigate very carefully.
NARRATOR: January 19, 2004.
The massive cargo ship rocknes is traveling through the winding channel from Eikefet, Norway, en route to the open ocean.
Captain Jan Juvik is in command of the ship and all 30 people on board.
JAN JUVIK: How's our progress, pilot? NARRATOR: His ship is loaded with state-of-the-art equipment.
But to safely navigate these waters, the Captain is relying on a local pilot, 41-year-old Vermund Halhjem.
VERMUND HALHJEM: Yeah, all good.
So far still on schedule, too.
NARRATOR: Captain Barry Lusk is an expert in marine navigation, and he knows just how crucial the pilot's role is.
BARRY LUSK: The pilot knows that area like the back of his hand, and most captains often turn the entire ship over to the pilot knowing full well that he knows a lot more about the journey that is going to be undertaken than the Captain does.
HALHJEM: Steady as she goes.
NARRATOR: Halhjem will be in charge of navigation till they clear the hazardous channels and reach the open sea.
It's something he's done almost a thousand times before.
But the rocknes is no ordinary ship.
544 feet long, this is the world's largest flexible fall pipe ship, also known as a rock dumper.
CHRIS HEARN: She carried the rock on board in her cargo holds, and then she was able to, through a conveyor system and a pipe system that would extend out below the hull, to funnel rock very specifically in a very small area.
And this is really good for securing subsea pipelines and laying protective rock in close to civil engineering projects.
NARRATOR: All that heavy equipment is great for moving gravel, but it makes this ship tricky to steer.
Captain Jan Magne Fosse has piloted the rocknes and knows just how demanding it could be.
JAN MAGNE FOSSE: The important challenges for piloting that ship was the quite poor visibility from the bridge.
If you tried to look what's ahead of the ship, you could actually not see anything else than the superstructure.
NARRATOR: The pilot needs to walk more than 80 feet from one side of the bridge to the other just to see what's ahead.
HALHJEM: Getting my exercise today.
JUVIK: For sure.
HEARN: Imagine you're driving down a road and there's an enormous block right down the center line of the hood of your vehicle.
NARRATOR: They're just minutes away from entering the channel that will take them to the open sea at a place called Vatlestraumen.
MOÃLLER: The channel is very narrow.
So they must keep the center line of this channel in order to be safe.
NARRATOR: That's easier said than done.
Currents here are unpredictable.
FOSSE: The current in Vatlestraumen is running in different directions.
So, it can be quite challenging just to keep the ship steady on a course.
NARRATOR: Eight stories below the bridge, the ship's crew monitors massive 7,300-kilowatt engines.
ENGINEER: Oil pressure looks good.
ELECTRICIAN: Okay! NARRATOR: They know the pilot could need more power at any moment.
Among them is Hubert Manginsay, the ship's electrician.
NARRATOR: Like Manginsay, most of the crew are from the Philippines.
LUSK: They're half a world away, and they spend six, eight, ten months away from their family, working aboard those ships.
NARRATOR: The enormous ship catches the attention of Gisle Mellum and his wife.
They watch from shore as it passes their home.
GISLE MELLUM: My wife and I had just eaten dinner, saw rocknes.
Wow, look at the size of that thing.
It's absolutely massive.
It's one of the biggest ships we saw pass by in Vatlestraumen.
So we went out and just were taking a nice shot of it.
NARRATOR: On the bridge of the rocknes, the pilot is making his final turn into the channel.
HALHJEM: Helm, give me five degrees port rudder.
NARRATOR: Something doesn't feel right.
HALHJEM: You feel that? It's listing.
HEARN: The pilot noted a slight shift or a list to starboard.
JUVIK: Let's see what we're dealing with.
MELLUM: Does it look like it's, it's leaning over to one side? HEARN: Something is wrong.
Something is definitely not right.
MANGINSAY: Did you feel that? ENGINEER: Yeah.
NARRATOR: The ship is rolling dangerously to starboard.
JUVIK: Sound the general alarm! NARRATOR: And it's not stopping.
