Critical Error: Zeebrugge Ferry Disaster

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0:56It's 6.45 p.m. On March the 6th, 1987. A cold, blustery night just off the coast of Belgium. Freezing rain needles the surface of the dark, turbulent North Sea. Ragged waves, driven landward by a northern wind, barrel across the sandbank and crash into spray against the breakwater.

1:23About a kilometer offshore, just a few hundred meters beyond the entrance of the harbor, something breaks the surface of the waves.

1:34A face appears, ghostly pale, wide-eyed, and incredibly young. It's a teenager, a child, blinking through strands of wet hair plastered to her cheeks. Sixteen-year-old Gillian Lashbrook kicks wildly, frantically, as she fights to keep her head above water. She tries to breathe, but she's disorientated, thrown into shock by the cold, and swallows a mouthful of seawater. She gags and splutters, coughing up brine, and before she can take a second breath, she's buried by another wave. Then another.

2:19When she re-emerges, panting, she begins casting around for something to grab hold of. There was debris around in the sea and I was looking for something to hang on to to help me float because with the winds all the waves were really quite high and they were crashing over my head. Gillian gives up on finding something to cling on to. She kicks off her heavy boots and starts to swim, battling against the currents and the winds. But swimming fully clothed isn't easy, especially in a thick jacket and long denim skirt. Eventually, her muscles throbbing with exertion, she stops. Treading water, she turns to look behind her.

3:06There, silhouetted against the dark evening sky, is the ferry that she was on just moments ago, before the unthinkable happened. She's only swum a few hundred yards, but from this distance, it's now possible to take in the entire terrible spectacle. It wasn't too far, but it was still far enough for me to be able to turn around and see the full scope of the ferry on the side. That's when you really realise then, yeah, things have gone terribly wrong.

3:47Ever wondered what you would do when disaster strikes? If your life depended on your next decision, could you make the right choice? Welcome to Real Survival Stories. These are the astonishing tales of ordinary people thrown into extraordinary situations. People suddenly forced to fight for their lives. In this episode, we meet Gillian Lashbrook. In March 1987, Gillian is 16 years old and on a day trip to Belgium with her mum, stepdad, uncle and two stepbrothers. At the end of a day's sightseeing, the family from Liverpool board the ferry to take them home to England. But tragedy will intervene.

4:30All of a sudden I was looking down into the water and I could see that the ferry was going downwards into the water. And I thought, oh, must be imagining that. It just doesn't look real. When a catastrophic oversight causes the ferry to start taking on water, the vessel and its 450 passengers will be pitched into chaos. Suddenly alone, Gillian will find herself fighting for survival in the bitterly cold waters of the North Sea. I was just so frightened and cold and I knew the only way to survive would be to swim. My mum has always taught me to swim and I knew it would be the only way that I'd be able to save my life.

5:13Facing life or death decisions, she left to summon a resilience, courage and composure far beyond her years. It was just unbelievable. It was just so unreal. It was only when I realised what actually was happening I knew then that I had to fight for my own life. I'm John Hopkins. From the Noiser Podcast Network, this is Real Survival Stories.

6:01It's 5pm on Friday, March 6, 1987. A ferry is docked in the port of Zabrugge, Belgium, waiting to shuttle its passengers across the water to England. The Herald of Free Enterprise is a large ship, weighing almost 8000 tons, and measuring 400 feet from Prow to Styrn. On board there's a restaurant, a gift shop, and a cinema room spread across its 8 spacious decks. Every day, the Herald completes two round trips between Dover and Zabrugge, a short crossing of around four hours, weather permitting. This evening's departure is the final sailing of the day. Most of the passengers waiting to board are holidaymakers, day trippers, and tour groups returning to England after sightseeing on the continent.

6:57At the ferry terminal, a slow-moving line of cars inches its way up the loading ramp. Sitting on the backseat of her parents' camper van, Gillian Lashbrook rests her head against the window, watching the rain slide down the glass. Gillian and her family travelled down from Liverpool yesterday, in time to catch the morning ferry from Kent to Belgium. Their outing has been slightly marred by the wet weather. As it turns out, Belgium in the rain is about as exciting as England in the rain. But still, it takes a lot to dampen the spirits of this family, and they had a merry old time despite the drizzle.

7:36Now Gillian is looking forward to the final leg of this trip. I was glad to get back onto the ferry, really, because the weather was so bad that day. And being on the ferry was always quite fun, really, because there was lots of things to keep youngsters interested and entertained. And my mum always spoilt us. We'd let us go down to the souvenir shop and we'd have our dinner there. And it was always quite fun, really. And again, obviously, we were all together. And we always had fun together because Scousers were really good at having fun.

8:14In the seats beside her, Gillian's stepbrothers Colin and Mark laugh and chatter. alongside their Uncle David. Up front, her mum Eileen and stepdad Keith chuckle along with the antics on the backseat. Jillian turns back to the window, smiling. Half an hour later, they've made it on board. With the campervan parked on the vehicle deck, the family is now sitting in a lounge area near the back of the vessel, waiting for the ferry to disembark. Jillian looks out of the window. It's not yet six, but already getting dark, as if the day can't wait to be over. Somewhere, a foghorn blasts. The vibrations hum up through the floor as the ship starts its engines.

