Cruise Liner on Fire: Typhoon Incoming

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0:31It's the afternoon of October the 4th, 1980. 140 miles off the coast of Alaska, the sky lowers ominously as strong winds whip and heavy rainfall beats the surf. The sea bucks and sways. Gargantuan waves seem to grow like monsters rearing up towards the murky sky. The timing of this savage storm couldn't be worse. In the middle of the gathering squall, undimmed by rainfall, a thick column of smoke stretches up into the heavens, fed by hungry orange flames. The MS Princeton Dam is on fire. The blaze crackles up from the bowels of this commercial cruise liner. Only four days ago it left Vancouver, carrying over 300 passengers and 200 crew, bound eventually for Japan.

1:22Around the flaming vessel, lifeboats tumble in the choppy waters. And aboard one of these tenders, wet through and shivering in the Arctic air, 48-year-old John Graham clings to the gunner for dear life. With a sudden lurch, he lifts himself up, leans over the side of the lifeboat, and vomits into the surf. We're seasick as dogs. We have been from the beginning. But more to the point is that we're all suffering from hypothermia. Now, I've been in mountains a lot. I know a lot about hypothermia. And the way it works is you get really cold. But then, oddly enough, you start feeling warm again. And you go to sleep.

2:03And you don't wake up. They were warned of a coming typhoon. Now it's here. John and the seven others on board his life vessel are drenched and freezing, dressed in nothing but their bedclothes, clinging desperately to a dwindling hope of rescue. We are in waves that are 30 feet high, and that's like going up and down on a small boat, up and down the height of a six-story building. The winds are hitting 60 knots, and the lifeboat is rocking and rolling, and I'm beginning to realize that this is an adventure that I may not survive.

2:48Ever 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 John Graham, who at 48 years old has already lived more lives than most. Formerly of the U.S. Foreign Service and the U.S. State Department, John is now working as a lecturer aboard a cruise ship, the MS Princeton Dam. But on the night of his first talk, four days into the cruise, a fire tears through the commercial liner and more than 500 people are forced overboard.

3:33I managed to crawl all the way back up the ship to lifeboat number two. It says on the side that the lifeboat is meant to hold 45 people. Almost 90 are waiting for that lifeboat. People are really getting scared. If you fell over into the ocean, well, it's like in the Titanic. You got, what, five or ten minutes and you freeze to death because there's ice water out there. To make matters worse, helicopter rescue soon becomes impossible, and John and his fellow survivors must face down a typhoon with nothing but a metal dinghy between them and the roiling deep. As the hours tick by, seasickness and hypothermia aren't their only concern.

4:12for John and his companions. Time is running out. The real factor that's important is light. The odds on us being found by a Coast Guard cutter are small enough with a bit of daylight left in the storm. But we don't have any lights, no flares, no radio, of course. And it's going to be dark in 45 minutes or an hour. Once it gets dark, we're dead. I'm John Hopkins. From the Noiser Podcast Network, this is Real Survival Stories.

5:04It's the evening of the 3rd of October, 1980. In the main dining room of the cruise ship M.S. Prinzendam, cutlery clinks, cocktail glasses chink, and the band strikes up a waltz. Waiters clear dessert plates, and the smell of coffee wafts through the large, ornately decorated hall. With dinner coming to an end, the evening's entertainment glides seamlessly from speeches to the more physical business of dance. Couples of all ages rise, take each other by the hand, and shuffle smilingly onto the rapidly filling dance floor. One particularly strapping gentleman catches the eye. Standing six and a half feet tall, his shock of perfectly coiffed dark hair clearly visible above the sea of white and gray, dashing 48-year-old John Graham is having a ball.

5:58It's funny because I hadn't realized this If the shipping company, they're no fools They only want me to give these lectures They knew that I looked really good in a tuxedo Which I guess in the day I did And that part of my job was to waltz little old widows With blue hair around the ballroom And chat them up for the whole summer I quickly realized that was part of my job too Dressed to the nines, John Beams still high on an adrenaline rush. He's just given his first lecture, and judging by the number of women now asking him to dance, it was a success. His own companion on the ship can't get a look in right now.