MELLUM: I heard the SOS signal and starting to wondering, what the hell is happening? HEARN: The vessel is listing, she's listing quickly.
MELLUM: Oh, my god! The boat is starting to flip over.
So I take up my camera again.
NARRATOR: The farther they roll, the more likely it is they'll capsize completely.
HEARN: There's panic on the bridge.
HALHJEM: Hard aport! NARRATOR: The pilot hopes a sharp turn will level the ship.
But it doesn't work.
FOSSE: The Captain very quickly realized that this is a life-and-death situation.
JUVIK: This is the Captain.
Abandon ship! Abandon ship! NARRATOR: The engine room is at the very bottom of the ship.
JUVIK: We are losing her! Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! We are turning over in the channel! HEARN: Loose equipment is flying around.
They're literally trying to hold on to bits and pieces of equipment.
FOSSE: The pilot realized that it's just a few second, and we will be capsized.
So he just went directly for the door.
NARRATOR: The pilot manages to haul himself out through the bridge wing door, and below decks, the crew races for the exits.
HEARN: What was the deck is now rapidly becoming the ceiling.
NARRATOR: Somehow, the pilot pulls himself over the handrail onto the side of the ship.
FOSSE: He run on the side of the ship to get up to the bottom of the ship before the ship was totally capsized.
HEARN: He finds himself actually standing on what would have been underwater a minute ago The hull of the ship.
NARRATOR: The rocknes is now completely upside down.
There's no sign of the Captain or other officers.
The pilot is the only one who made it off the bridge.
HEARN: Within four minutes, 166 meters of ship with 30 people on board was now completely capsized and upside down.
NARRATOR: Rescuers search the frigid waters looking for survivors.
No one knows Manginsay and two colleagues are trapped inside the ship.
MANGINSAY: Help! NARRATOR: Their oxygen is running out.
Their only hope is that someone will find them before it's too late.
The 544-foot rocknes has capsized in a Norwegian shipping channel.
HEARN: It must have been an unbelievable sight.
An enormous ship upside down in the fjord in front of everybody.
In front of people's houses, they saw this actually go on.
NARRATOR: Within 30 minutes seven survivors are pulled from the icy waters.
Two more, including the pilot, Vermund Halhjem, are air-lifted from the hull.
But 21 of the crew are still missing.
LEIF LINDE: Okay, let's see what we got.
NARRATOR: Leif linde is in charge of the dive rescue team.
He has years of experience, but he's never seen anything like this.
LINDE: It was big, totally unexpected.
This was an event we never planned for.
HEARN: Now they've got to figure out, you know, is anybody trapped in underneath in the hull, can we see anybody? NARRATOR: Rescuers circle the ship listening for sounds, anything that might tell them there are survivors trapped in the ship.
HEARN: They may be hurt, they may be injured, the water is cold.
DIVER: I think we've got survivors.
We heard knocking.
LINDE: Show me.
NARRATOR: A faint sound provides a flicker of hope.
HEARN: Someone is alive.
Someone is trapped.
MANGINSAY: We're here! Help! Help! NARRATOR: Hubert Manginsay and two colleagues are trapped in an air pocket near the engine room.
What was once the bottom of the ship is now the top.
SOLOREN: Help, help, please! HEARN: They've managed to survive flying equipment, and one of them has a broken arm.
And the three of them are clinging on to a ladder.
NARRATOR: They Don't know how long their oxygen supply will last or if the water will continue to rise.
LINDE: Any idea where the sound was coming from? DIVER: I Don't know.
It echoed all over.
Couldn't hear a thing.
NARRATOR: Linde needs to figure out where the sound is coming from.
LINDE: The challenge was that knocking reverberates.
HEARN: We have 166 meters of steel.
It's like an echo chamber.
So, somebody banging, we're not sure where they're banging from.
LINDE: Okay, let's make a plan.
I think our best bet is here.
This section.
NARRATOR: Linde knows if there are survivors, they'll likely be near the work areas in the engine room.
