Cruise Liner on Fire: Typhoon Incoming

At 48 years old, John Graham has already lived more lives than most. Formerly of the US Foreign Service and State Department, he’s now working as a lecturer aboard a cruise ship - the MS Prinsendam. But on the night of his first talk, a fire tears through the commercial liner and more than 500 people are forced overboard. To make matters worse, a typhoon is on its way… A Noiser podcast production. Hosted by John Hopkins. Written by Rhys Bevan | Produced by Ed Baranski | Assistant Producer: Luke Lonergan | Production Assistant: Chris McDonald | Exec produced by Joel Duddell | Sound Supervisor: Matt Peaty | Sound design by Jacob Booth | Assembly edit by Rob Plummer | Compositions by OliverBaines, Dorry Macaulay, Tom Pink | Mix & mastering: Cody Reynolds-Shaw. For ad-free listening, bonus material and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Click the subscription banner at the top of the feed to get started. Or go to noiser.com/subscriptions If you have an amazing survival story of your own that you’d like to put forward for the show, let us know. Drop us an email at [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03John Hopkins?

  It's the afternoon of October the 4th, 1980. One hundred and forty miles off the coast of Alaska, the sky lowers ominously. The strong winds whip and heavy rainfall beats the surf. The sea bucks and sways. Dargentian waves seem to grow like monsters rearing up towards the murky sky. The timing of this savage storm couldn't be worse. In the middle of the gathering squaw, undimmed by rainfall, a thick column of smoke stretches up into the heavens, fed by hungry orange flames. The MS Princeton Dam is on fire.

• 0:42John Hopkins?

  The blaze crackles up from the bowels of this commercial cruise liner. Only four days ago, it left Vancouver, carrying over 300 passengers and 200 crew, bound eventually for Japan. Around the flaming vessel, lifeboats tumble in the choppy waters. And aboard one of these tenders, wet through and shivering in the Arctic air, 48-year-old John Graham clings to the gun for dear life.

• 1:09John Hopkins?

  With a sudden lurch, he lifts himself up, leans over the side of the lifeboat, and vomits into the surf.

• 1:16Speaker 01

  We're seasick as dogs. We have been from the beginning. But more to the point is that we're all suffering from hypothermia. Now, I've been in mountains a lot. I know a lot about hypothermia. And the way it works is you get really cold, but then, oddly enough, you start feeling warm again, and you go to sleep, and you don't wake up.

• 1:37John Hopkins?

  They were warned of a coming typhoon. Now it's here.

• 1:43John Hopkins?

  John and the seven others on board his life vessel are drenched and freezing, dressed in nothing but their bedclothes, clinging desperately to a dwindling hope of rescue.

• 1:53Speaker 01

  We are in waves that are 30 feet high, and that's like going up and down on a small boat, up and down the height of a six-story building. The winds are hitting 60 knots, and the lifeboat is rocking and rolling, and I'm beginning to realize that this is an adventure that I may not survive.

• 2:20John Hopkins?

  Ever wondered what you would do when disaster strikes? If your life depended on your next decision, could you make the right choice? Welcome to Real Survival Stories. These are the astonishing tales of ordinary people thrown into extraordinary situations, people suddenly forced to fight for their lives.

• 2:40John Hopkins?

  In this episode, we meet John Graham, who, at 48 years old, has already lived more lives than most. Formerly of the U.S. Foreign Service and the U.S. State Department, John is now working as a lecturer aboard a cruise ship, the MS Princeton Dam. But on the night of his first talk, four days into the cruise, a fire tears through the commercial liner, and more than 500 people are forced overboard.

• 3:04Speaker 01

  I managed to crawl all the way back up the ship to lifeboat number two. It says on the side that the lifeboat is meant to hold 45 people. Almost 90 are waiting for that lifeboat. People are really getting scared. If you fell over into the ocean, well, it's like in the Titanic. You've got, what, five or 10 minutes, and you freeze to death because this is ice water out there.

• 3:27John Hopkins?

  To make matters worse, helicopter rescue soon becomes impossible, and John and his fellow survivors must face down a typhoon with nothing but a metal dinghy between them and the roiling deep. As the hours tick by, seasickness and hypothermia aren't their only concern. For John and his companions, time is running out.

• 3:48Speaker 01

  The real factor that's important is light. The odds on us being found by a coast guard cutter are small enough with a bit of daylight left in the storm, but we don't have any lights, no flares, no radio, of course, and it's going to be dark in 45 minutes or an hour. Once it gets dark, we're dead.

• 4:06John Hopkins?

  I'm John Hopkins. From the Noiser Podcast Network, this is Real Survival Stories.

• 4:36John Hopkins?

