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Shipwrecked: nightmare in the Pacific

T hirty-seven years ago this summer, some fishermen spotted a small dinghy adrift in the Pacific ocean. She was called the Ednamair and measured just 9ft from bow to stern. The fishermen watched the dinghy pitching and rolling in the vast emptiness of the Pacific and assumed that the occupants were long gone. They were nearly 300 miles from land. But they were wrong. A family of five, plus a friend, were on board. Packed like sardines into every nook, and with the flimsiest of protection, they had spent nearly six weeks stranded in the middle of the ocean with little food and water. Their dream of sailing round the world had gone horribly wrong.

On 27 January, 1971, Dougal Robertson, his wife, Lyn, and their children, Douglas (then 17), Anne, (16) and twins Sandy and Neil (nine), climbed into their yacht Lucette at Falmouth harbour, Cornwall. Eighteen months later – and by now joined by Robin, a hitchhiker, but minus Anne, who had left the boat in the Bahamas – they were 200 miles from the Galápagos islands when catastrophe struck. The Lucette was attacked by killer whales. "There was a bang! Bang! Bang! And we were lifted off our feet," recalls Douglas. "There was a huge splashing noise behind me and I turned round and saw three whales." It took only minutes for the Lucette to sink.

Bemused, shocked and unprepared – Lyn was still in her nightdress – they scrambled aboard a leaky raft, and then, when that deflated 17 days later, the dinghy. The odds of survival were against them: there was only enough water for 10 days, the only food on board consisted of a bag of onions, a tin of biscuits, 10 oranges, six lemons, and half a pound of glucose sweets. Nobody knew they were missing. They weren't on a shipping route, so their chances of being sighted and rescued were remote. Sinking was a constant worry due to the weight on board and to compound their problems, sharks were circling in the water.

Yet, amazingly, they did survive, and their remarkable story is legendary, inspiring a bestselling book – Survive the Savage Sea by Dougal Robertson – an exhibition and a feature film starring Robert Urich and Ali MacGraw (1992).

But according to Douglas, the real story of the Lucette is still a secret. He says his father's book only covers the days after the shipwreck, and is dry and academic, drawn from the voyage log. The film was only loosely based on what happened – "They sailed from Australia, not England!" – and while he wrote a book himself, The Last Voyage of the Lucette, in 2005, revealing the whole story, not many people heard about it because its publication was eclipsed by a personal tragedy. Douglas's son, Joshua, 16, had a near fatal motorbike accident in Australia. When Douglas should have been promoting his book, he was by his son's side in intensive care.

I meet Douglas, now 55, at a college in south London, where he works as an accountant. Except he doesn't look like an accountant; he looks like a biker, with black leathers and cowboy boots and a red biker scarf tied around his neck. He says this contradiction is a legacy from the wreck. "One part of you craves normality but the boundaries have been moved so far you can't really do that." He is stocky and strong-looking – even as a youth he was the "muscles on the boat", rowing, splintering wood, and blowing up the leaky raft until his mouth was cut and sore. "My dad was the brains. He couldn't have done that stuff without me." This is one of the beefs he has with his father's book. "We all contributed to the survival in the raft and nobody else was recognised for it."

His own book charts the family's transition from farmers to sailors and the 18 months at sea before the wreck – they were, it transpires, almost killed within hours of leaving Falmouth when they sailed into a Bay of Biscay storm. The book adds an intriguing emotional dimension to the story – eagerness and joy, but also a son's frustration and fear.

"Dad was a bit of a tyrant and we lived under his command," Douglas explains. "He gave us a good thrashing every time we stepped out of line, and he had hands like spades." The Last Voyage of the Lucette is a catalogue of his violent explosions. Douglas is punched in the face when the crockery smashes after not being stowed away properly, and he is pummelled into submission. But Douglas gets his own back. En route to Jamaica, his father is almost washed overboard after being hit on the head by the boom. Douglas rescues him by grabbing his legs, but as his father hangs perilously over the side of the boat, Douglas extracts a vow: "Promise you'll never hit me again, ever, or so help me I'll dump you over the side right now."

Then there is Albert, a male nurse they met in Miami. "Albert was a very nice man, a very friendly man," Douglas recalls, "but he had a motive – me." He says he still feels let down that his father didn't protect him. The book alludes to "inappropriate sexual connotations" but is hazy about specifics. Did Albert make a pass at him. "Yeah, he did." Did he succeed? "Somewhat, yeah," he says, quietly.

He says he tried to tell his father, but "he didn't want to listen. Neither did my mother. I started to tell my mother about it many years later and she said, 'Douglas, don't give me a burden to take to my grave.' So how can you tell parents like that what is happening?"

Yet he reveres his father, too, and aspires to be adventurous like him – although his brother, Neil, confirms that Douglas is a much gentler character. "I haven't undermined my dad – I've championed him for what he did for us. Dad was a very courageous man. He would never have got us home otherwise. But I've shown that he is a human being and he made mistakes." Dougal Robertson died in 1991 but Douglas insists that he had his blessing to write the book.

The youngest of eight children, Dougal Robertson had been a master mariner in east Asia, but gave it up after meeting his wife, Lyn, in Hong Kong in 1952 to become a farmer. To understand how the Robertsons survived their ordeal, you only need look at their previous life at Meadows Farm, in Staffordshire. It was a lesson in deprivation. No running water or electricity until Douglas was 10. No TV, set, only paraffin lamps and candles. No money for children's shoes. "Dad's life was terrifically hard," says Douglas. "He was very frustrated – he saw his brothers and sisters sending their children off to university and private school, the sorts of things he was no longer able to provide." Douglas is still critical of this decision. "He was a professional man and he became a farmer. I wish he'd stayed a professional man."

Douglas believes, most fervently, that this frustration was behind his father's violent outbursts. It certainly made him disposed to want to begin again. So when Neil, then nine, asked why they couldn't sail around the world like the yachtsman Robin Knox-Johnston, Dougal leapt at the idea. As did Douglas. "I wanted to go to university and be a geologist, but sailing around the world seemed a much better option," he recalls. The only person with reservations was his mother. "She was aware of the dangers. She considered the risk. For Dad it was an escape, so he didn't consider the risk. They argued about it. Mum probably hoped it would be a passing phase, but then we sold the farm."

