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This is clearly a difficult one to write about. I look out my window everyday and see the ferries shuffling too and fro. They are a fantastic sight and of course we all take them for granted in many ways. The prospect therefore of one of them sinking doesnt bear thinking about for even a moment.
But on this day in 1987 just such a ferry, the Herald of Free Enterprise, sank outside Zeebrugge. It was just a mere 100 yards from shore and the whole thing capsized in a staggeringly short 90 seconds and went down.
I probably wouldnt be talking about this at all if I hadnt heard a piece about the horrors of it all on R4 this morning...when an eye witness decribed how the vessel suddenly turned on its side. The wall became the floor and people fell terribly. There were cuts and broken bones, and then the worst of all nightmares, the water started to come in. Children screamed for their mummies and daddies, and the parents screamed for their kids.
193 people died.
I didnt live in Dover then, so I dont know first hand what it was like in the town here, but it must have been horrible, as indeed it must have been in Zeebrugge.
The operating company Townsend Thoresen, a company many of us who didnt live here would have been familiar with, through holidays and so on, has clearly vanished off the scene. I dont know what became of them afterwards but maybe some of you guys can fill us in.
