Researchers looking into the ‘Greek Titanic’ have found rare items on the ocean floor near the ship’s wreckage.
The Heimara sank on January 19, 1947, after hitting an islet in the South Euboean Gulf, killing 400 people in Greece’s deadliest-ever maritime disaster.
New photos have now shown artefacts littering the ocean floor near the wreck, frozen in time for almost eight decades.
Among them are the shoes of the dead, some of them children’s, as well as paper items, and letters from the ship’s nameplate.
Perhaps most surprising is the wealth of surviving paper artefacts, researcher Kostas Thoctarides said.
‘During the dive, we found newspapers, books and correspondence buried in the muddy bottom of the Euboean Sea since 1947. These were Greek, Cypriot and French newspapers,’ he said.
‘There were telegrams, French books, and stamps of the time that were not completely destroyed, although they had been lying on the seabed for dozens of years. Finding paper underwater is a particularly rare occurrence and there are very few times when documents have survived on the seabed.’
The ship’s sinking would have been ‘shocking’ for the passengers – with the experience made even more terrifying by the steam escaping from the engine room.
‘The rudder was disabled in the starboard position, while water began to flow into the ship’s interior from the holes,’ Mr Thoctarides said.
Captain Spyros Bilinis then ordered his crew to use a manual rudder to ground her in the shallows – only to find the other rudder was also destroyed, and the radio wasn’t working.
‘The captain attempted to maintain order while distributing life jackets to the passengers and loading them into the lifeboats. But he did not succeed because several members of his own crew were the first to leave the steamer in an attempt to save themselves alone. In the darkness and panic, shots could be heard.’
The ship was largely salvaged in 1968, but enough remains to confirm the cause of the sinking, alongside numerous personal artefacts.
‘Next to the ship’s ventilators, personal items of the Heimara’s passengers were scattered. Such as boots, ladies’ shoes, children’s shoes, combs, women’s stockings, life jackets, and an officer’s sword,’ Mr Thoctarides said.
‘The most emotional thing we found was a pair of children’s shoes among the wreckage, apparently from one of the unfortunate children who perished in the sinking of the ship.
‘The presence of human elements was intense and brought to mind scenes from the unbelievable tragedy that occurred there. You feel like you’re travelling in time and you have a sense of sadness for everything that happened.’
The sinking has been blamed on a failure to change course from 140 degrees to 125 degrees after the last shift change on the bridge.
Mr Thoctarides and his team also discovered that the crew had failed to ensure that the watertight doors were closed and that the ship had never had an abandonment drill.
Today, the ship lies at a depth of 33 metres near the Megalo Verdougi islet, close to the ferry route between Agia Marina, on the Greek mainland, and Nea Stira, on the island of Euboea.
Artefacts from the wreck are now on display in a new free exhibition in Rafina.
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