But time is running out.
HEARN: They're breathing this stuff in.
So it's critical for the rescue team now to get these people out as soon as possible.
NARRATOR: Linde's men inch their way along the hull, listening for the source of the sounds.
But now there's a new problem.
MAN: [ON RADIO.]
Very unstable, repeat, very unstable.
HEARN: There's anywhere from three to four knots of current moving through the channel.
So the rocknes is actually moving, she's still moving bodily in the water, even though she's upside down.
NARRATOR: The drifting wreck could sink at any moment.
Linde has to make a tough decision.
LINDE: Understood.
Let's get our guys out of there asap.
MAN: [ON RADIO.]
Copy that.
Standing down.
NARRATOR: He puts the rescue on hold.
LINDE: The danger was that the ship was going to sink and take all the rescue workers with it.
We can't do anything until we secure the ship.
It's too dangerous.
NARRATOR: The only choice is to push the 25,000-ton ship ashore to get it out of the current.
It must be done carefully or they risk releasing the air pocket that's keeping the ship afloat and the survivors alive.
The delay is agonizing.
The survivors have no idea what's going on.
MANGINSAY: Get us out! SOLOREN: It stopped.
It stopped.
NARRATOR: After two long hours, the rocknes is secured to shore.
MANGINSAY: Help! We're here! NARRATOR: And linde's team is back in action.
MANGINSAY: Hear that? SOLOREN: I heard that.
MANGINSAY: We're here! MANGINSAY: Help! SOLOREN: Bang louder! MANGINSAY: Okay, okay.
Help! We're here! RESCUER: There! MANGINSAY: Help! We're here! Here, here, here! LINDE: We're coming.
LINDE: We're gonna have to do this nice and careful.
NARRATOR: A layer of steel is all that lies between the survivors and rescue.
But linde needs to proceed carefully.
HEARN: They need to be sure they're not cutting into a fuel tank or a place that could be dangerous.
Are they gonna blow up something? NARRATOR: He needs to cut just the right spot.
LINDE: If we opened the ship in the wrong place, the air from inside would escape, and the ship would sink.
We're gonna drill a hole, then let's take a look.
MAN: Okay.
NARRATOR: Trapped air is the only thing keeping the rocknes afloat and the three men alive.
Cutting a hole might cause the room to flood and drown the men before they can escape.
Pressurized air bursts through the punctured hull.
LINDE: Can anybody hear me? NARRATOR: The howling noise adds a new complication.
MANGINSAY: We're right below! Right below! NARRATOR: Rescuers can't hear what the survivors are saying.
They have to use notes to find out if the area is safe to cut.
LINDE: We're out of time.
We got to go now.
NARRATOR: Linde orders his men to start cutting.
No one is sure what will happen next.
HEARN: All that air, that trapped air, is now pressing up on the, on the deck.
Once they cut this hole, air is going to push out, water may start to increase in terms of flowing up through.
SOLOREN: Hurry! LINDE: Let's get 'em out.
MANGINSAY: Go up.
NARRATOR: All three men are pulled out seconds before the compartment floods with water.
They're the last crew-members of the rocknes found alive.
LINDE: That sight and the look on his face, I'll never forget it.
NARRATOR: After searching all night, 12 crewmen from the rocknes have been saved.
18 others, including the Captain, are dead.
HEARN: For the 18 casualties, there were many open questions on behalf of their family members.
How did this happen? NARRATOR: The pressure is on to find out what caused the deadly capsize of the rocknes.
The day after the tragic capsize of the rocknes, police divers complete a grim task.
They need to recover the remaining bodies of the crew before the ship is towed out of the channel.
18 people died here; Norwegian police want to know why.
Bergen's assistant chief of police, Svein Erik Krogvold, is in charge of the police investigation.
SVEIN ERIK KROGVOLD: The police are concerned about what is the cause of the disaster, is there any criminal issues here concerning the navigation, concerning the cargo handling of the ship or other issues.