One of the great surprises is that they set off from Falmouth astonishingly unprepared. Dougal was an experienced sailor and Anne had learned the basics, but the children had no experience whatsoever. "I still can't believe that!" cries Douglas. "Why didn't we learn to sail in those quiet waters at Falmouth? We went straight into a force 10 gale and it was horrific. I had no idea what to do."

But then no amount of experience would have prevented the whale attack. "I'm sure they thought we were a big whale. Maybe it was the shape of the hull or the speed we were moving at," he says. His most terrifying moment was yet to come – swimming in the water to the raft, after the Lucette went down. "I'd seen the whales in the water. I thought, 'This is how I'm going to die. I'm going to be eaten alive.'"

Once on the raft, he and his father came up with the plan that saved their lives: rather than aiming for land, they decided to aim for water – which meant sailing 400 miles north to the Doldrums.

Life on the raft was grim. "It got holed when we launched it and that hole got worse. We were sitting with the water up to our chest. We had salt-water sores all over us and the heat would be taken out of your body – it was horrible. We used to take it in turns to sit on the thwart [seat] because it was dry, and my mum, God bless her, would say, 'Doug, you take my turn.' And she'd sit in the water for another hour." Sleep was impossible, because as soon as they nodded off, their heads would hit the water and they'd jump awake. Lyn was terrified that the twins would drown in their sleep.

The Ednamair, by contrast, was dry but flimsy. "We were always in danger of being swamped by a wave, and on the 23rd day it rained so heavily we thought we'd lost it. I think Dad was ready to give up. But Mum looked at Dad and held his eyes. Then Dad said, 'Bale for your lives and bale twice as quick as you're doing now.' And we did."

What kept them going was grit, determination and turtle blood. "You have to knock it back quickly, otherwise it sets into blancmange," Douglas explains. Plus it's got an "aftertaste that makes you want to wretch". Their mother rubbed turtle oil on the salt-water boils, and tried to keep them all hydrated with makeshift enema tubes made from the rungs of a ladder. "It was her nursing background. She knew the water at the bottom of the dinghy was poisonous if taken orally because it was a mixture of rain water, blood and turtle offal. But if you take it rectally, the poison doesn't go through the digestive system."

By the time the Toku Maru, a Japanese fishing boat, rescued them after spotting a distress flare, they were so dehydrated that they hadn't peed for 20 days and had tongues so swollen with thirst that they could hardly speak. "It was like having our lives given back to us, a pinnacle of contentment never reached again," says Douglas. When they got to Panama, he celebrated with three rancher's breakfasts of steak, eggs and chips.

After they got back - another voyage on board the MV Port Auckland – the family lived in a caravan on an aunt's farm in the Midlands for six weeks. When Dougal got an advance from his publisher, they moved to a rented cottage. But Douglas says that family life was changed for ever. "Mum and Dad divorced. They couldn't be together after that." He says they had terrible arguments on the dinghy.

"My mother's fault I'm afraid," says Douglas. "She'd argue about not having electricity at the farm and not having proper running water or shoes for the kids, and Dad didn't need that."

Dougal bought another yacht and went to live in the Mediterranean. Lyn went back to farming, on a farm bought for £20,000 by Dougal from sales of Survive the Savage Sea.

Douglas believes his parents never stopped loving each other. Dougal died from cancer, aged 67, and for the last three years of his life, Lyn nursed him at their daughter's house. She died aged 75, also from cancer. Douglas went on to join the navy, and then became an accountant. He has five children from two relationships.

"Dad always felt guilty," concludes Douglas. "He always said, 'I don't know why I did it. I could have taken you to the Mediterranean – that would have done. I didn't have to take you around the world.' But we would say, 'Dad, we survived! You helped us! We did it!'"

The Last Voyage of the Lucette by Douglas Robertson, Seafarer Books, £13.95. To order a copy for £12.95 with free UK p&p, go to theguardian.com/bookshop or call 0330 333 6846. The Ednamair is on display in the Survival Zone at The National Maritime Museum, Falmouth , until January

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Family were sunk by killer whales and stranded on a tiny dinghy

They survived on turtle blood and water enemas

• 14:00, 5 FEB 2023
• Updated 11:03, 16 AUG 2023

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It was one of the most extraordinary voyages to ever leave Cornwall. Little did the Robertson family realise on January 27, 1971, but their adventure of a lifetime would turn into a nightmare which saw them attacked by killer whales and surviving on water enemas and turtle blood in a tiny life raft for almost six weeks.

It all started when Neil Robertson said one day: "Daddy’s a sailor. Why don’t we sail around the world?” And, so, Lyn and Dougal Robertson and their children - Anne, 18, Dougal, 16 and Neil and his twin brother Sandy, nine - decided to do exactly that in their modest sailing yacht Lucette.

After setting sail from Falmouth , the Robertsons spent the first 18 months sailing across the Atlantic and stopping at various Caribbean ports. Anne decided to retire from the voyage in the Bahamas and the family welcomed Robin Williams, a 22-year-old Welsh graduate in economics and statistics, to join them on their onward voyage to New Zealand, via the Panama Canal and the Galapagos Islands.

Read more: Cornwall's Lana Peters was actually dictator Stalin's daughter

They were about 200 miles west of the Galapagos when on June 15, 1972, three horrendous sledgehammer blows hit the hull of Lucette. The boat had been attacked by three male Orca whales. It only took minutes for Lucette to sink. The family grabbed a few items and abandoned ship and managed to board their inflatable rubber life raft and 9ft fiberglass dinghy, Ednamair.

The group only had enough water for ten days and emergency rations for three days. Lyn had grabbed their papers, the logbook and a bag of onions, and they had a kitchen knife, a tin of biscuits, ten oranges, six lemons, half a pound of glucose sweets and flares plus Lyn's sewing box.

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They had no maps, compass or instruments and nobody knew they were missing. Their fight for survival had begun.

For the next five and a half weeks they would fight for their lives, working constantly to keep their raft afloat, catching rain water, fishing, bailing and eking out their meager provisions. Holes started appearing in the raft, and on the 17th day, the floor gave way, forcing them all to take to the open dinghy.

They spent the following 21 days in these cramped conditions, surviving through fierce storms and drought, and coping with severe hunger, thirst and exposure; their bodies wracked with sores and cramp through lack of movement. They knew that nobody would be out looking for them; no one knew they were in trouble simply because they had not expected to be heard of for some time.

Neil and Robin suffered terrible sea sickness but there were fortuitous moments too. A huge 35lb dorado fish landed in the dinghy so there was raw fish for breakfast, with the leftovers cut into strips to dry.

