-- Cheers mates!
-- Cheers Earnest! Happy Birthday old man!

Today Earnest was celebrating his 45th birthday and he was celebrating it with Tommy and Lance who were his childhood friends. Three of them were the same age, all single and desperate.

Yesterday they landed on the East London Airport in Eastern Cape prepared for an exciting journey on the MTS Oceanos cruise.

It was the night of August 3 a bit after 9 p.m. in the evening. They were trying to calculate what is the percentage of all single women out of all 571 passengers on the ship.

Seems like it wasn’t the best occasion for meeting new people as most of the passengers were already lying in their beds.

Moss Hills and his wife Tracy were entertaining the audience at the restaurant. There were not more than 30 people including Earnest, Tommy and Lance applauding them after each song.

It was almost 9.30.

The beer was over and Earnest, who was already half drunk decided to buy one more beer for three of them. He approached the bar with a big smile on his face staring at Stacey who’s blue eyes made him melt everytime he was staring at her.

Suddenly….

Earnest heard a loud noise, coming from the pipes that were behind the bar, those pipes exploded releasing a large amount of water quickly flooding the entire room. Stacey, who was serving drinks, was completely paralyzed by the shock. She did not understand what was happening.

Earnest told Stacey to get away from the bar immediately, that there were electrical wires and a short circuit could occur. The few people who were in the bar, met to try to find out what was going on.

Tommy and Lance got up from the table and approached the group that quickly formed in the bar lounge. Stacey took the internal phone that was in the hallway and tried to communicate with the bridge of the ship, but nobody answered, that should not happen, someone was always on duty to attend to any emergency.

Meanwhile in the engine room of the ship, the explosion of one of the machines had caused a hole in the hull of the ship, and the water quickly entered the room causing in a few minutes a great flood. The water entered the drainage pipes, sending these waters to all the compartments and cabins where there were pipes and water drains.

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The engineers of the engine room, and mechanics quickly vacated the areas and abandoned them, breaking all safety manuals and regulations. Paul the engineer in charge ran to the cabin of captain and informed him what happened, the ship was making water and there was not much time before it sank.

The captain gave the orden to leave the ship, and issued a call for help to authorities and nearby boats. Together with his crew they began to abandon the ship, without caring for the safety of the passengers they were in charge of, nor their lives.

Stacey looked at Earnest in fright and informed her that nobody answered the phone on the bridge. Earnest decided with his friends that they would go out to find out what was going on, but that for security everyone should get on the deck of the ship. Moss and Tracy knew the ship very well, because for two years they had been working entertaining the public in the bar, and they offered to help the other passengers to take them to the deck of the ship, where the lifeboats were.

This was how the group that was in the bar separated, Stacey along with Earnest, Tommy and Lance went to the bridge to look for the captain, when they arrived they found the room empty and abandoned, there was nobody. Tommy, looking out the window, noticed how life-saving boats could be seen in the distance, and indicated to Ernest that the captain and his crew had abandoned the ship leaving them all to their fate.

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Ernest was outraged and angered by such atrocious behavior of the crew and its captain, and together with his friends decided to evacuate and save as many people as they could. They devised a plan so that each of them could go to a different place on the ship, to wake the passengers and take them to the lifeboats.

Earnest and his young friends served in the navy, and that experience would help them evacuate and save as many people as possible. So for the next half hour Earnest, Stacey, Tommy and Lance, passed through the corridors of the cabins waking up and alerting people of what was happening to climb the deck where the boats were and leave the ship.

Finally, when he had passed through all the corridors, evacuated all Earnest and the others climbed into the lifeboat, the ship was tilting dangerously to starboard and could collapse at any moment.

Once in the lifeboat Stacey hugged Earnest hard, and cried in his arms, at last She was able to release the fear, and stress She felt since the ship began to sink. Earnest wiped her tears, and told her everything would be all right, placed his hands on Stacey's cheek and pulled her close to him and kissed her.

Half an hour later the helicopters of the Air Force and the Marian of South Africa arrived, as well as the nearby boats that heard the S.O.S issued by the ship. All lifeboats were rescued, and no one died despite the negligence of the crew and their captain. The rescue of the boats and all the passengers became the biggest and most successful rescue story on the coasts of South Africa.

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Authorities when questioning the passengers learned about the heroic exploits of Earnes, Stacey, Tommy, Lance, Moss and Tracy were decorated with the highest order given to some civilians by the government.

The captain, his crew and the company that owns the ship were accused by the authorities of negligence and endangering human lives. In the trial the passengers declared what they lived in those terrible hours. The verdict of the trial condemned the captain, his crew, to the managers and owners of the company with jail and millions in fines.

Earnest and Stacey continued to see each other after the ship's events, and a year later they got married, their friends Tommy and Lance acting as boyfriend godparents. His friends Moss and Tracy, encouraged the wedding and many of the guests were the passengers they helped save from the sinking of the ship, which after the events became his friends.