NARRATOR: There are many witnesses to the disaster, including Gisle Mellum.
MELLUM: I've got the whole thing on my camera.
NARRATOR: A series of photographs captures the terrifying scene as the massive ship rolls 180 degrees.
Marine investigators from three different countries are assigned to find out what went wrong.
Right away they're struck by the shocking speed of the disaster.
INVESTIGATOR: It's so odd.
How does a ship this big capsize so fast? NARRATOR: Hans-Joachim MoÃller is a marine surveyor and a consultant on the case.
MOÃLLER: I learned that the ship capsized within four minutes.
And this is very seldom.
Normally a ship shouldn't capsize within, within four minutes.
NARRATOR: It's clear rocknes hit something that tore a hole in her side, but it's not clear how this hole could have triggered the disaster.
MOÃLLER: The bottom of the ship, the starboard side of the ship was ripped open for about 20 meters.
NARRATOR: Investigators calculate the 65-foot hole would have let in about 2,400 tons of water.
MOÃLLER: It's a lot of water, but, but for a ship like this, 166 meters long, it's not so much.
NARRATOR: The hole simply isn't big enough to explain the capsize.
There must be more to the story.
MOÃLLER: So at first my idea was that there was something wrong with the stability of the vessel.
NARRATOR: Investigators learn the rocknes was modified and then relaunched just eight months earlier.
MOÃLLER: The ship was a former bulk carrier and redesigned as a rock dumper.
LUSK: When the ship was converted, there was 3,000 tons of iron castings added to the deck of that ship, which is a huge amount of weight.
MOÃLLER: Because of additional structure on board the vessel, they altered the complete stability of the vessel.
NARRATOR: Is it possible her top-heavy design is why she capsized so quickly? The only way to find out is to recover the ship's computers from inside the wrecked ship.
MOÃLLER: I think it was critical to have this information from the computers because they can restart.
NARRATOR: The delicate electronics have been soaked in seawater.
No one knows if the data has survived.
While marine investigators wait for the salvage to begin, Bergen police try to find out if the ship's pilot, Vermund Halhjem, is responsible for the disaster.
KROGVOLD: I want to thank you gentlemen for coming in.
Our interrogation of him was very formal, and we gave him the formal status of, of suspect.
Okay, tell us everything you can remember.
Start when you got on board, right up until the capsize.
Because he was the only survivor from the, the bridge, he could provide some very vital information.
HALHJEM: I knew the area well.
I wasn't worried.
KROGVOLD: How was visibility from the bridge? HALHJEM: The visibility wasn't great, but I could handle it.
NARRATOR: The pilot tells the police the day started out like any other aboard the rocknes.
HALHJEM: Give me five degrees port rudder.
HELMSMAN: Five degrees port.
NARRATOR: But Halhjem says there was one hint of trouble.
Earlier in the voyage, he noticed the rocknes was listing slightly to one side.
HALHJEM: You feel that? JUVIK: Yeah, it could be the cargo.
FOSSE: The conclusion was that it must have been some of the cargo that have slide over to the starboard side and make this list permanent.
NARRATOR: On this trip, rocknes was loaded with more than 23,000 tons of gravel stowed in six cargo holds, each one taller than a four-story house.
If the cargo was loaded unevenly, it might have added too much weight to one side and caused the list.
JUVIK: It's a pretty small list.
We should be okay.
NARRATOR: According to Halhjem, the Captain wasn't worried, and they continued on their journey.
HALHJEM: Steady as she goes.
NARRATOR: For more than six hours, there was no further sign of trouble.
Then the rocknes started its last turn.
HEARN: And all of a sudden they hear scraping.
FOSSE: They could feel some vibrations in the ship.
HEARN: We've hit something.
MANGINSAY: Did you feel that? ENGINEER: Yeah.
JUVIK: I think we hit bottom.
HALHJEM: Yeah, I think we touched bottom.
FOSSE: You never want to hear that as a pilot.
LUSK: Running aground is one of the most serious things a ship can do.