Turtle became the mainstay of their diet. They ate the meat and eggs and drank the blood. The raft was leaking and they were all sitting in water up to their chests, giving them saltwater boils. They set up a makeshift fishing line but wily sharks stole any fish which were caught.

On Day 15 Dougal dived in and swam to retrieve the dinghy which had broken free from the raft. Exhausted, he somehow found the strength and escaped the sharks. It was at this stage that Lyn suggested using the water from the bottom of the dinghy in the form of enemas. It was too foul to drink, but would allow their bodies to keep hydrated. Douglas crafted the makeshift equipment and everyone except Robin accepted the enemas.

On Day 17 the bottom of the raft virtually disappeared and they had to transfer to the dinghy. They salvaged what they could from the raft including flotation pieces to be secured to the bow of Ednamair and the canopy to give them shelter.

Day 20, July 4, was Lyn’s birthday. They all sang Happy Birthday and dined on a feast of fresh turtle meat, dried turtle meat and dried dorado, with water to drink. By Day 27, after surviving a number of frightful storms, they were using turtle oil made from the fat for use in enemas and to soothe damaged skin.

On Day 29 Dougal caught a 5ft Mako shark, hauled it on board and cut its head off. The severed head closed its mouth on his hand and drew blood. He kept the teeth as a souvenir. By Day 36 clothes were tattered and threadbare but Lyn washed and mended them - her sewing kit proved a vital lifeline. The twins were very thin by this stage - Neil was emaciated and Sandy had a cough, possibly pneumonia.

On July 23, 1972, 38 days into their trip in the Ednamair, they were finally picked up after a Japanese fishing trawler, the Toka Maru II, on her way to the Panama Canal, spotted their distress flare. The Japanese sailors couldn't believe what they saw.

The Robertsons and their guest had travelled over 750 miles by raft and dinghy and had about 290 miles left until they would reach land. Robin flew back to England and the Robertson family came back by ship, the MV Port Auckland. Their daughter Anne was waiting back in England, and the family were soon all together again.

The Ednamair is on permanent display in the National Maritime Museum Cornwall (NMMC) in Falmouth, which tells the extraordinary story in full. The Roberstons - and the museum - mark three dates each year: the date they left Falmouth on January 27, Sinking Day (as the family call it) on June 13 and Rescue Day on July 23.

Last year the family spent the 50th anniversary of Sinking Day at the museum . "It was incredibly poignant and very special for everyone involved," said a NMMC spokesperson.

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The incredible story of a family who survived for SIX WEEKS while lost at sea

Douglas Robertson's dad was on the verge of bankruptcy when deciding to sell his farm and buy a boat - a decision which very nearly killed his family

• 07:00, 4 May 2016
• Updated 08:55, 4 May 2016

Douglas Robertson was 18 years old when his father announced he was selling the family farm to buy a boat.

Dad Dougal was struggling on the verge of bankruptcy, so he decided to pack up his wife and his children and take them sailing around the world.

But what started off as an exciting adventure ended in horror when the boat sank and the family spent nearly six weeks adrift in a tiny dinghy.

Former maritime captain Dougal, then 47, was the only one with any sailing experience - Douglas, his mum Lyn, sister Anne, 19, and twin brothers Neil and Sandy, 12, were novices.

They left Falmouth in 1971 on board the Lucette, a 43ft schooner - and sailed straight into a storm. Everyone learned the ropes fast.

Now 61, Douglas tells The New Day the incredible story of their survival.

My dad had been a farmer for 15 years, but we couldn’t even pay the electricity bills.

One day he decided we should change our lives. He could have had a midlife crisis or an affair but instead he sold up, bought the Lucette and took us around the world.

Dad had experience of big boats, but no small vessel experience. We sailed all the way through the Caribbean, Jamaica, Panama and spent three weeks in the Galapagos Islands.

For me, at 18, it was great fun. I remember my Dad standing on the deck and screaming ‘yee-haa’ then a wave came across the bow and soaked us all. Neil and Sandy fell about laughing.

But after over a year at sea, 200 miles from the nearest land, disaster struck. A pod of killer whales circled the yacht and starting barging us, thinking we were a whale.

The blows were like sledgehammers smashing into the hull. We began to sink. Water was ­everywhere and I was terrified. All I could hear was Dad shouting, ‘Abandon ship!’ I called back, ‘Where to? We’re in the middle of the ocean.’ He shouted, ‘Overboard man! Get in the raft.’

Everything was a blur. Mum was caught in the rigging of the sinking yacht and I was in the water trying to fix a hole in the lifeboat thinking, ‘I’m going to die.’ Killer whales were swimming all around me.

But two minutes later, it was over. We found ourselves shipwrecked, sitting in a small fibreglass lifeboat in the middle of the ocean. Me, mum, dad, my two brothers and deck hand Robin (Anne had left the trip in the Bahamas) watched the remains of our yacht sink into the sea.

For two days we sat in shock, just imagining how we would die: starvation or drowning. We only had enough water for 10 days, plus some food and sweets. Someone had grabbed a bag of onions.

Dad said, ‘We’re 200 miles west of Cape Espinoza, we’ve got 2,700 miles ahead of us to the Maldives. We’re never going to make it.’ But I had an idea – if we sailed to the middle of the Pacific where there was regular rain and more chance of rescue, we could ­collect rainwater and at least stay alive.

Life on the boat was rough. We were up to our knees in seawater most of the time. We got sores all over our bodies, so we’d take it in turns spending an hour on the dry bit of the boat, then an hour off it.

We knew if we were going to survive, we’d have to live off the ocean. You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to kill a turtle with your bare hands. The first ones I caught I had to let go – they fight hard and slash you with razor-sharp claws. But you learn quickly when you have to. We ended up catching 13 in total.

We’d tie them up, bleed their jugular into a cup and drink their blood. It’s grim – a little bit salty and hard to get down – but it keeps you alive.

The meat was like steaks. Sometimes we ate the eggs from inside a turtle. Steak and eggs together, it was incredible!

We’d also eat the contents of sharks’ stomachs. You’d find a whole flying fish in there inside their stomach, and it would taste as if it had been cooked in a grill. We realised turtle fat, when heated in the sun, made a good salve. It kept you waterproof which stopped the sores.

But being stuck in that 10ft space, we argued a lot. The ­lowest moment was when we lost all our water on the 23rd day adrift. We’d tied the tanks together and hung them off the side of the boat. But a particularly angry turtle slashed the rope with its claws, and all we could do was watch our water tanks sail off into the ocean.