8:58The youngsters scatter, excited to explore.

9:05My mum was about to give me some money to go and get something to eat in the cafe. And I said, I'll be back in a minute. I just want to go and have a look outside first.

9:17Jillian heads upstairs on her own, pushing through a door onto the upper stern deck at the rear of the ship. A cold blast of briny air greets her as she steps outside, her long fair hair tousled by the wind. She buttons up her denim jacket and hugs herself as she walks over to the railing. She leans against it, shivering slightly, gazing out at the the ceiling lights of Zybrugge as the ferry slips its moorings. In many respects, Jillian is a typical 16-year-old. Bright and sociable, when she isn't listening to music or out shopping with her mates, she's revising for her upcoming O-level exams.

9:58In other ways, however, she is quite exceptional. While many of her friends might shudder at the prospect of a rainy day cooped up in a camper van with their families, Jillian is different. She genuinely enjoys spending time with hers, even her brothers, all four of them, including Mark and Colin. That bond is rooted in the way they came into her life. Suddenly, all at once, in a whirlwind of change when her mum remarried. I was always very close to my mum. She was my natural mother and my father, he was my stepfather. We got together when I was five and everybody just blended as a nice family, me and all my stepbrothers.

10:38It was lovely to have other children to play with as I was an only child originally. I went from being an only child and having four stepbrothers, so I had a lot of playmates all of a sudden. It was just great. At the heart of this tight-knit family is Gillian's mum, Eileen. My mum was just a lovely lady. She was a typical Scouse lady, shall we say. And she was really funny and she really was a good mum. She loved her children. She was a homemaker. She used to work for my dad as well through his business. Used to sell cash registers for a living and my mum used to do all the accounts and seeing things like that for him.

11:22Gillian's stepfather, Keith, a warm and charismatic salesman, occasionally brings her along with him on sales trips, showing his teenage stepdaughter the ropes so that she too might someday join family business. I was looking forward to leaving school and I was going to go to college, but my mum had plans for me to go into my dad's business. He used to teach me how to do his job, so that's a reason why he took me out with him as well. So he trained me up to be able to help him one day once I'd left school.

11:58It's about twenty past six. Jillian rests her forearms against the railing, watching the V-shaped wake widen as the ferry chugs out of harbor. In the fading twilight, the waves appear dark and menacing, the light from the boat catching on their foamy crests. The sea isn't particularly rough, but the cold, wet weather makes the water look forbidding, a frigid grey mass with webs of whites lacing the peaks and troughs. We're looking at the white spray that the ferry was giving off and holding on to the white railings. And I was looking down into the water and I could see that the ferry was going downwards into the sea.

12:41It just looked unreal. I was saying to myself, I must be imagining it. She looks more closely. The surface of the sea seems to be rising up towards her, as the stern of the boat sits lower in the water. Is it an optical illusion, some peculiar trick of the light? Jillian looks around for someone to notify. But the deck's deserted, she's the only one up here. She looks back down at the water. She can't be imagining things. The ship's stern really does seem to be sinking, causing the deck she's standing on to tilt. A lump of panic forms in her throat. She's about to spin around and run back inside when suddenly there is a powerful, knee-buckling jaunt.

13:32Jillian is thrown off her feet and collides headfirst with a solid metal wall. The impact knocks her out cold.

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15:42When Gillian opens her eyes Her world has been thrown into disarray I came back round and realized When everything was the wrong way round I knew that it was real Something terribly wrong had happened In the eerie darkness it's hard to make sense of her surroundings. Everything seems off, as if the universe has been inverted. Jillian is lying flat on her back on something cold and hard. High above her head, she can make out a length of railings protruding horizontally from the now vertical deck of the ship. Somewhere to her left, she can hear the hiss and crash of the waves. They sound unnervingly, impossibly close.

16:31Jillian hauls herself up, teeth chattering, her face flecked with ocean spray. Something awful has happened, that much is clear. But it takes several moments for the reality to sink in, the only possible explanation for why the world has been tipped sideways. The ferry must have capsized, with every passenger still trapped inside. Every passenger, it seems, except Jillian. The ship had settled by then, and that's when I thought, I've got to try and get back into the ferry because I need to get back to my mum. When the ship capsized, Jillian must have been hurled sideways into an outer wall. That is where she has ended up.

17:20stranded alone on a crumpled metal platform, jutting out at a right angle from the upturned deck. She staggers to her feet, head throbbing, and starts gingerly feeling her way in the darkness. All I was thinking, I just wanted to get back inside the ship to the safety of my mum and my family. It wasn't rational in a way, because when you think back, it was impossible to get back inside the ferry. I was actually trapped outside on my own. The fairy's power must have gone out, because there's no light coming from anywhere. Gillian fumbles blindly, her heart racing, trying to find some entryway back inside to her family.