JUVIK: Close watertight doors.
LUSK: The Captain at that time felt that they might be able to limit the damage to the ship by closing some watertight doors.
It never occurred to the Captain or anyone else on that bridge that a capsizing activity was going to take place.
JUVIK: Let's see what we're dealing with.
NARRATOR: They knew it was serious, but the rocknes is designed with watertight bulkheads.
It should buy them time to deal with the problem.
And according to Halhjem, both he and the Captain took immediate action to try and save the ship.
HEARN: However, she starts to develop a much more pronounced list to starboard.
NARRATOR: Halhjem tried to correct it by turning the ship as hard as possible the other way.
HALHJEM: Hard aport! NARRATOR: It didn't work.
The ship just kept rolling.
FOSSE: For those on board, it must have been a terrifying experience.
The pilot, he realized that there was nothing he could do to save the ship.
JUVIK: Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! FOSSE: So he just went directly for the door.
NARRATOR: That split-second decision saved his life.
Now police want to know if he's responsible for running the ship aground.
KROGVOLD: From your perspective, uh, you were on course? HALHJEM: I was on course.
NARRATOR: Halhjem is adamant he did nothing wrong.
HALHJEM: There was a shoal out there that's not on any chart.
NARRATOR: It's an alarming possibility.
KROGVOLD: We'll look into that.
I'm a policeman and I'm not a pilot, and I'm not a Captain, but I was stunned about this.
Thanks for coming, gentlemen.
So this ended up as the main issue for our investigation.
NARRATOR: Police are faced with trying to prove one of two equally disturbing theories.
Either the pilot is lying about being on course, or the chart for one of Norway's busiest waterways is wrong and many more lives are in danger.
Two months after the capsizing of the rocknes, the upside-down wreckage has been towed to port, and the heavy work of salvage begins.
Was the disaster caused by pilot error? Or was the top-heavy ship simply too unstable? Investigators believe the answers may be recorded on the ship's computers.
Some have been recovered by divers; Others are still inside the hull.
HEARN: The investigative team hopes that even though they've been thrown around, they've been submerged in saltwater, that the information on the hard drives, the critical information about the moments up to the capsizing, that all this information is secured and that they can use it.
NARRATOR: Computer engineer Oyvind Nyland was in charge of the data recovery.
OYVIND NYLAND: This is definitely a race against time.
Salt will start to kind of corrode the drive really hard, and then it gets really difficult to get the data out.
NARRATOR: Before they can board the ship, the rocknes needs to be turned upright in a process known as parbuckling.
NYLAND: It's really a massive operation to turn this big boat around, and it's really dangerous as well.
NARRATOR: Parbuckling has rarely been done on a ship this size.
It will take a fleet of heavy tug boats and a 900-ton floating crane.
And if a cable snaps or a winch jams, it could be a disaster.
HEARN: They Don't want the vessel to keep going and roll back over again.
They Don't want to hurt or kill anybody.
This is a very risky operation.
NARRATOR: It takes two days to roll the big ship over.
Then the next phase of the operation can begin: Recovering the ship's computers.
Each one has a different story to tell.
KROGVOLD: You have the navigation computers and you have your loading computers.
They are very interesting from our point of view as evidence.
NARRATOR: The navigation data should reveal exactly where the ship went off course and whether the pilot is to blame.
And the loading data will have crucial information about the stability of the ship.
It takes repeated trips to the ruined bridge to find all the computers.
Turid Stemre is one of the investigators who went on board.
TURID STEMRE: I felt a bit like I was trespassing.
I knew what had happened in there, and I shouldn't have been there.
NARRATOR: Buried beneath the rubble, the team finds what they're looking for.
NYLAND: We finally found the right computers.
STEMRE: Do you need some more light? NYLAND: It was almost unbelievable how much was left.
NARRATOR: They know this is their best chance to find out what happened in the moments leading up to the disaster, and who, if anyone, is responsible.
The computers are in rough shape.
They're rushed to Nyland's lab, where the delicate job of data recovery can finally begin.