6:38Instead, she watches from a nearby table with a smile of embarrassed pride. The Princeton Dam is four days into its journey to the Far East. There are more than 500 people on board, passengers, and crew. So far, they've enjoyed the frigid beauty of the Alaskan coastline and are now 140 miles into the North Pacific. It's a long way to Japan. There'll be many more nights like this. Outside, the prow of the ship continues to plow through the dark, icy depths. Within, a glassy-eyed, lightly perspiring John decides to call it a night. He retires to his cabin and is soon snoring contentedly But he isn't asleep for long About midnight, there's a loudspeaker voice over the intercom system And a voice says, we're very sorry, wake you up But there's been a small fire in the engine room And we put the fire out, of course But unfortunately, there's a lot of smoke in the ship and we're going to have to use fans to clear the ship of smoke.

7:43And we urge you all to please come up to the ship's lounge. We'll be serving free drinks. For a moment, John sits in bed, perfectly still. He cocks his head, considering. Then, with a yawn, he rolls over and goes back to sleep. The voice did not seem at all panicked or anxious. The hell with it, we can deal with a little smoke. And about 20 minutes later, the voice comes back on. This time, it wasn't so placid. And it says, no, please, please, you have to come up to the ship's lounge now. And so, okay, fine. John's large frame moves with reluctant stiffness. He stands and goes across to the cabin door.

8:24Still yawning, he opens the door and is immediately forced backwards, coughing and spluttering, squinting through an invading fog. Sure enough, the corridor outside our stateroom is full of smoke. Wafting the smoke with his hand and stooping to avoid the worst of it, John hurries into the corridor, straight into a dead end. The fire door just forward of our cabin had automatically slammed shut. This is the main route we used to get up to the deck. With this much smoke, the fire must still be burning somewhere on the ship. A small voice pipes up beside John, asking what he thinks they should do.

9:04John's jaw tightens He's been in dangerous situations many times before But this is different This time, he isn't alone

9:19Disney Plus Hulu will make your day every day Bluey for the kids The all-new Hulu original series Furious For the second they're down Good Morning America for your morning ESPN College Game Day for your Saturday. And Toy Story 5 for a cozy family movie night on Sunday. Make your day every day with Disney Plus Hulu. 18 and older with the Disney Plus Hulu Bundle subscription. Access these titles via Disney Plus. Terms apply. This episode is brought to you by ChatGPT. Hey, it's Bill Simmons from the Bill Simmons Podcast. Have you guys heard about ChatGPT work? It's the new way to use ChatGPT for bigger multi-step projects.

10:00And when you need more than just answers, give ChatGPT work access to your apps and files, and it can create real work documents like spreadsheets, slides, and structured reports. Get started at ChatGPT.com by selecting work mode available on Plus and Pro plans. John grew up in Tacoma, Washington State, near the Canadian border. It was a quiet city, and he enjoyed a quiet childhood, albeit one not without its difficulties. In middle school and high school, I was badly bullied. So it was a pretty miserable mid-teens and teen age for me. Trying to move on from a tough time at school, John quickly threw himself into another challenging environment, though this one was very different.

10:47I actually got a job working on a freighter. Freighters in those days, this is like 1959, were not container ships. They were just big ships, and they were run by 50 or 60 really tough guys with muscles and tattoos and everything. They took one look at me at this scraggly, know-nothing kid. And they said to themselves, wow, we've got life lessons to teach this. Work on the freighter took John to the Far East, where he learned about the world in ways he could never have imagined growing up in suburban Tacoma. His time with the ship's crew toughened him and gave him an appetite for thrills and adventure.

11:27He spent his college holidays hitchhiking around Europe. And it was while in Switzerland, as he was preparing to climb the Matterhorn, that something caught his eye. I picked up a newspaper in the youth hostel, and it said that there was a war going on in Algeria, that a bunch of rebels were trying to take control of the country from the French colonials. And I said to myself, wow, a war? I'd never been in a war before. With all the naivety of youth, John hitchhiked to Morocco and walked across the border into Algeria. He wore an American flag on his chest so as not to be mistaken for a Frenchman and shot on sight.