We couldn’t drink the water from the bottom of the boat. Mum, a nurse, said if we drank it it would make us ill. But she knew that there was one way we could take the fetid water without being sick – through our backsides. A thirsty man will do anything, so we created an enema system from the rungs of a metal boat ladder.

It was a two-man job – three men if you consider the person receiving it – but we managed it.

Some days the sun was our greatest enemy, on others it was the rain. We’d either spend our time lying in the baking heat, sucking on pieces of rubber ­trying to create saliva just to ease our thirst, or being flung around the boat by storms.

But among the desolation, I learned to treasure each day. Watching the sun come up and go down becomes incredible as you are so delighted just to be alive for another day.

After 38 days, my plan paid off. On the horizon we saw a Japanese trawler boat slowly coming towards us. We were jumping up and down like crazy people. Dad had been sunk in Sri Lanka by the Japanese in 1942, and here they were in 1972 plucking him out of the water and saving his life.

We were adrift for five weeks, but it took us 20 years to get over it. Mum and Dad divorced afterwards, and dad died from cancer in 1992. People ask me if I hold a grudge against him. I don’t. He was only 5ft 5in, but when sharks circled our boat waiting for us to die, he’d punch them with his bare hands. He never stopped protecting his family.

We don’t often talk about what happened, but every now and then, we’ll go to the National Maritime Museum, where our little lifeboat is kept, and remember: life is precious.

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The Robertson Family Rescue

By Lynne Vosper.

Lyn and Dougal Robertson were struggling dairy farmers who decided to sell their farm at Meerbrook, near Leek in Staffordshire and to purchase a boat to sail around the world with their family, 16-year-old son Douglas, daughter Anne, 18, and twin sons Neil and Sandy, aged nine.  It all started when Neil said, in all innocence, “Daddy’s a sailor.  Why don’t we sail around the world?”  The farm was sold in 1970 and the family purchased a fifty-year-old, nineteen-ton, forty-three-foot schooner Lucette in Malta and sailed her to Falmouth in October 1970.

The Robertson Family onboard Lucette in Falmouth before departure. Photograph from ‘The Last Voyage of the Lucette ’ by Douglas Robertson.

The family finally left Falmouth on 27 January 1971 on their adventure of a lifetime.  It was a poorly planned voyage; although Dougal was a Master Mariner and an experienced sailor and Anne had learned the basics on the voyage back from Malta, the children did not have any sailing experience. Lyn was a practising midwife and a State Registered Nurse. They spent the first eighteen months sailing across the Atlantic and stopping at various Caribbean ports. Anne decided to retire from the voyage in the Bahamas and the family welcomed Robin Williams, a 22-year-old Welsh graduate in economics and statistics on board to join them on their onward voyage to New Zealand, via the Panama Canal and the Galapagos Islands.  They were heading for the Pacific Ocean, some 64 million square miles in area and 35,000 feet deep, and with over 30,000 islands spread over almost a third of the earth’s surface.

Map of the entire voyage. Illustration from ‘The Last Voyage of the Lucette ’ by Douglas Robertson

The Attack – Day 1

After leaving Cape Espinosa on Fernandina Island in the Galapagos on 13 June 1972, they set sail for the Marquesas Islands some 3,000 miles west. They were about 200 miles west of the Galapagos when, at 9.57am on 15 June three horrendous sledgehammer blows hit the hull of Lucette , she had been attacked by three male Orca whales.  It only took minutes for Lucette to sink.  The family grabbed a few items and abandoned ship and managed to board their inflatable rubber life raft and nine-foot fiberglass dinghy Ednamair .  They only had enough water for ten days and emergency rations for three days on the raft.  Lyn had taken their papers, the logbook, and a bag of onions, and they had a kitchen knife, a tin of biscuits, ten oranges, six lemons, half a pound of glucose sweets and flares.  Lyn had brought her sewing box which proved to be a treasure trove of useful items. They had no maps, compass or instruments and nobody knew they were missing.  Their fight for survival had begun.

Castaways – Day 2

Dougal decided to head north for the Doldrums where there would be rain that they could collect for drinking water, and they might be closer to shipping lanes and be able to catch the counter current back to America. The survival raft was eight-foot by six-foot and was in poor condition and leaking. There were bellows to keep the raft inflated but they became broken and so Dougal, Douglas and Robin took turns to blow it up by mouth which was exhausting. They bailed out the Ednamair and worked on the jury rig using a paddle, an oar, and a makeshift sail to convert the dinghy into a tug which they used to tow the raft stern first.

Ednamair towing the raft stern first. Illustration from ‘Survive the Savage Sea’ by Dougal Robertson.

Hunger and thirst were the greatest problems to be overcome. The group had several cans of water and the few rations they had managed to salvage, which lasted them about six days. They ate flying fish that landed in the raft and the dinghy, and caught dorado but Turtle became the mainstay of their diet. They ate the meat and eggs and drank the blood. The raft was leaking, and they were all sat in water up to their chests, giving them saltwater boils. They used the wind and current to their advantage, heading to the northeast towards Central America.

Every day was a challenge with some days more memorable than others, with details of each day of the ordeal recorded in Dougal’s improvised logbook written with a biro found in Lyn’s sewing box.

Day 3 – A flying fish landed in Ednamair , Lyn marinated it with lemon juice. Neil and Robin had terrible sea sickness.

Day 4 – The leaking raft needed topping up with air more often.

Day 5 – Leaks found and repaired in the raft.

Day 6 – A huge 35lb Dorado landed in the dinghy so there was raw fish for breakfast, and plenty left to cut into strips to dry.

Day 7 – Wednesday 21 June.  Heavy rain, allowing cans and bags to be filled with water.  There was great excitement when Douglas spotted a cargo ship a few miles away from their position.  Two parachute rocket flares and three hand flares were used but the Straat Cook failed to see them and sailed on by, to the huge disappointment of all onboard the raft.

The first turtle was caught later that day and was killed taking great care not to spill any blood into the sea that would attract sharks.

Day 8 – Breakfast of turtle steaks and eggs.

Day 10 – By now everyone had saltwater boils, there was not much water left and the raft needed to be constantly inflated.

Day 11 – Hoping for rain. Hoped to be in the rain-bearing doldrums in a few days.

Day 13 – In desperate need of water. Sharks stole fish from the fishing line.

