Mick Dolman

The bosun, Stan Leary, he started pulling it apart.

And he yelled down the deck, I need a pinch bar or something similar to get the lid off.

And so somebody... But you couldn't open it, in other words.

Couldn't.

It was a bit difficult to open.

Right, right.

And I think Mick Power found a jerry bar or whatever and he got the lid off the box and proceeded to get the life raft out of the box.

Now, it's attached to a lanyard or a rope and...

to the life raft and the other end tied off to the rail of the ship because you don't want that connection when you're getting away from the ship.

Exactly right.

So we've got to get that off.

And Tassie Leary got that and he started pulling.

And inside the capsule that holds the life raft is a gas cylinder that once you get to the end of the tether of the rope, you give it a big pull.

So Tassie pulled it and it inflated.

And that got the line off the side of the ship.

I jumped on into the raft.

Other people were still coming through.

There was a bit of a pregnant pause between the last one that got in and we realised that there was a couple of people missing.

Eagles, the chief engineer, to his credit, very brave credit, went down into the engine room to shut the engine down because the propeller of the ship was exactly where we had to launch the life raft.

It would have shredded us.