Researchers looking into the ‘Greek Titanic’ have found rare items on the ocean floor near the ship’s wreckage.
The Heimara sank on January 19, 1947, after hitting an islet within the South Euboean Gulf, killing 400 people in Greece’s deadliest-ever maritime disaster.
Recent photos have now shown artefacts littering the ocean floor near the wreck, frozen in time for nearly eight a long time.
Amongst them are the shoes of the dead, a few of them children’s, in addition to paper items, and letters from the ship’s nameplate.
Perhaps most surprising is the wealth of surviving paper artefacts, researcher Kostas Thoctarides said.
‘Through the dive, we found newspapers, books and correspondence buried within the muddy bottom of the Euboean Sea since 1947. These were Greek, Cypriot and French newspapers,’ he said.
‘There have been telegrams, French books, and stamps of the time that weren’t completely destroyed, although that they had been lying on the seabed for dozens of years. Finding paper underwater is a very rare occurrence and there are only a few times when documents have survived on the seabed.’
The ship’s sinking would have been ‘shocking’ for the passengers – with the experience made much more terrifying by the steam escaping from the engine room.
‘The rudder was disabled within the starboard position, while water began to flow into the ship’s interior from the holes,’ Mr Thoctarides said.
Captain Spyros Bilinis then ordered his crew to make use of a manual rudder to ground her within the shallows – only to search out the opposite rudder was also destroyed, and the radio wasn’t working.
‘The captain attempted to keep up order while distributing life jackets to the passengers and loading them into the lifeboats. But he didn’t succeed because several members of his own crew were the primary to go away the steamer in an attempt to save lots of themselves alone. Within the darkness and panic, shots might be heard.’
The ship was largely salvaged in 1968, but enough stays to substantiate the explanation for the sinking, alongside quite a few personal artefacts.
‘Next to the ship’s ventilators, personal items of the Heimara’s passengers were scattered. Akin to boots, ladies’ shoes, children’s shoes, combs, women’s stockings, life jackets, and an officer’s sword,’ Mr Thoctarides said.
‘Probably the most emotional thing we found was a pair of kids’s shoes among the many wreckage, apparently from one in all the unlucky children who perished within the sinking of the ship.
‘The presence of human elements was intense and delivered to mind scenes from the unbelievable tragedy that occurred there. You’re feeling such as you’re travelling in time and you could have a way of sadness for all the pieces that happened.’
The sinking has been blamed on a failure to vary course from 140 degrees to 125 degrees after the last shift change on the bridge.
Mr Thoctarides and his team also discovered that the crew had didn’t be sure that the watertight doors were closed and that the ship had never had an abandonment drill.
Today, the ship lies at a depth of 33 metres near the Megalo Verdougi islet, near the ferry route between Agia Marina, on the Greek mainland, and Nea Stira, on the island of Euboea.
Artefacts from the wreck at the moment are on display in a brand new free exhibition in Rafina.
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