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"   Published in the December 2012 issue Dr. Steven Ledtke, Passenger January 13, 2012; 9:40 p.m. We were three hours into the cruise, at a late dinner with two other couples. About 9:40 P.M., we heard and felt a thud. The whole ship shook. Glasses started tipping, and it became obvious that the boat was tipping to the port side. Everybody was suddenly up and trying to get out of the way of everything. The floor was very slippery. The table I was sitting at was pushing me up against the wall. The staff had disappeared \u2014 I could see no one who had been working there. Then the lights went out. Thankfully, they came back on ten or fifteen seconds later. One of the last overhead announcements in English said that it was an electrical problem and not to worry.  I&amp;#039;ve been on a dozen cruises, and we normally have a safety briefing or disaster drill. We hadn&amp;#039;t had one \u2014 they had said they were going to do it the next day \u2014 so no one knew where to go at this point. And there was no help. It was obvious to us that this was serious. We went outside toward the lifeboats, and it was pitch black. Out beyond the lifeboats were some lights from a house, which meant we weren&amp;#039;t far from shore. We thought everyone was going to survive. The boat went from listing to the port side back to level to listing to the starboard side. Our group lined up to get on a lifeboat. The families with young kids were very nervous, so we had them in front. Suddenly, an employee showed up and told us to get off. There was no problem, he said. We got off the boat and he closed the gate. We waited and waited, and as we continued to list further, we thought we should try the lifeboat again. Another man and I went to get things started, and again an employee showed up and told us to get off, then disappeared. After about seventy minutes of waiting, there was finally an announcement: &amp;quot;Abandon ship.&amp;quot; We went from chaos to complete terror. The lights were going on and off. People were clamoring to do something, so finally we opened the gate to the lifeboat. Children were let on first, thank goodness, because there was no crowd control. We got on and three employees appeared on the boat. They just got on \u2014 didn&amp;#039;t make any effort to help people, count passengers, or reassure us. There were easily 250 people on a boat with a capacity for 150, so we didn&amp;#039;t know what condition it would be in when it was let loose. When the guy supposedly in charge finally told them to let the boat away from the ship, it just jerked. We dropped ten feet. It was a scary moment. Then we lowered into the water, the motor started, and we headed away from the boat.  The guy driving our boat announced himself \u2014 there was a little overhead speaker \u2014 &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m the first officer of the boat. It&amp;#039;s your lucky day. I&amp;#039;m going to save your life.&amp;quot; And the surreal irony of this whole thing, he doesn&amp;#039;t take a direct route to shore like other lifeboats were doing; he did a circle and went back toward the ship, which people were getting really upset about because it looked like the whole ship was going to tip over on top of us. And he kept doing this. He was looking. Some of the Americans started chanting, &amp;quot;Get us to shore.&amp;quot; We finally got off the boat and into another strange scene, with thousands of people on this little island. We found a little church where other people had gone for shelter. It was packed with people. Whenever anybody from our group got up, we had to save the spot. Some were lucky enough to have blankets thrown down by people in town. There was a microphone people could talk on, and we thought they might say something about what was going on, but they were just saying names. One would be in French, one would be in Italian. They were just looking for people.  Nobody slept. Come 6:00 A.M., people started wandering out. We followed them, and there was a ferry to the mainland that we eventually got on. The sun was coming up, and as we left in the boat, we could see our ship on its side. \u2014As told to Matt Goulet READ MORE FROM THE ORAL HISTORY OF 2012 "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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