Reaching Land

EMPIRE GUILLEMOT arrived at 19.15pm at an anchorage off Dubai.  The 341 survivors including 47 crew members were taken to a newly constructed hotel owned by Mohammed Ali El Ghaz, who was himself one of the survivors landed at Bahrain.

BRITISH ENERGY arrived in the early hours of the 9th April, disembarking 141 survivors at the Bahrain Petroleum Company’s bunkering wharf at Sitra, followed by the YOYU MARU No 5 at 6am.  The injured were taken to Bahrain Government Hospital with the remainder transported in buses to Muhurraq Airport where they were accommodated in an immigration camp guarded by the Bahrain Police.  For some it was as an ignominous end to a horrendous ordeal and as unfavourable reports reached English newspapers, many thousands of miles away, questions were asked in the House of Commons about the treatment of DARA survivors.

Knowledge of the full horror of the disaster was now widespread and H.M. The Queen sent a message of condolence: “we wish the relatives of those who lost their lives in this terrible event and those who were injured to know that they have our deepest sympathy”.  In Dubai a subscription fund was opened for survivors in the Trucial States.

The immediate concern of B.I. and their agents, Gray Mackenzie, was to repatriate those passengers who were well enough to travel in specially chartered planes or on board the company’s vessel ARONDA.