THE LOSS OF THE DARA
by J L Shaw
ONE of a class of four vessels constructed for the British India Steam
Navigation Co Ltd, the Dara was a single-screw vessel of 5,030 gross
tons launched by Barclay, Curle and Co Ltd, Glasgow in 1948. The
ship was specifically designed for the Persian Gulf trade and spent
her working life plying between Bombay and the many ports that line
the shore of this body of water.
Her passenger accommodation was uniquely suited for the
Middle East market, carrying 80 first-class passengers, 30 “A” and 24
“B” second-class passengers and up to 1,377 unberthed passengers,
who usually made use of the ship’s extensive ‘tween decks area. A
Doxford-type oil engine propelled the vessel along on her course of
duty at a comfortable 14 knots.
Though the circuit of the Dara’s employment was not
considered a war zone in 1961, there had been a number of terrorist
incidents in the region directed against British property. Omani rebels,
who had been defeated by British forces in 1959, were said to be
have been responsible, but clear-cut proof had never been
forthcoming. In any case, the strict security procedures which now
greet passengers at modern day airports were yet to be enacted. The
Dara collected and discharged her passengers with little thought that
some might bear her harm.
This was the mood of officers and crew watching passengers
board the Dara off Dubai on April 7, 1961. Having arrived from
Bahrain that same day the Dara anchored offshore to collect
travellers and cargo from launches. Everyone was boarded and shore
personnel were about to leave the ship when a heavy gale swept in
from the normally calm Gulf. In a matter of minutes the strength of the
wind reached force 7, sufficient to push a weakly-anchored Panamanian cement ship, the Zeus, into the Dara’s starboard bow. Though
little damage was done during the contact, the Dara’s master, Capt
Charles Elson, decided to take his vessel to sea.
On board the Dara at this time were 613 passengers, 132 crew
and 74 shore personnel. It was intended that the latter group of
people would be landed at Dubai after the storm had abated. Through
the night of April 7 conditions were rough and cramped in the Dara.
Those not assigned berths made do with chairs and sofas in the
public lounges. A few slept in the alleyways on the upper deck.
Unberthed passengers spread out their belongings on the fore and aft
‘tween deck spaces. The storm set a record for its ferocity that
evening, but gradually subsided by the early morning hours.
At 4.14 am. Capt Elson was called from his cabin as he had
requested. By this time the wind had dropped to force 5 out of the
North East and appeared to be moderating. The Dara’s second
officer, Charles Alexander, was establishing the ship’s position from
the Jezirat Tunb light, some 15 miles distant.
With much of the storm’s fury spent, the captain decided that
the Dara could return to Dubai without further delay. Accordingly, a
new course was laid out and the Dara turned South on a heading of
190 deg. Off on the far horizon the lights of a distant ship could be
made out.
Satisfied that all was correct, the captain retired once more to
his cabin leaving the second officer and a helmsman on the bridge. At
approximately 4.43 am. a terrific explosion, described later by the
captain as sounding like “a twelve-pounder gun fire - a sharp crack,
like a steel door being slammed” echoed throughout the ship. At once
the lights went out and the helmsman was thrown to the floor by the
steering wheel which suddenly spun out of control. Within seconds
fire alarm bells began ringing and could not be silenced. Something
had happened on board the Dara that was to doom her and 238 of
her passengers and crew.
In the engine room the second engineer, Mr Ramsay Birrell,
heard the explosion as a “loud, sharp bang very quick bang”.
Immediately the main breaker on the generator distribution board
jumped out. This was followed by a cascade of loose cement and
asbestos lagging falling from pipes and fittings above. Thinking
instinctively that something had happened in the crankcase, Mr Birrell
stopped the main engine, then with Mr P Durham, the fifth engineer,
following began making a running inspection of the engine with his
torch.
The Dara’s chief engineer, Mr G K Cruikshank, off duty at the
time, was jarred awake in his cabin. Rushing into the hall and finding
no lights he shouted for someone to start the emergency generator.
His order was acknowledged by the third engineer, and Mr
Cruikshank then tried to telephone down to the engine room. There
was no reply.
On the bridge Capt Elson arrived to find the second officer
attempting to trace the source of the alarm by working the switches
on the Kidde alarm system. It was no use; the alarm bells continued
to ring. In the end both men jammed the bell with wads of paper to
stop the noise. At the binnacle the light had gone out and the
helmsman could no longer see the ship’s course. This problem was
rectified by the captain who returned to his cabin for a torch which
was subsequently fastened to the binnacle stand.