12:11He was picked up by rebels, who turned out to be surprisingly welcoming, even helpful. They secured John lifts wherever he needed to go, albeit in a manner that was less than plight. The rebels were really kind to me. They would stop cars going in my direction at gunpoint and then tell the driver to take me wherever I wanted to go. John then spent time in Algeria with the French Foreign Legion, a group of men who reminded him of the freighter crew. They seemed to me incredibly brave, and it was just another example of what real men did. Real men were tough and violent, and it just underscored my push to be that kind of a man.

12:54John's high-risk lifestyle soon solidified into a career. He became a freelance war reporter for the Boston Globe, traveling around the world, sending stories back from some of its most dangerous combat zones. When John landed a job with the U.S. Foreign Service, he became known as the guy you could send to places where no one else wanted to go. Soon after I joined, they sent me to the revolution in Libya. Everybody else at the embassy was freaking out because there were cars burning in the public square and they were rock-throwing mobs. But for me, I was in my element. I was then six and a half feet tall and really strong and nobody was messing with me anymore.

13:35The Foreign Service noticed his aptitude for risk and sent him to the most dangerous spot they had, right in the middle of the Vietnam War. I became advisor to the city of Hue. Hue was famous for the Tet Massacre. It's a small city, just a few miles, 50 miles short of the DMZ, the demarcation line that then divided North and South Vietnam. So it was an incredibly dangerous place to be. In 1972, with American troops finally withdrawing from South Vietnam, John found himself in the middle of a highly volatile event, an advance of North Vietnamese troops known as the Easter Offensive. The North Vietnamese crossed the border, surrounding the city of Hue.

14:21John and a handful of civilian members of the U.S. Foreign Service were stranded without hope of extraction. If Hue fell, they would fall with it. With the enemy at the gates, the South Vietnamese soldiers within Hue started to defect, causing chaos in the streets Defectors set the marketplace ablaze, and as a thick pall of smoke covered the city, riots broke out John was one of the people chiefly responsible for law and order So he marched into the mayor of Hue's office and demanded violent retributions to punish the deserters But even as he barked his recommendations in the mayor's face, John's words began to falter.

15:07This is a real life-turning moment. I'll never forget slamming my fist down on this guy's desk, the mayor's desk, with the artillery booming and people screaming and demanding that he set up a firing squad. And somewhere, it suddenly dawned on me what the hell was happening. I was 29 years old, no longer a kid. And here I was, demanding that one Vietnamese start shooting a second set of Vietnamese so they could get together and start shooting a third set of Vietnamese. My home was 6 ,000, 7 ,000 miles away. I knew the war was lost. I knew that from the beginning. I didn't go to Vietnam as a patriot.

15:48No, I went there more or less as a mercenary. It was all because of the adrenaline rush and also because being in a war was what real men did, and I wanted to be a man. And suddenly what hit me was how shallow my life had become. My life had become nothing but a thirst for risky adventures, a thirst for violence. Part of it, a good part of it, was my mistaken belief in what it took to be a man. And that suddenly dawned on me that that was wrong.

16:23Luckily for John, the next day the skies cleared and American bombers lifted the siege. He escaped with his life. When he returned home, he started to make a change. It wasn't easy. His experiences had left him with deep scars. I had a healthy dose of what we now would call PTSD. I would walk across the street in Palo Alto, California to avoid sniper fire. That's how bad it was, how messed up I was. Through therapy and a new job, working with the UN on behalf of the US State Department, John was able to heal and devote himself to peace rather than war. Incredibly, he oversaw US policy towards the entirety of what was then known as the Third World.

17:09He had power, and he wielded it for good. Working with the UN in the 1970s, he was part of the fight to end apartheid in South Africa. But life moves fast in global politics. A new administration was moving into the White House, one John didn't align with, so he left his post. He found himself without an income and with limited savings. A particular problem, as he now had two children to support. He began giving anti-war speeches, buoyed by his innate idealism and optimism for the future. But he could not live on optimism alone. I was happier than I'd ever been in my life, but I was also going rapidly broke.

