BY JO CHANDLER
THE AGE (MELBOURNE)
STORIES OF SHIPWRECK, real and imagined, have a special place in the archive of human misery. The notion of being lost at sea, frail souls at the mercy of the elements, taps into our most deep-set fears.
Witness the barrage of remembrances of the Titanic, a century on, and the media frenzy around the grounding of European cruise ship the Costa Concordia on the Italian coast in January this year.
Three weeks after the Costa Concordia came to grief, with the loss of 32 lives, it was still making international headlines, overshadowing news that a heavily loaded island ferry vanished in wild seas off the Papua New Guinea coast somewhere around dawn on February 2.
For a while it seemed the story of the MV Rabaul Queen was destined, like the ferry, to sink almost without trace, obscured by the bluster of the continuing maelstrom of Papua New Guinea's political crisis and by early reports that now appear to have grossly underestimated the loss of life.
Almost three months on, the truth of the tragedy - together with disturbing questions about the conditions on board the ship, its safety systems and those of PNG's maritime protocols more broadly - is surfacing in the testimony of witnesses summonsed to hearing rooms in Port Moresby and Lae.
Over the past two weeks, more than a dozen survivors have quietly provided raw firsthand insights into what is shaping up as one of the nation's most devastating recent tragedies.
George Turme, a 20-year-old university student, was the first to testify to the inquiry before Commissioner Warwick Andrew, the Australian judge heading the investigation at the request of the PNG government.
Turme swears he was in the company of more than 500 other passengers on that wild, doomed overnight voyage from the island of New Britain to the mainland port of Lae - crammed shoulder to shoulder, packed onto the heaving decks so tight that sleeping, even sitting, was impossible for most.
Turme spent most of the voyage squashed into a toilet area with other men, who assembled around the decks trying to give more protected space in the interior to women and children who spilled across the floors (there were only 50 seats on the whole vessel). It was an act of gallantry that would backfire horribly when the ship capsized.
According to the ship survey certificate presented to the inquiry, the Rabaul Queen could carry a maximum number of unberthed passengers of 295, and up to 15 crew - a total of 310.
If Turme's estimate that there were more than 500 people on board - and it is one shared by several witnesses in sworn testimony to the inquiry into the disaster, but which outstrips passenger lists drawn from official manifests by about 50 - then well over 250 souls were lost when the Rabaul Queen sank in up to 3,000 metres of water.
The true toll may never be known, not least because the lack of records for the infants carried onto the ship by their mothers, and who could not save themselves or be saved.
Turme tells of the desperate, dark hour before the ship sank, as it listed heavily to the left - several witnesses were worried that the Queen seemed to be out of balance right from the time she departed Kimbe wharf.
Around dawn someone - maybe a crew member, though it was impossible to tell as they did not wear uniforms - called on him and about 20 other men to go to the starboard side and try to balance the ship as it negotiated its way through the notoriously treacherous Viliaz Strait, which separates New Britain from the mainland.
They tried to lean out over the right side of the ship as the big waves came. ''We look out for the strong wind. So when the waves hit the ship we all bend to the right side and try to balance it,'' Turme told Commissioner Andrew.
Once, twice, when really big waves came in, they succeeded in keeping it upright but then ''another strong wave come, came and hit the ship''. It struck the back of the vessel on the starboard side and the Queen began to roll over to the left. Turme and the men with him all leapt into the water as she capsized.