A glance at the rev counter told all three men that the main
engine was dead and that the ship was now losing way.
Remembering that he had seen a ship in the area a few minutes
earlier Capt. Elson ordered the second officer to run up the “Not
Under Command” lights.
Mr Peter Eugene Jordan, the Dara’s Chief Officer, had been
asleep in his cabin just beneath the bridge when awoken by what he
took to be “the door to the deck slamming’. A few minutes later the
second officer appeared at his door to state that the captain wanted a
report of what was wrong. Dressing in haste, Mr Jordan made an
inspection of the officers’ deck then crossed down to the promenade
deck. A woman passenger at this level informed him that there was a
small fire in the aft lounge.
Upon reaching the lounge the chief officer was able to make out
flickers of flame through the glass door of the bar. On entering the
room he found a single chair afire. This he put out with a fire
extinguisher, but the fire immediately re ignited. Kicking the chair out
of the way Mr Jordan found that flames were actually coming up
through a hole in the deck. Within a few seconds they rose to a height
of five or six feet.
Two decks below, Mr Birrell, the second engineer, had reached
the top platform of the engine room in his quick inspection of the main
engine casing. Nothing had proven amiss. But, as he looked forward,
it was apparent that a large volume of smoke was now entering the
engine room through either a ‘tween-deck door or hole in the
bulkhead. At the same time he realised that he could hear screaming
close by. Gaining access to the outside passage he could make out
the form of a badly injured man lying on the deck. Beyond this
individual, towards the unberthed passenger’s area, the screaming
rose in tempo. Something had happened, something much more
severe than a minor engine explosion.
Above him Chief Officer Jordan found he could do nothing
against the flames in the aft lounge. They were feeding on something
below. On the outside deck the extra third officer had already arrived
and was busily unrolling a water hose towards the area. When the
two men attached the hose to its hydrant however nothing happened.
There was no water pressure. The chief officer now raced to the
bridge to report that there was definitely a fire on board, one he
thought might be originating from the engine room, and one which
they might not be able to subdue.
Unknown to most on board the Dara, something had exploded
in the alleyway just outside of cabin 28 on the upper deck. The blast
had rendered large holes in both the main engine room casing and in
the bulkhead separating cabin 28 from the outside alleyway and
punctured smaller holes in the two decks immediately above. In all
probability 20 to 25 lb. of explosive material had been detonated in
the space of a microsecond creating temperatures as high as
6,000˚F.
Though the damage caused by the initial blast was not grave,
the resulting fire panicked passengers and a number of the ship’s
crew. In the ‘tween deck spaces the mushrooming clouds of black
smoke from the explosion area caught many passengers still asleep;
they died of asphyxiation before the ensuing scramble for breathable
air awoke them. Then, in a matter of minutes, the Dara’s narrow
passageways became jammed with screaming and yelling people
attempting to reach the upper decks. Once outside, passengers
streamed to the bow or stern of the ship, away from flames and
smoke that now engulfed the superstructure.
On the bridge Capt Elson quickly worked out the Dara’s
position utilising the emergency light in the radio room. This
completed, he handed the results to the chief radio officer and requested that an SOS signal be sent. At almost the same time thick
clouds of smoke began boiling up from the decks below. Within
seconds both the bridge and radio room had to be abandoned, the
SOS message left unsent. Very fortunately a ship which had long
been on the Dara’s beam was already rushing towards the stricken
vessel in a rescue bid. This was the 4,215 ton Empire Guillemot, a
military landing craft whose lights Capt Elson had noticed earlier in
the night.
As the Empire Guillemot approached, efforts were made by the
Dara’s crew to launch lifeboats. This activity was hindered by the
large number of passengers who had swarmed into the boats, many
bringing all their luggage and possessions. Fire had already consumed most boats on the starboard side, thus more and more
passengers pressed towards the few remaining craft.
The crew, a large number out of uniform because of the early
hour, struggled to get boats over the side and into the water, but the
reluctance of passengers to give up their positions made this a
formidable process. In the case of number 10 boat lowered off the
poop deck the results were disastrous. The overcrowded launch hit
the waves and immediately turned over spilling most of its occupants
into the sea, many never to regain the surface.