17:53So a friend of mine comes up to me and he says, Hey John, you always had this good ability to give a good speech. You know you can get paid by lecturing, giving lectures on cruise ships? I said, you're kidding. You're kidding. And he says, no, no, no. And so the very first time I tried, I got a job lecturing on a cruise ship, the Princeton Dam, which was leaving from Vancouver. It was perfect. It was the answer to John's financial troubles and an opportunity to give his idealistic lectures all while traveling the world. And the best bit of all, he didn't have to go alone. All I had to do was give a couple speeches on the voyage over to Japan, and they paid me an absurd amount of money, and I got to take my daughter, then 13 years old, my daughter Mallory, with me.

18:48Right now, aboard the Princeton Dam, Mallory's eyes are wide as smoke fills the ship's corridors. Like her dad, she has something of a taste for excitement. A few months earlier, John had taken her to see the Empire Strikes Back, and she'd practically bounced home, beaming and swinging an invisible lightsaber. Looking down at his child now, John sees a familiar glint in her eye. To her young imagination, this is just another grand adventure. John relaxes his furrowed brow and softens his worried expression. They may well be in danger, but she doesn't need to know that. Not yet, anyway. Suddenly, the 13-year-old turns, and calling for her dad to follow, heads back up the landing away from the barricaded fire door.

19:36Mallory goes in the other direction, to the rear of the ship, and discovers another stairway, not far away, and we take that stairway up to the deck where the ship's lounge is. Everybody else is up there too, and they're all chattering. Nobody has warm clothes, and more to the point, the ship's lounge is just as full of smoke as the rest of the ship, so you couldn't stay in the ship's lounge even with free drinks. It's impossible to stay here. The smoke is too thick, and so passengers begin to filter out, coughing as they go. In little groups, people head out on deck, where the North Pacific air chills them to the bone.

20:14We're October, Gulf of Alaska, and so people are trying to stay warm, and they start pulling tablecloths off the tables in the ship's lounge, or even ripping down curtains and wrapping themselves in the curtains, all the while looking a bit more anxious than they did when they came up there. What had sounded like a small hiccup, a technical issue the crew would soon remedy, is clearly much more. John scans the drawn and worried faces, pale with cold, the unmistakable flash of fear behind their eyes. Braving the icy temperature, he and Mallory walk around the deck and scan the horizon. The sea stretches out, infinite in every direction.

20:58The passengers of the MS Prinzendam have been warned of a coming storm, Typhoon Vernon, and were given precautionary seasickness tablets over dinner. Right now, though, John stands in the freezing October air and stares out at the calmest of seas and the most beautiful of night skies. Other worldly colors and lights dance across the heavens. We were heading into a typhoon, but at the moment, when we were out there on deck looking at the smoke, the sea was relatively calm, and you could see the aurora borealis stretched across the sky, and it was just beautiful and a surreal moment. Gradually, the night slips by, and the smoke only increases.

21:41Clearly, there's still a fire on board. Heat begins to grow from the bowels of the ship. Around 3 a.m., the captain appears on deck. He asks all passengers to move to the stern of the ship. Dutifully, they obey. As the crowd shuffles towards the rear of the vessel, crew in firefighting uniform streak past in the other direction. Jaws set, deep concern in their eyes. And still, the heat grows. Then, at around 4 a.m., the captain decides enough is enough. The order is given to go up to our lifeboat stations. Oh, wow, now this is getting serious. It's a sudden melee of shuffling bodies as the crowd on deck shifts towards the lifeboats.

22:30John and Mallory manage to make their way back to the first lifeboat on the port side, lifeboat number two. Quickly, Mallory counts around 90 people waiting to board this single craft. Yet on its side, written clearly, are the words, maximum capacity, 45. This is a new cruise ship, so no one thought anything like this had any possibility of happening. And so everybody on the ship's crew was poorly trained and poorly organized, so the lifeboats were either underloaded or overloaded. As people jostle for position, John sticks tight to Mallory. In the scramble, people are being pushed perilously close to the edge of the deck.