Day 14 – The raft was in even more poor condition, there was water flooding into it and a need for constant bailing. It was the beginning of the end for the raft. Caught a small turtle. Caught the blood in bailers and drank it.

Day 15 – Heavy rain at last enabling them to fill all the containers. The dinghy broke away from the raft.  Dougal dived in and swam to retrieve it, somehow finding the energy. Luckily, he escaped the sharks and was utterly exhausted. It was at this stage that Lyn suggested using the water from the bottom of the dinghy in the form of enemas. It was too foul to drink but would allow their bodies to absorb water. Everyone except Robin accepted the enemas. Douglas crafted the makeshift enema equipment.

Day 16 – All on board were in very poor physical condition with sores, boils and sunburn. Still raining.

Day 17 – This was a significant day. It was the day the bottom of the raft virtually disappeared, and they had to transfer to the dinghy. They salvaged what they could from the raft including flotation pieces to be secured to the bow of Ednamair and the canopy to give them shelter. They were unable to move places without planning, to maintain an even keel. Each person had their allotted place.

Ednamair under way on Day 17 following the sinking of the raft. Illustration from ‘The Last Voyage of the Lucette ’ by Douglas Robertson.

Illustration from ‘Survive the Savage Sea’ by Dougal Robertson.

Day 18 – A tasty breakfast of flying fish, turtle meat, mixed with pieces of turtle fat.  Saw frigate birds and storm petrels.  Clothes were disintegrating causing sunburn.

Day 19 – A blue-footed Booby landed on Douglas’s shoulder.

Day 20 – 4 July was Lyn’s birthday.  Birthday feast of fresh turtle meat, dried turtle meat and dried dorado, with water to drink.  Sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to Lyn.

Day 21 – The sea anchor and float broke away.  Douglas rowed after it in a feat of sheer endurance, taking 35 minutes of rowing to retrieve it.  That afternoon Douglas saw a green flare often used by submarines on manoeuvres, but nothing came of it.

Day 22 – Caught a large turtle.  Had to drink the blood quickly before it coagulated.  Saved the deep yellow fat.  There was a terrible storm and torrential rain.

Day 23 – Still torrential rain requiring constant bailing.  They were in a desperate situation and had to bail for their lives.  Douglas told everyone to sing to keep warm.  A miracle happened, the wind fell silent, and rain stopped.  The wind changed direction.  Somehow, they had survived the worst night yet.

Day 24 – Still raining and lightening all around them.

Day 25 – Food becoming short, but large turtle caught.  With more food and water all were improving physically and mentally.

Day 26 – Another stormy day.  Lyn planned more enemas for herself and the twins.

Day 27 – Turtle oil made from the fat for use in enemas and sooth damaged skin.

Day 28 – By morning there was a rough southerly swell with 20-foot waves.  Continuous bailing needed. Heading north-east.

Day 29 – This was the day that Dougal caught a five-foot Mako shark, hauled it on board and cut its head off.  The severed head closed its mouth on Douglas’s hand and drew blood.  He kept the teeth.  Progress eastwards was improving.

Day 30 – Douglas spotted the Pole Star so they knew they were back in the northern hemisphere.

Day 31 – An enormous shark bumped the boat.  Food stocks were boosted by catching a turtle.

Day 32 – Here was a shortage of water again, but a 20lb dorado was caught.

Day 33 – Eat or be eaten was the law of survival at sea.  Three large dorado were caught, giving much needed fluids, helping to relieve the severe thirst of all.

Day 34 – Surviving on fish, eating the raw meat, sucking on the bones and eyes to get fluid.

Day 35 – Huge deluge of rain.  Filled the containers, tins and plastic bag with water.  Enemas for everyone for digestive reasons.  Found five holes in the flotation collar.

Day 36 – The seas were rough and squally.  Clothes were tattered and threadbare, but Lyn washed and mended them.  The twins were very thin, Neil was emaciated, and Sandy had a cough, possibly pneumonia.  If he did not improve, they would have to start rowing with or without reserves of water.

Day 37 – Dougal almost capsized the dinghy trying to drag a turtle onboard.  They were approaching the direct route between Panama and Hawaii where there was a greater chance of seeing a ship.  Sandy’s cough had become worse and the prospect of rowing the estimated 350 miles to land became more pressing.  Land was about 15 days away and there was probably enough dried meat and fish to last.

Drying Fish. Illustration from ‘The Last Voyage of the Lucette’ by Douglas Robertson.

The Rescue – Day 38

While planning to draw up a rowing rota, Dougal spotted a ship coming towards them.  He waved a red flare and the torch.  The ship gave a prolonged blast on her whistle, they had been seen and they were going to be saved.

On 23 July 1972, 38 days into their trip in the Ednamair , they were finally picked up after a Japanese fishing trawler, the Toka Maru II , on her way to the Panama Canal, spotted their distress flare.  The Japanese sailors looked in disbelief.  They were going to cast off the Ednamair but after signalling that they wanted to keep the dinghy, they emptied out all the bad smelling meat and other contents and brought her on deck.  The Japanese crew looked after everyone well.

They had travelled over 750 miles by raft and dinghy and had about 290 miles left until they would reach land.  When they arrived in Panama on 28 July 1972 the world press was there to greet them. Robin flew back to England and the Robertson family came back by ship, the MV Port Auckland .  Their daughter Anne was waiting back in England, and the family were soon all together again.

It was their spirit of comradeship, ingenuity, love for each other and sheer determination to survive that brought them all home.  It was an experience none of them would ever forget.

The track of the survivors’ drift in the Pacific, after the loss of the Lucette . From ‘The Last Voyage of the Lucette ’ by Douglas Robertson.

A photograph taken after the rescue to show how everyone fitted into Ednamair . Photograph from ‘The Last Voyage of the Lucette ’ by Douglas Robertson.

Ednamair at National Maritime Museum Cornwall in Falmouth where she is on permanent display. © LM Vosper.

What happened to the Ednamair

The Ednamair was named after Lyn’s sisters, Edna and Mary.  Edna had given the family the money to buy the dinghy.

For many years after the rescue the Edmamair had been in the care of Edna, but later was brought to Falmouth where she had begun her voyage and was donated to National Maritime Museum Cornwall. On 26 November 2008, Douglas Robertson gave a lecture entitled ‘The Last Voyage of the Lucette ’ which was held at the museum.