On board the Dara, the ship’s superstructure was almost totally
ablaze. Forward, only the chief officer, the senior radio officer and the
captain remained, all taking sanctuary on the port bridge wing. As this
spot became precarious the three dropped down to the forward
corner of the boatdeck. Within minutes the woodwork in this area
began blistering and smoking. Not wishing to linger any longer, each
man jumped overboard and began drifting aft along the ship’s hull.
The Empire Guillemot, under the command of Capt. F. E.
Godley, had radioed her sighting of the burning Dara to other ships in
the area. This had induced a quick response from three tankers in the
vicinity, the Norwegian Thorsholm, the Japanese Yuyo Maru No. 5 and
the London-registered British Energy.
Upon arrival all three vessels swiftly launched their boats in a
rescue bid. They were joined by one of British India’s own cargo
vessels, the 6,800-ton Barpeta. In addition to these commercial ships
the British naval frigates Loch Alvie, Loch Ruthven and Loch Fyne
were dispatched from Bahrain along with the American naval vessels
USS Laffey and USS Tanner.
Arriving first on the scene, the Empire Guillemot directed her
own lifeboats to the Dara’s bow and stern to take off people trapped
in these locations. The British Energy, closing from astern of the
Dara, was able to pick up a number of people who had drifted away
from the stricken ship on floating wreckage. Likewise, the Thorsholm
took over 80 persons from the water, among them the captain of the
Dara who immediately asked to be ferried back to his own ship to
assist in the rescue effort.
Unknown to the captain however was the fact that only 15
people now remained on the Dara. These people had managed to
find refuge on the ship’s stern just behind the crew’s quarters. They
were not spotted until daybreak when a boat from the British Energy
closed in to take them off.
On board the rescue craft were the Dara’s second officer and a
cadet who reboarded the burning vessel to ascertain any chance of
salvage. They were joined within an hour by the Dara’s master, chief
officer and chief engineer. Working together these five men were able
to get a water pump started on the aft deck which allowed them to
cool the fittings holding Nos 7 and 1OA lifeboats. These craft were
swung over the side and No 7 boat lowered to the water.
As the men worked to get the second boat down, a loud
“whoosh” sound was heard forward. Realising that oil floating
alongside the Dara had suddenly caught fire, the men scrambled
down the opposite side of the vessel and safely made their getaway
in the already lowered lifeboat.
At 3.30 p.m. the Empire Guillemot departed for Dubai with over
330 Dara survivors on board, 84 of these collected from the
Thorsholm. Later that evening Capt Elson signed Lloyd’s open form
on board the Loch Alvie which had arrived from Bahrain in company
with two other Royal Navy warships. Through the night these three
vessels played hoses on the Dara’s superstructure and upper decks
in an attempt to keep the fire from spreading. On the following
morning Capt Elson and several men from the Loch Alvie reboarded
the Dara.
What they found disturbed all men present. On the ‘tween deck
level charred bodies could be made out among the debris. More were
found in companion-ways where they had been trapped trying to
escape to the upper decks. In the devastated superstructure area the
gaping holes caused by the original explosion were now easily
visible.
Through April 9 various fire-fighting parties boarded the ship to
still stubborn fires and lighten the vessel of excess debris. A list had
developed however and by 6 pm that evening registered over six
degrees to starboard. Accordingly, further efforts to subdue the lower
deck fires with water were terminated, and spray was only directed on
the hull of the ship in a cooling exercise. Shortly before midnight on
the 9th both a salvage expert and the tug Ocean Salvor arrived. After
a quick inspection of the Dara it was decided that the tug would
commence towing the vessel to a nearby shoreline for beaching on
the following morning.
Shortly after daybreak on April 10 both ships began their run to
the beach, the Dara sheering dangerously at the end of a taut
towline. The damaged vessel’s list had now increased to 10 degrees
and those watching her saw water enter through several lower ports.
At approximately 9.20 am a large cloud of black smoke erupted from
the ship’s starboard side. The Dara’s time had come. At the end of a
hard sheer to port the ship rolled over on her side and settled to the
shallow bottom in a cloud of rising steam and smoke. The Dara was
gone, along with the 238 people who perished in the disaster.
One year later a Court of Inquiry was held in London to
examine the incident. Though it was proved beyond reasonable doubt
that an explosive device had been detonated aboard the vessel it was
never proved who had caused such mayhem. The loss of the Dara
has thus remained an unsolved case, one for which no terrorist
organisation has ever risen to claim responsibility.
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