23:11Go too far, and you could fall overboard into the deadly waters below. If you fell over into the ocean, well, it's like in the Titanic. You got, what, five or ten minutes and you freeze to death because there's ice water out there. John turns to Mallory, attempting to give her a reassuring smile. When suddenly, an almighty crash splits the air above their heads, followed by a roar of heat and bright orange light. The fire burns through, blows out the windows in the ship's lounge. and in the ship's dining room. And the fire has this huge gulp of air, oxygen. And all of a sudden, flames are shooting 20 feet high from the center of the ship into the night sky.

23:55And now people are really freaking out, and for good reason. So then the captain comes out again on the deck with his bullhorn, and he says, we have lost the battle with the fire, and we have to abandon ship.

24:15Disney Plus Hulu will make your day every day. Bluey for the kids. The all-new Hulu original series Furious for the second they're down. Good Morning America for your morning. ESPN College Game Day for your Saturday. And Toy Story 5 for a cozy family movie night on Sunday. Make your day every day with Disney Plus Hulu. 18 and older with the Disney Plus Hulu bundle subscription. Access these titles via Disney Plus. Terms apply. This September, on the Noiser Podcast Network. On Jane Austen stories, Dame Julie Andrews continues to bring Austen's beloved classic Emma to life. On Short History of, we're in medieval England for the fascinating story of the Peasants' Revolt.

24:59And 25 years on from 9-11, we're on the ground in New York City. On Real Survival Stories, we're on a luscious winery in Northwest America, and venturing into a missile silo in the dead of night as the US is threatened with nuclear disaster. And in Sherlock Holmes' short stories, get two episodes each week as Hugh Bonneville explores Conan Doyle's great novel A Study in Scarlet. Get all of these shows and more early and ad-free on Noiser Plus.

25:35It's early morning on the 4th of October, 1980. 140 miles off the coast of Alaska, a massive tanker splits the surf, cleaving the water with its monstrous gleaming bough. This oil-carrying behemoth has made its way down from Port Valdez at breakneck speed in response to a distress call. The crew aboard only hope they haven't come too late. As the first purpley hues of dawn creep across the sky, a column of smoke splits the horizon. A fire rages in the North Pacific. Bright orange tongues of flame leap from the MS Prinzen Dam. Thick black smoke billows up into the sky. Everywhere, lifeboats bob listlessly around the fiery cruise liner.

26:24Though the oil tanker has arrived quickly, it soon becomes apparent that there's little it can do to help. The tanker is too big to maneuver, its sides too steep to climb. The lifeboats have no engines with which to pull alongside such a massive vessel. All they can do is sit and wait.

26:45On one of the small lifeboats, there is a huddled mass of bodies. Far too many souls for a craft this size. Among the group are John Graham and his 13-year-old daughter, Mallory. Together, they hunker down against the cold. Being crammed together is almost a good thing because we don't have warm clothes. A crowded lifeboat helps keep people warm. It wasn't easy getting the lifeboats down into the water, but miraculously all but one of the dinghies has made it to the ocean. John and some of the other men used their arms and shoulders to buffer the boat as it was lowered and prevent it colliding with the hull.

27:24When John's arm touched the steel of the ship, it was hot, almost too hot to touch. The fire is powerful, and it's spreading. In a surreal moment, as the tenders were lowered, the house band struck up a tune. The ship's orchestra had come out, but instead of playing Near My God to Thee, they started playing show tunes from Oklahoma. It was like, oh man, this is like, I've seen this story before. Now all is quiet. The musicians are in lifeboats, just like everyone else. The spectre of the Titanic looms over the situation The air is thick with the parallels The lifeboats, the icy water, the dread John pulls his daughter in tight There's nothing to do now but wait and hope And then a sound, faint at first but unmistakable The growing thud, thud, thud of propellers Helicopters start arriving from shore bases, Canadian and Air Force rescue helicopters, but they're 140 miles away, so they don't have a lot of time.