Other artifacts on display include a pressure cooker weight from Lyn’s sewing box that was used as a fishing weight.  Some of the teeth from the 5-foot Mako shark were kept as a trophy.  Turtle Oil, saved by the Robertsons’ from their ordeal, was an extremely valued resource made by melting turtle fat in the sun.  The oil was used to rub onto saltwater boils, drunk as a warming tonic, mixed with fish and turtle meat to make a stew, and used as an enema.  The Enema Tube was cut from the boarding ladder of the life raft and was a good way of rehydrating the family using the dirty water from the bottom of the boat.

Ednamair and the Robertsons

The Museum is celebrating the 50th anniversary of this incredible story of human endurance with a talk by Douglas Robertson. Hear, in his own words, what happened on the 15 th June 1972 and the following 38 days as the family fought to live. Douglas will be joined by the other surviving members of the Robertson family for a panel discussion and an audience Q&A.

Further reading

We have two books for sale on our online shop, written by Dougal and Douglas. Every purchase supports the Museum.

‘Survive the Savage Sea’ by Dougal Robertson (1973) – available via our online shop .

‘The Last Voyage of the Lucette ’ by Douglas Robertson (2005) – available via our online shop .

The Bartlett Blog

This article has been written by Lynne Vosper to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the rescue of the Robertson family following the sinking of their schooner Lucette in the Pacific and tells how they survived in their raft and dinghy Ednamair , which is on permanent display at the National Maritime Museum Cornwall.  In one of the pockets of the raft was an instruction book entitled ‘Living in the Liferaft’ and this became Dougal Robertson’s logbook for the duration of the 38 days they struggled to survive.  He wrote all over the pages of the book and his notes formed the basis of two books, ‘Survive the Savage Sea’ by Dougal Robertson (1973) and ‘The Last Voyage of the Lucette ’ by Douglas Robertson (2005).

The Bartlett Blog is written and produced by the volunteers who staff The Bartlett Maritime Research Centre and Library of National Maritime Museum Cornwall. The 50th Anniversary of the Robertson Family Rescue  was written by Lynne Vosper.

The Bartlett Library  holds a Collection of over 20,000 volumes and offers access to one of the finest collections of maritime reference books, periodicals and archival material. The Bartlett Blog reflects the diversity of material available in The Bartlett Library.

How was your visit? Let us know on tripadvisor .

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The Last Voyage of the Lucette: Book Review

Posted by Wayne Gagnon | Book Reviews , Dogwatch

Back in the late 1970s, when I first felt the need to sail, I read everything our local library had on sailing and the adventure of the sea. One book I remember particularly well was Survive the Savage Sea, the story of Dougal Robertson and his family’s 38 days afloat in the South Pacific after their yacht, Lucette, had been sunk by a pod of killer whales. Now Dougal’s son Douglas, who survived the ordeal at the age of 18, has compiled a larger edition entitled The Last Voyage of the Lucette. While the original gives an account of how the family survived after they were sunk, this larger version, which includes the full text of Survive the Savage Sea, explores the challenges the family faced in the months and years leading up to their sinking.

The Last Voyage of the Lucette begins with Dougal’s autobiographical account of his experiences during World War II as a young officer aboard a freighter that was sunk by the Japanese, killing his wife and son. After the war he remarried and eventually gave up a life at sea for that of a dairy farmer in England with his new family. We learn about their hardships while trying to survive on the meager profits that life on the farm afforded them, their decision to sail around the world, and their cruise up to the time they were sunk off the Galapagos Islands. In addition to the full text of Survive the Savage Sea, there is some follow-up information on where the family is today, as well as 16 color photographs, several line drawings, and maps of their route.

Pop psychology says that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Many of the struggles the Robertsons faced are common to any family, but they play a more crucial role on a small boat in a hostile environment where there is little, if any, room for error or privacy. When one realizes the difficulties they faced on the farm and in the early days of their cruise, one can see how the family bonds were created and how each individual acquired the deep reserves of personal strength that carried him or her through their ordeal. Sir Robin Knox-Johnson writes in the foreward that both books “should be compulsory reading for anyone planning a world cruise.” While it is true that both books contain a lot of useful information, we can learn more from them than survival skills for the open sea.

The Last Voyage of the Lucette by Douglas Robertson (Seafarer Books; Sheridan House, 2005; 372 pages) 

About The Author

Wayne Gagnon

Wayne Gagnon is a semi-retired teacher who lives in Antigo, Wisconsin. He's owned Tortuga, a 1969 Westerly Centaur, since 2001, and sails her on the bay of Green Bay out of Marinette, Wisconsin. He's familiar with the waters around Door County and Michigan's Upper Peninsula, but Lake Huron's North Channel has been on his bucket list since he started sailing.

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Last Voyage of the Lucette: The Full, Previously Untold, Story of the Events First Described by the Author's Father, Dougal Robertson, in Survive the ... Sea. Interwoven with the original narrative. Paperback – Illustrated, March 1, 2005

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• Print length 388 pages
• Language English
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• Publication date March 1, 2005
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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Sheridan House; Illustrated edition (March 1, 2005)
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• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1574092065
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• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 16 ounces
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Watch CBS News

Killer whales sink yacht after 45-minute attack, Polish tour company says

By Emily Mae Czachor

November 6, 2023 / 9:58 AM EST / CBS News

A group of orcas managed to sink a yacht off the coast of Morocco last week, after its 45-minute attack on the vessel caused irreparable damage, a Polish tour company said.

The incident happened Tuesday, Oct. 31, as a crew with the boat touring group sailed through the Strait of Gibraltar. The narrow waterway bridges the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, which separates the southern tip of Europe from northern Africa. 

A pod of orcas, colloquially called killer whales, approached the yacht and "hit the steering fin for 45 minutes, causing major damage and leakage," the tour agency Morskie Mile, which is based in Warsaw and operated the yacht, wrote on  Facebook in a translated post.

Although its captain and crew were assisted by a search-and-rescue team as well as the Moroccan Navy, the yacht could not be salvaged. It sank near the entrance to the port of Tanger-Med, a major complex of ports some 30 miles northeast of Tangier along the Strait of Gibraltar. None of the crew members were harmed, said the Polish tour agency, adding that those on board the sunken yacht were already safe and in Spain by the time their Facebook post went live. 

"This yacht was the most wonderful thing in maritime sailing for all of us. Longtime friendships formed on board," wrote Morskie Mile. The company said it was involved in other upcoming cruises in the Canary Islands and would work to make sure those boat trips went ahead as planned.

