A Note of Bravery – The Story Of Moss Hills

A musician steps up in a big way during disaster

The ocean is a lonely place.

Even when everything is going right.

I remember standing on the back of the Carnival Imagination at night, off the coast of Southern California.

(May she and her fellow Fantasy-Class sisters rest in peace.)

I thought about just how pitch-black the inky waters below were, and just how isolated we seemed.

Even though we were not even 100 miles from millions of people.

The ocean is a great big yawning void. And help can be far off.

For this and other reasons, the Captain of a ship is effectively the law when it comes to matters aboard. In this way, the Captain sets the tone.

History is full of stories of skippers standing up and delivering when it counts the most.

Because humans are humans however, history also tells tales of Captains who, when the time came, ran from their responsibilities.  

Of course, the Captain is far from being the only crew member aboard a ship that makes an impact on the passengers. People take cruises to have fun, and thus those involved in entertainment are front and center in meeting those expectations.

They are generally not expected to take command, however.

The MTS Oceanos was 502-foot cruiser which had seen better days when she departed from East London, South Africa on a voyage to Durban on August 3, 1991. She had a delayed departure, having suffered a bomb threat. Not exactly a good omen, but the cruise must go on.

She encountered rough seas almost immediately. It is thought that a rouge wave, a truly unlucky stroke of misfortune, damaged the shell plating protecting her sewage system ventilation pipe and allowing the sea to find its way into the ship.

Once Captain Yiannis Avranas realized what was happening, and that the sinking could not be stopped, he shamefully abandoned the ship along with senior officers, leaving her passengers to their fates.

“When I give the order to abandon ship, it doesn’t matter what time I leave. “

“Abandon is for everybody. If some people want to stay, they can stay,” he later said.

This situation would repeat itself during the Costa Concordia sinking decades later, when Captain Francesco Schettino cowardly abandoned his ship after running aground trying to impress his mistress with a off-chart island sail-by. For the 361 passengers left aboard the Oceanos, things seemed grim.

The ship began to list (lean) to one side and the water continued to pour into the modest ship below decks. Panic began to set in.

Guitarist Moss Hills was no stranger to cruising.

Once he and other entertainment staff, including his wife Tracy, realized the gravity of their situation, he stepped up and began to organize rescue efforts.

Braving the tilting decks, he kept the passengers calm, much as the heroic band of the Titanic did when she was slipping into the freezing waters of the Atlantic back in 1912.

Organizing their rescue, Moss had reached the bridge.

Finding it abandoned, he called for urgent help over the radio.

When all was said and done, every single passenger and crew member was rescued from the stricken vessel.

“I had times when I was scared,” Hills related. “Each time I went below to check on water levels, I was always worried that the ship might roll over and I’d be trapped or that the water pressure might burst a bulkhead and flood over me.”

“At other times of danger I didn’t have time to be scared. When I was stretched across the opening to the life-boats, I was too busy hanging on and guiding people past.”

“Anyway, that only lasted less than 10 minutes or so.”

“On the fore-deck with the choppers there was so much noise of wind, sea and engines and the deck heaving and just hanging on that I didn’t think about dying,” Moss wrote in a statement in 1991.

Here is a video of the sinking, which is quite dramatic:

Years later, Moss would find himself in another heroic shipboard situation, when the Achille Lauro ocean liner caught fire and sank.

Two people lost their lives in that situation.

But again – Moss was able to be, pardon the pun, instrumental in saving the lives of his fellow human beings.

“It was just a case of doing what needed to be done. Somebody had to step up,” Moss said about his efforts to make a difference.

Humble to the end, Moss lives today in Liverpool:

Where he is hopefully able to take it easy and enjoy some well-earned rest.

Guest Autor Alex Chrisman is a person of lifelong curiosity, the type of kid who used to read the back of shampoo bottles in the bathroom while growing up in low income housing. Reading was salvation for him and a path to better places and non-fiction was the focus, as he soaked up bits and pieces of information along the way.

Rage Against The Machine and Nine Inch Nails are still his jam, and you can learn more about his world at his blog:  cornucopiadigest.com .

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