'I Saw People Trapped Inside Asking Me to Break the Glass. Most Suffocated and Died'

It was supposed to be an evening cruise to celebrate the completion of one of the Gulf kingdom’s most prestigious building projects, the twin towers of the Bahrain World Trade Centre.

But even before the ship, an old Arab dhow, left the dock near the Marina Club at Manama there were signs that something was wrong. Jai Kumar George, an Indian engineering consultant who had worked on the towers for 18 months, felt uneasy as he gathered with his friends on the pier, ready to board at 8pm on Thursday. "The boat was oscillating from one side to another. Glasses and bottles were falling down on to the pier even before we left," he told the Guardian.

Others were worried that the ship was overcrowded. Raymond Austin, 50, a Briton who works for a concrete company in Bahrain, decided not to board. Isa al-Qobaisi, who owned the vessel, told the Gulf Daily News there were too many people on board and the captain had initially refused to leave the dock. Bahrain’s interior ministry said as many as 14 people disembarked before the ship sailed. There were 126 guests left on the cruise.

Less than two hours later, as the ship took a sharp left turn less than a mile off the coast, it capsized, flipping over in seconds. Up to 57 passengers were killed almost immediately, including 12 Britons. Rescuers pulled 67 survivors from the sea. Two passengers were still missing.

The ship had two decks: one below, which was enclosed with glass windows, where tables and chairs had been set for dinner, and the upper one, where guests sat in the open air talking and drinking as they sailed around the harbour.

Early in the cruise, the captain asked many of the guests to move down from the top deck, where there had been a welcoming speech. "He told us not to move around too much on the top deck to balance the boat and he said people should move to the lower deck. Most people went down," Mr George said last night from his hospital bed. He went to dinner, then returned to the top deck to sit with friends. The sea was calm. "All of a sudden it happened. The boat turned to the left, the wind was coming very fast and the boat tipped over," he said. "We crashed across the deck and straight into the water."

The guests on the lower deck were trapped and banged against the windows, screaming for help. "I saw people inside asking me to break the glass. I started to kick. I didn’t have anything with me that I could use and the glass was not breaking. Most of the people suffocated and died inside," Mr George said. "I tried my level best but I couldn’t break the glass."

He and others dragged themselves on to the exposed hull. One woman found a mobile phone in her handbag and Mr George called friends and told them to get help. By then he realised that the man he had been sitting next to on the top deck, a British engineer, was dead. "One minute we were talking and taking photos. Then he was gone."

As the survivors clung to the wreckage another cruise ship passed by. The survivors shouted and waved. The second ship did not stop, Mr George said, but he did see passengers put on their lifejackets. "It means they were aware something had happened, but they didn’t stop," he said. Finally, the coastguards arrived and began lifting off the survivors. Mr George climbed on to the third rescue boat - by then, he said, it had been 35 minutes since the accident.

Many of the passengers worked for Nass-Murray & Roberts, the construction company in charge of the building project which had chartered the boat. Others were engineers from other companies involved in the work, together with their wives and partners. Four of the Britons who died were named as David Evans, the project chairman, Will Nolan, Stephen Grady and Chris Braysher, who had dual UK and South African nationality. They worked for Nass-Murray & Roberts.

Two survivors were still being treated at Salmaniya Medical Complex in Manama: Mr George, who needed three stitches to a head wound, and a second Indian man, who was more seriously injured. Doctors said 31 others had been treated and allowed home.

Bahraini officials last night arrested the ship’s captain, saying he didn’t have the proper qualifications. David Pouponneau, harbour manager for the Marina Club, said the ship was licensed for 100 passengers.

The coastguard was alerted at about 9.45pm local time by a mobile phone call from a passenger, the interior ministry said. Colonel Yousif Al Ghatam, coastguard director, said there was little chance for passengers to grab lifejackets. "Suddenly it flipped," he said. "All of the people who died except one were below deck when it overturned."

Other dead passengers were from India, Pakistan, South Africa, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, South Korea, Germany and Ireland. Investigators will interview survivors and prospective passengers such as Mr Austin, who chose not to board the boat. He telephoned his daughter Rebecca in Kent yesterday to tell her he was well but "shaken up and distraught".