HA LONG BAY, Vietnam — An anchored boat packed with sleeping travelers sank early Thursday in Vietnam’s scenic Ha Long Bay, killing 12 people from nine countries in the deadliest tour-boat accident since the country opened to foreign visitors 25 years ago.
Vacationers from the U.S., Britain, Australia, Japan, Russia, France, Sweden and Switzerland died along with their Vietnamese tour guide. All were sleeping on the ship, which had anchored for the night in about 30 feet of water near a small island.
Nine foreigners and six Vietnamese survived by flinging themselves overboard and swimming to other tour boats anchored nearby.
Hours earlier, Italian traveler Stefano Corda felt an ominous tilt as dinner was served, but crewmen on the boat assured him everything was fine.
Later, Corda and his friend jumped for their lives into the bay as water rapidly filled the wooden vessel, sucking it down.
“We woke up at 5, and the boat took one minute to sink,” Corda, 35, of Palermo, Italy, said. “We went to the exit and the boat was almost vertical. I grabbed my friend, we went out, and it was so fast.”
Ha Long Bay is one of the country’s top tourist attractions, drawing more than 5 million visitors a year to the province where 1,600 jagged rock formations rise stunningly out of the bay, forming tiny islands.
Many visitors stay overnight on wooden boats equipped with sleeping cabins and eating quarters.
Police are investigating what caused the accident, and a Vietnamese official called for checks on safety of the more than 100 tour boats that ply the bay.
Corda’s friend, Stefano Sacconi, 33, of Rome, was in the bathroom just before the disaster struck. He thought he felt the boat buckling on its right side and soon realized they needed to get out. And fast.
“We started to hear tables and glasses falling from the top of the restaurant,” he said. “After that, my friend went out. He called me, ‘Come up! Come up! Something’s wrong here! The boat is going down!’”
They jumped from the boat and swam to a nearby ship.
Other survivors reported seeing a wooden plank ripping away from the ship about 5 a.m., followed by gushing water inundating the boat and quickly pulling it under near Titov island, about an hour’s ride from the mainland, said Vu Van Thin, chief administrator of Quang Ninh province.
Several feet of the ship’s masts were still visible, and Thin said authorities were working to obtain a crane to pull the boat out. Divers worked to free the bodies still inside Thursday morning.
There were 27 people, including six crew members, aboard the boat and all have been accounted for, Thin said.
The vessel, which is owned by Truong Hai Co., was anchored alongside dozens of other cruise boats, and weather conditions were calm at the time of the sinking.
The dead have been sent to Bai Chay Hospital for identification and survivors received treatment for minor injuries there, said Ngo Van Hung, director of Ha Long Bay’s management board.
The official Vietnam News Agency published the victims’ names and ages, most of them aged 20 to 25. Seven were women. They were a Briton, two Americans, one Japanese, one French, two Swedes, two Russians, one Swiss and one person of Vietnamese origin living in Australia, according to the government.
Vietnam’s foreign ministry confirmed the survivors as two Danes, one German, two Italians, one American, one Australian, one French and one Swiss.
Information for this article was contributed by Tran Van Minh and Margie Mason of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 6 on 02/18/2011