Last week's incident in the Strait of Gibraltar was not the first of its kind. Reported attacks by killer whales that seem to be trying deliberately to capsize boats off the coast of Spain and Portugal have more than tripled over the last two years, according to data  released in the spring by the research group GTOA, which studies orcas around Gibraltar.

"Nobody knows why this is happening," Andrew W. Trites, professor and director of Marine Mammal Research at the University of British Columbia, told CBS News in May. "My idea, or what anyone would give you, is informed speculation. It is a total mystery, unprecedented." 

GTOA recorded 52 maritime interactions with orcas between the Strait of Gibraltar and Galicia, a coastal province in northwestern Spain, between July and November 2020. The incidents picked up in the years that followed, with 197 interactions recorded in 2021 and 207 recorded in 2022, GTOA said, noting that the interactions mainly affected sailboats. 

Then, in June of this year, one of two sailing teams involved in an international race around the world reported a frightening confrontation involving multiple orcas as they traveled through the Atlantic Ocean to the west of Gibraltar. The teams, which were competing in The Ocean Race, said the orcas did not damage their boats or harm crews, but recalled the sea creatures pushing up against and, in one instance, ramming into one of the boats. The orcas also nudged and bit the rudders, one crew member said.

Caitlin O'Kane and Kerry Breen contributed to this report.

Emily Mae Czachor is a reporter and news editor at CBSNews.com. She covers breaking news, often focusing on crime and extreme weather. Emily Mae has previously written for outlets including the Los Angeles Times, BuzzFeed and Newsweek.

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Russia’s damaged Black Sea flagship sinks in latest setback

FILE - A Russian sailor salutes on the bow of Missile Cruiser Moskva, left, as crew of Russian patrol ship Pitliviy, right, prepare to moor the vessel, in Sevastopol, Crimea, March 30, 2014. The Moskva was built in Ukraine during the Soviet era and now is the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet in its war with Ukraine. (AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin, File)

In this image from video provided by the Ukrainian Presidential Press Office, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks from Kyiv, Ukraine, Wednesday, April 13, 2022. (Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP)

This satellite image provided by Maxar Technologies shows cruiser Moskva in port Sevastopol in Crimea on April 7, 2022. (Satellite image ©2022 Maxar Technologies via AP)

FILE - The Russian missile cruiser Moskva, the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet is seen anchored in the Black Sea port of Sevastopol, on Sept. 11, 2008. The Russian Defense Ministry confirmed the ship was damaged Wednesday, April 13, 2022, but not that it was hit by Ukraine. The Ministry says ammunition on board detonated as a result of a fire whose causes “were being established,” and the Moskva’s entire crew was evacuated.(AP Photo, File)

A woman looks as Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) servicemen enter a building during an operation to arrest suspected Russian collaborators in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Thursday, April 14, 2022. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)

Rifles and an axe lay in a field where Ukrainian soldiers dig a trench in case of another Russian invasion, in Bucha, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday April 14, 2022. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) servicemen enter a building during an operation to arrest suspected Russian collaborators in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Thursday, April 14, 2022. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)

A cemetery worker carries a cross for the tomb of Tetyana Gramushnyak, 75, who was killed by shelling on March 19 while cooking food outside her home in Bucha, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday April 14, 2022. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

Cemetery workers during the funeral of Tetyana Gramushnyak, 75, killed by shelling on March 19 while cooking food outside her home in Bucha, in the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday April 14, 2022. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

Volunteers carry the body of a man killed during the war to a refrigerated container in Bucha, in the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday April 14, 2022. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

The tail of a missile in a yard of a residential area in a village of Senkivka, near the Belarus border, Chernihiv region, Ukraine, Thursday, April 14, 2022. The fluid nature of the conflict, which has seen fighting shift away from areas around the capital and heavily toward Ukraine’s east, has made the task of reaching hungry Ukrainians especially difficult. (AP Photo/George Ivanchenko)

A woman looks for goods dropped from the apartment building partly damaged by shelling, in Kramatorsk, Ukraine, Thursday, April 14, 2022. (AP Photo/Andriy Andriyenko)

People look at a crater of an explosion in a village of Horodnya, Chernihiv region, Ukraine, Thursday, April 14, 2022. The fluid nature of the conflict, which has seen fighting shift away from areas around the capital and heavily toward Ukraine’s east, has made the task of reaching hungry Ukrainians especially difficult. (AP Photo/George Ivanchenko)

A cemetery worker takes a rest from working on the graves of civilians killed in Bucha during the war with Russia, in the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday April 14, 2022. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

A Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) serviceman plays with a cat during an operation to arrest suspected Russian collaborators in Kharkiv, Ukraine, Thursday, April 14, 2022. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)

Women wait at a bus station in Kramatorsk, Ukraine, Thursday, April 14, 2022. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, a guided-missile cruiser that became a potent target of Ukrainian defiance in the opening days of the war, sank Thursday after it was heavily damaged in the latest setback for Moscow’s invasion.

Ukrainian officials said their forces hit the vessel with missiles, while Russia acknowledged a fire aboard the Moskva but no attack. U.S. and other Western officials could not confirm what caused the blaze.

The loss of the warship named for the Russian capital is a devastating symbolic defeat for Moscow as its troops regroup for a renewed offensive in eastern Ukraine after retreating from much of the north, including the capital, Kyiv.

In his nightly video address to the nation, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy alluded to the sinking as he told Ukrainians they should be proud of having survived 50 days under attack when the Russians “gave us a maximum of five.”

Listing the many ways Ukraine has defended against the invasion, he noted “those who showed that Russian warships can sail away, even if it’s to the bottom” of the sea. It was his only reference to the missile cruiser.

The Russian Defense Ministry said the ship sank in a storm while being towed to a port. Russia earlier said the flames on the ship, which would typically have 500 sailors aboard, forced the entire crew to evacuate. Later it said the blaze had been contained.

The Moskva had the capacity to carry 16 long-range cruise missiles, and its removal reduces Russia’s firepower in the Black Sea. It’s also a blow to Moscow’s prestige in a war already widely seen as a historic blunder . Now entering its eighth week, the invasion has stalled amid resistance from Ukrainian fighters bolstered by weapons and other aid sent by Western nations.

During the first days of the war, the Moskva was reportedly the ship that called on Ukrainian soldiers stationed on Snake Island in the Black Sea to surrender in a standoff. In a widely circulated recording, a soldier responded: “Russian warship, go (expletive) yourself.”