NYLAND: You are trying whatever you can with all your tools and all your knowledge in order to bring this drive back to life.
If we make something wrong, the hard drive may die.
NARRATOR: Nyland's team carefully cleans and dries out the electronics.
Then they start the painstaking process of determining how much data has survived.
NYLAND: If you imagine putting a puzzle together, the number of pieces on the hard drive, it's millions, millions and millions.
NARRATOR: Reconstructing the data takes weeks.
They won't know if they've been successful until the final downloads are complete.
And it works.
NYLAND: That was quite a moment for the team.
Great work.
We then knew that we could provide the data to figure this out.
NARRATOR: With the newly recovered data in hand, the team wastes no time piecing together the evidence.
Pilots rely on special maps or charts that include information about the depth of the water.
It allows them to stay in the safe zone down the center, and avoid any rocky shallows lurking below the surface.
Investigators study every detail of the ship's progress before it ran aground.
Did the pilot steer rocknes dangerously off course? Or will the data confirm his story that whatever he hit, it wasn't marked on his chart.
INVESTIGATOR: Look at all these course changes.
NARRATOR: They immediately notice something unusual.
For some reason, the pilot made many tiny course corrections, instead of a few larger turns.
HALHJEM: Coming up on the shallows.
Let's go five degrees port rudder, please.
NARRATOR: On his final turn into Vatlestraumen passage, his strategy seems to backfire.
INVESTIGATOR: There.
Looks like he started his turn too late.
MOÃLLER: So, if he started too late, the ship comes too much to the south.
That means he came into the red sector.
This is, this is for sure.
NARRATOR: The late turn took the rocknes at least 75 feet outside the safe zone.
What it doesn't explain is why.
Was the pilot being reckless, or was something else going on in the final moments before the disaster? The navigation data has been recovered from the rocknes.
It reveals the ship veered into dangerously shallow water just moments before the disaster.
Investigators want to know why.
STEMRE: You ready? NARRATOR: Turid stemre suspects badly loaded cargo might have played a role.
If it made the ship unstable, it could explain why the pilot was struggling with the turns.
STEMRE: In order to be able to assess the stability of rocknes at the time of the accident, we needed to know exactly how she was loaded.
If the ship was unstable, then there should have been a warning sign for the crew.
We knew that they had procedures whereby they should calculate the stability before they left port.
Stop right there.
NARRATOR: The data shows the crew did receive a stability warning after loading the cargo in port.
STEMRE: The rocknes stability calculator showed us the damage stability.
It said critical.
NARRATOR: The list was serious, about 14 degrees.
MOÃLLER: That means that the ship is, is not, is not correct with the stability.
Then you shouldn't sail with the ship like this.
NARRATOR: Investigators suspect the problem was triggered by a quirk of the conveyor belts used to load the ship, which tended to dump cargo in a lopsided fashion.
HEARN: The problem with the load port was that the conveyor belt arm and the system for delivery wasn't long enough.
So most of the cargo ended up to one side.
NARRATOR: The uneven cargo weighed down one side of the ship, triggering an instability warning for the crew.
It wouldn't have been a problem if they fixed it.
OFFICER: Good to go? LUSK: The first officer aboard the ship should have sent his men out with rakes and shovels and moved this sloping gravel so that it was equally spaced across the entire hold.
That never happened.
NARRATOR: It's a shocking discovery.
Instead of leveling the cargo by hand, investigators believe the crew corrected the list by adding tons of water to the starboard ballast tanks until the ship leveled out.
It was at best a sloppy fix.
HEARN: The danger with this is that when the vessel started to maneuver to the seaway, then the cargo is liable to shift or move to one side towards the other.
NARRATOR: At some point before the rocknes enters Vatlestraumen channel, the unstable cargo does shift, and the ship begins listing to starboard.
HALHJEM: It's listing.
NARRATOR: It makes the naturally top-heavy ship even harder to control.
FOSSE: If you are sailing on a ship that is listing and you are making turns, she will start to turn faster.
