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Only three lifeboats had been lost in the flames, but many of the others were all but unusable. Some were without rudders, and others had rusty chains that would not slide down the davits.
No one seemed to know how to lower them properly. The second boat down the side banged heavily against the ship, and then tipped over and spilled its cargo of passengers into the sea. Other boats had no bungs to plug drains, and survivors had to bail frantically, ripping off clothes that they could stuff into the open bung holes. In the panic on deck, most of the boats, each of which had room for 75 passengers and ten crew, were lowered only partly filled. The rest of the passengers went down the side on ropes or simply leaped from the deck into the sea below.
Cognac & Blankets. The water was 64°, but many of the children and the elderly passengers were soon dead nevertheless. As dawn broke, the rescue fleet, now swollen to some 20 vessels, looked out on a vast scene of lifeboat debris and bobbing bodies. Despite the calm seas, it was not easy to pick them up. The rafts and lifeboats kept banging into the windward side of the waiting merchantmen; hour after hour the arduous task continued, until at last all the living and dead were hauled aboard. On the Salta, which picked up 478 people from the sea, cognac and blankets were passed out to the shivering survivors, but the crush was so great that soon there was not enough of either to go around. The British aircraft carrier Centaur picked up 55 bodies, then dispatched a helicopter to the Lakonia to see if anyone was still on board; from the vessel, a British officer reported that the liner was a burnt-out hulk. As the rescue ships sped from the scene toward the port of Funchal in Madeira, the ruined liner was taken into tow by the Norwegian salvage tug Herkules.
Captain's Retort. In Funchal, many of the survivors bitterly accused the Lakonia's crew of cowardice, panic and incompetence in the face of the disaster. One woman charged that she found a Greek crewman looting her cabin when she went to get her life jacket, and another claimed that a sailor had made a pass at her. Undoubtedly, many of the accusations were the result of passenger terror and hysteria and the fact that few of the crew spoke English, thus causing their intentions to be misconstrued. But it was evident that the fire-fighting procedures were inadequate and that many of the lifeboats had been lowered in panic with only crewmen aboard, leaving the passengers to fend for themselves on deck.
Captain Zarbis, true to the tradition of the sea, had been the last to leave his ship. Tearfully, he denied charges of misconduct. "There was no panic aboard my ship," he said, "neither among the crew nor among the passengers. My crew did not try to jump into the lifeboats ahead of the passengers." But the Greek Line ordered Zarbis and his officers to report immediately to the Lakonia's home port of Piraeus, where the inquiry will be conducted.