The Associated Press could not independently verify the incident, but Ukraine and its supporters consider it an iconic moment of defiance. The country recently unveiled a postage stamp commemorating it.

The news of the flagship overshadowed Russian claims of advances in the southern port city of Mariupol, where Moscow’s forces have been battling the Ukrainians since the early days of the invasion in some of the heaviest fighting of the war — at a horrific cost to civilians .

Russian Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov said Wednesday that 1,026 Ukrainian troops surrendered at a metals factory in the city. But Vadym Denysenko, adviser to Ukraine’s interior minister, rejected the claim, telling Current Time TV that “the battle over the seaport is still ongoing today.”

It was unclear how many forces were still defending Mariupol.

Russian state television broadcast footage that it said was from Mariupol showing dozens of men in camouflage walking with their hands up and carrying others on stretchers. One man held a white flag.

Mariupol has been the scene of the some the war’s worst suffering. Dwindling numbers of Ukrainian defenders are holding out against a siege that has trapped well over 100,000 civilians in desperate need of food, water and heating. David Beasley, executive director of the U.N. World Food Program, told AP in an interview Thursday that people are being “starved to death” in the besieged city.

Mariupol’s mayor said this week that more than 10,000 civilians had died and the death toll could surpass 20,000, after weeks of attacks and privation left bodies “carpeted through the streets.”

Mariupol’s capture is critical for Russia because it would allow its forces in the south, which came up through the annexed Crimean Peninsula, to fully link up with troops in the Donbas region, Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland and the target of the coming offensive.

The Russian military continues to move helicopters and other equipment together for such an effort, according to a senior U.S. defense official, and it will likely add more ground combat units “over coming days.” But it’s still unclear when Russia could launch a bigger offensive in the Donbas.

Moscow-backed separatists have been battling Ukraine in the Donbas since 2014, the same year Russia seized Crimea. Russia has recognized the independence of the rebel regions in the Donbas.

The loss of the Moskva could delay any new, wide-ranging offensive.

Maksym Marchenko, the governor of the Odesa region, across the Black Sea to the northwest of Sevastopol, said the Ukrainians struck the ship with two Neptune missiles and caused “serious damage.”

Russia’s Defense Ministry said ammunition on board detonated as a result of a fire, without saying what caused the blaze. It said the “main missile weapons” were not damaged. In addition to the cruise missiles, the warship also had air-defense missiles and other guns.

The Neptune is an anti-ship missile that was recently developed by Ukraine and based on an earlier Soviet design. The launchers are mounted on trucks stationed near the coast, and, according to the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, the missiles can hit targets up to 280 kilometers (175 miles) away. That would have put the Moskva within range, based on where it was when the fire began.

Launched as the Slava in 1979, the cruiser saw service in the Cold War and during conflicts in Georgia and Syria, and helped conduct peacetime scientific research with the United States. During the Cold War, it carried nuclear weapons.

In 1989, the Slava was supposed to host a meeting off Malta between Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and U.S. President George H.W. Bush, but gale-force winds moved the talks to the docked cruiser Maxim Gorky.

On Thursday, other Russian ships that were also in the northern Black Sea moved further south after the Moskva caught fire, said a senior U.S. defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal military assessments.

Before the Moskva sank, Yuriy Sak, an adviser to Ukraine’s defense minister, told AP its removal would mean “we can only have a sigh of relief.”

While the U.S. was not able to confirm Ukraine’s claims of striking the warship, U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan called it “a big blow to Russia.”

“They’ve had to kind of choose between two stories: One story is that it was just incompetence, and the other was that they came under attack, and neither is a particularly good outcome for them,” Sullivan told the Economic Club of Washington.

Russia invaded on Feb. 24 and has lost potentially thousands of fighters. The conflict has killed untold numbers of Ukrainian civilians and forced millions more to flee.

It has also further inflated prices at grocery stores and gasoline pumps, while dragging on the global economy. The head of the International Monetary Fund said Thursday that the war helped push the organization to downgrade economic forecasts for 143 countries.

Also Thursday, Russian authorities accused Ukraine of sending two low-flying military helicopters some 11 kilometers (7 miles) across the border and firing on residential buildings in the village of Klimovo, in Russia’s Bryansk region. Russia’s Investigative Committee said seven people, including a toddler, were wounded.

Russia’s state security service had earlier said Ukrainian forces fired mortar rounds at a border post in Bryansk as refugees were crossing, forcing them to flee.

The reports could not be independently verified. Earlier this month, Ukrainian security officials denied that Kyiv was behind an air strike on an oil depot in the Russian city of Belgorod, some 55 kilometers (35 miles) from the border.

Associated Press journalists around the world contributed to this report.

Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

Russian crowd mourns Black Sea flagship after sinking

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Putin says concert attackers were fleeing to Ukraine when detained

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday that the four men who attacked a concert near Moscow were heading towards Ukraine when they were detained, and that they hoped to cross the border.

Victorian ferry rescues children from boat after fears of fire off Queenscliff

Victorian school students have been rescued from a boat in Port Phillip this morning after its engine started smoking.

Police said 22 passengers, including school students, were in the boat off Queenscliff when a suspected engine bay fire broke out about 8:30am.

A ferry and a Parks Victoria vessel quickly responded a short time later and all passengers were safely evacuated onto the ferry.

Nobody was injured, a police spokesperson said.

A spokesperson from the school, Hamilton and Alexandra College, said a group of year eight and nine students were attending a two-day outdoor education camp in Queenscliff when the incident occurred.

"This morning, 20 students and two staff members were on board a snorkelling boat when the engine stopped working and a small amount of smoke was detected," the spokesperson said.

"As a precautionary measure, action was taken immediately to have all passengers calmly evacuated onto the Queenscliff-Sorrento Ferry."

The owner of the boat escorting the students, James Murphy, said the evacuation of was a standard procedure following a "very minor incident".

"Shortly after departure the skipper noticed a little bit of smoke coming from the engine room, he's then reverted back to our safety management system procedures," Mr Murphy told ABC.

"Part of those procedures is to ensure everybody on board are safe, so [the skipper] has called the local vessel … and they've collected the passengers while he ascertained what the challenge was.

"He was able to get the boat started again, no challenge, and driven it back to the harbour so we're treating it as a very minor incident."

Police said the exact circumstances surrounding the fire were still being investigated, but it was not being treated as suspicious.

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