You could actually lose control over the, the ship.
NARRATOR: Turning too sharply could cause more cargo to shift and make the list even worse.
The pilot decides it's safer to make a wider turn.
HALHJEM: Five degrees more port rudder.
NARRATOR: He steers the rocknes a mere 75 feet past the boundary of the shipping Lane, likely believing the waters are safe.
KROGVOLD: We'll need all other traffic to stay well back.
NARRATOR: Police divers have scoured the bottom of the channel searching for the scene of the crime, the exact spot the rocknes ran aground.
KROGVOLD: If you have a murder, you could lock down the, the apartment and secure it that way.
Here we have the crime scene two soccer fields long.
You can't put a police cordon around it.
And so that is a very challenging aspect from the police side of view.
NARRATOR: In less than a week they find what they're looking for.
KROGVOLD: Bingo.
The divers found a rock about 20 kilos, and you had the red paint on it.
It's similar to the red paint on the bottom of the rocknes.
NARRATOR: The rock was found just a short distance from where the rocknes went off course.
It could be the final piece of the puzzle to explain why 18 men died.
KROGVOLD: Let's get this to the lab.
NARRATOR: Lab tests quickly confirm the paint on the rock matches the hull of the ship.
KROGVOLD: So it was evident, here is the point where the ship has struck ground.
NARRATOR: The impact point is 75 feet outside the safe zone.
But according to the pilot, his charts didn't warn him to avoid the rocky shallows.
HALHJEM: There was a shoal out there that's not on any chart.
NARRATOR: Investigators review the charts and make a troubling discovery.
The shoal was added when the map was updated nine years before.
But the change was small and hard to see, and local pilots were never notified.
LUSK: The Norwegian hydrographic office did not produce a notice to mariners that a new shoal has been found and that you are to make a hand correction to your chart to show this danger.
HEARN: It should have been broadcast or made aware to all the pilots who were involved in operation of that area.
It's something that was an oversight.
18 men lost their lives as a result.
NARRATOR: After months of investigation by police and marine investigators, it's clear the wreck of the rocknes was the result of a chain of errors.
FOSSE: I would say more or less, everything that could go wrong did go wrong.
NARRATOR: It begins when the cargo isn't leveled properly.
OFFICER: Good to go? NARRATOR: It shifts while they are at sea.
HALHJEM: You feel that? JUVIK: Could be the cargo.
NARRATOR: The ship begins listing and the pilot can't turn as sharply as he needs to.
HALHJEM: Give me five degrees port rudder.
NARRATOR: Not realizing the danger, he starts his turn late, and strays into the nearby shallows.
Seconds later, the starboard hull is torn open by the rocks.
MOÃLLER: There was a water inrush of about 2,000 tons within minutes.
HALHJEM: Hard to port! NARRATOR: Once the water rushes in, there's no way to stop the capsize of the massive ship.
STEMRE: The moment the rocknes hit the rocks, she was doomed.
NARRATOR: The unusual speed of the disaster also makes it difficult to escape.
18 crew-members are killed.
HEARN: Most shipping accidents that occur are the result of many small things.
In a chain reaction they come together.
NARRATOR: In their final reports, maritime authorities recommend stronger regulations to ensure ships are correctly loaded at port.
Vermund Halhjem is never charged and continues working as a pilot.
KROGVOLD: But, uh, of course, he have to carry it with him for the rest of his life.
NARRATOR: In the wake of the accident, Vatlestraumen passage is dredged to make it safer for larger vessels.
But it is the story of survival that many remember best.
HEARN: The will to survive by these three Filipinos hanging on in the dark, banging and banging and banging till they get a response, and the efforts of the rescue team LINDE: Take my hand.
HEARN: To keep at it till they got these guys out, it's a remarkable story of survival, but also a remarkable story of dedication on the part of the rescue team.
MANGINSAY: When I think about rocknes, my tears fall for the 18 men who are my colleagues, who, who lost their lives.
I Miss them and I pray for their souls.