18:04But it's no use. She can feel nothing except the cold, metallic solidness of the ship's exterior. Under her feet, a foundering vessel lists and judders. Deep, sonorous groans rise from below the waterline. The sound of steel girders bending, of beams and bulkheads twisting and buckling. Jillian grabs hold of the nearest secure-looking object and clings to it tightly as the ferry lurches in the waves. Are they now going under? For the last few minutes, instinct has been compelling Jillian back inside, back to her family. But now, a different instinct takes over. It directs her not inside the ship, but away from it.

18:54I think the survival skills took over, really, because you've just got that need for self-preservation. You need to look after yourself. And that's when I decided that the only safe thing to do at that point was to jump into the sea.

19:22It's about 6.30pm, about a kilometre off the coast of Belgium. Perilously positioned on the side of the capsized ferry, Gillian shuffles over to the edge of the platform. Wind and spray sting her face as she squints down through the freezing mist. In the gloom, it's hard to tell how high up she is. Ten feet, twenty. She doesn't pause too long to deliberate. Jillian plants her feet, bends her knees, and hurls herself forward.

19:58She hits the surface and plunges straight down, slicing through the blackness, weighed down by her thick clothes and heavy leather boots. She opens her eyes and looks up. The surface is way, way above her, dimly illuminated by the sky's residual twilight. Perhaps it should have occurred to her to remove her boots before jumping. They're like anchors on her feet, pulling her down. She starts to kick and crawl, scrambling up through the dark water. I think it was just a natural instinct to survive more than anything. I was always lucky that my mum had taught me to swim from a young age. It was always important for my mum to teach us to swim, obviously because if you ever got into trouble in water, then you knew how to survive.

20:46I used to have to help my mum in swimming pools too because she used to wear contact lenses. So when she took her contact lenses out when we went to swimming pools, I was the one that used to guide my mum around. All those hours spent at the local swimming pool are now paying dividends. Gillian powers back to the surface. Finally, her head breaches the waterline. She takes off her boots and starts to swim away from the ferry, away from the possibility of being dragged down in the sinking ship's wake. When she feels like she's reached a safe distance, she stops and turns. I looked back then and I could see the ferry had capsized.

21:32I could really see what had happened and it was just surreal. It was unbelievable to see. And I could hear people screaming then as well. At the same time, some people had been able to escape through windows and were being pulled up through windows. And I could hear people screaming and shouting for the family. It's a terrifying sight, accompanied by a chorus of horrific sounds. The hulking, 400-foot-long passenger ferry lies on its side, parts submerged, flat against the heaving surface of the waves. What does this catastrophe mean for the people still trapped inside? For now, Jillian can do nothing except focus on herself.

22:19She turns back in the direction of land. The lights of Zybrugge twinkle on the shoreline, bobbing in and out of view as she rises and falls with the waves. It's probably no more than a thousand meters, But Gillian is already tiring. Her denim skirt and jacket are saturated, adding pounds of extra weight. If she tries to swim to shore, she might drown. And so she picks the lesser of two evils and turns back towards the carnage of the capsized ferry.

22:55It's not a case of thinking things through. It's just a quick decision. I decided it'd be better for my safety to go back into the ferry. That was the only thing I could think of because there was nothing around me which was helping me to keep afloat. And I knew that the waves that were crashing over my head would probably get the better of me if it didn't have something to hang on to. She swims back in the direction she came. After traveling a hundred feet or so, muscles searing, eyes burning from the salt water, she stops and glances up. The fairy's silhouette looms over her. She is staring up at what used to be the top deck, now tilted onto its side.

23:41Everything juts out at odd angles, the stanchions, walkways, and radio masts all upended, transfigured into a confusing three-dimensional puzzle. Meanwhile, Jillian's energy is being drained by treading water. When she spots a tight gap between two protruding walls, she swims for it, desperate to find a place to shelter from the waves. Tentatively, she approaches the opening. When she's paddled close enough, she reaches out and grabs hold of what appears to be some kind of railing, and pulls herself forward into the gap. She's in a sort of flooded passageway, with no floor to stand on, only cold black water.

24:27Vertical steel walls enclose her on both sides. Overhead, pieces of nautical equipment swing with the motion of the listing ferry. Ropes, hooks, and pipes creaking and clanging. With each wave, the water in the passage swells, like a cave on a beach at high tide. In danger of being sucked back out to sea, Gillian quickly devises a solution. There was a hook sticking out from the side, and I thought it would be a good idea to hook myself onto it, to keep me afloat so I wouldn't get carried away with the sea. It's a brilliant stroke of quick thinking. With the hook fastened to her skirt, Gillian manages to secure herself in place.

25:14It gives her a modicum of respite. Her limbs still need to work, gently kicking and paddling to stay afloat, but the strain is eased. A few moments pass. And then she hears something. Shallow, halting breaths. The sound of somebody shivering in the darkness next to her. She isn't alone. Gillian turns, staring down the flooded passage, her eyes straining as her vision adjusts to the gloom. Slowly, shapes begin to form. Two faces emerge from the shadows.