  It's the evening of the 3rd of October, 1980. In the main dining room of the cruise ship MS Princeton Dam, cutlery clinks, cocktail glasses chink, and the band strikes up a waltz. Waiters clear dessert plates, and the smell of coffee wafts through the large, ornately decorated hall. With dinner coming to an end, the evening's entertainment glides seamlessly from speeches to the more physical business of dance. Couples of all ages rise, take each other by the hand, and shuffle smilingly onto the rapidly filling dance floor.

• 5:12John Hopkins?

  One particularly strapping gentleman catches the eye. Standing six and a half feet tall, his shock of perfectly coiffed dark hair clearly visible above the sea of white and gray, dashing 48-year-old John Graham is having a ball.

• 5:30Speaker 01

  It's funny because I hadn't realized this. If the shipping company, they're no fools, and they only want me to give these lectures, they knew that I looked really good in the tuxedo, which I guess in the day I did, and that part of my job was to waltz little old widows with blue hair around the ballroom and chat them up for the whole summer. I quickly realized that was part of my job, too.

• 5:53John Hopkins?

  Dressed to the nines, John Beams, still high on an adrenaline rush. He's just given his first lecture, and judging by the number of women now asking him to dance, it was a success. His own companion on the ship can't get a look in right now. Instead, she watches from a nearby table with a smile of embarrassed pride. The Princeton Dam is four days into its journey to the Far East. There are more than 500 people on board, passengers and crew. So far, they've enjoyed the frigid beauty of the Alaskan coastline and are now 140 miles into the North Pacific. It's a long way to Japan. There'll be many more nights like this.

• 6:35John Hopkins?

  Outside, the prow of the ship continues to plow through the dark icy depths. Within, a glassy-eyed, lightly perspiring John decides to call it a night.

• 6:47John Hopkins?

  He retires to his cabin and is soon snoring contentedly. But he isn't asleep for long.

• 6:56Speaker 01

  About midnight, there's a loudspeaker voice over the intercom system, and a voice says, "We're very sorry, wake you up, but there's been a small fire in the engine room, and we put the fire out, of course, but unfortunately, there's a lot of smoke in the ship, and we're going to have to use fans to clear the ship of smoke, and we urge you all to please come up to the ship's lounge. We'll be serving free drinks."

• 7:21John Hopkins?

  For a moment, John sits in bed, perfectly still. He cocks his head, considering, then with a yawn, he rolls over and goes back to sleep.

• 7:32Speaker 01

  The voice did not seem at all panicked or anxious. To hell with it, we can deal with a little smoke. And about 20 minutes later, the voice comes back on. This time, it wasn't so placid, and it says, "No, please, please, you have to come up to the ship's lounge now." And so, "Okay, fine."

• 7:48John Hopkins?

  John's large frame moves with reluctant stiffness. He stands and goes across to the cabin door. Still yawning, he opens the door and is immediately forced backwards, coughing and spluttering, squinting through an invading fog.

• 8:04Speaker 01

  Sure enough, the corridor outside our stateroom is full of smoke.

• 8:09John Hopkins?

  Wafting the smoke with his hand and stooping to avoid the worst of it, John hurries into the corridor, straight into a dead end.

• 8:16Speaker 01

  The fire door just forward of our cabin had automatically slammed shut. This is the main route we used to get up to the deck.

• 8:26John Hopkins?

  With this much smoke, the fire must still be burning somewhere on the ship.

• 8:31John Hopkins?

  A small voice pipes up beside John, asking what he thinks they should do.

• 8:36John Hopkins?

  John's jaw tightens. He's been in dangerous situations many times before, but this is different. This time, he isn't alone.

• 8:51John Hopkins?

  This October on the Noiser Podcast Network. Real Dictators returns. We're in the Dominican Republic for the story of Rafael Trujillo. On Short History of, we'll uncover the secrets of the Hoover Dam and follow Mary Shelley, the creator of Frankenstein and his monster. On Real Survival Stories, a modern Viking adventure as a replica Norse vessel embarks on a daring voyage across the North Sea and a man is struck blind all alone at the very top of the world. In Jane Austen Stories, Emma continues with Dame Julie Andrews. And in Sherlock Holmes Short Stories, Holmes and Watson unpick an epic mystery of hidden treasure and murder in The Sign of Four.

• 9:33John Hopkins?

  Get all of these shows and more early and ad-free on Noiser Plus. John grew up in Tacoma, Washington State, near the Canadian border. It was a quiet city and he enjoyed a quiet childhood, albeit one not without its difficulties.

• 9:54Speaker 01

  In middle school and high school, I was badly bullied. So it was a pretty miserable mid-teens and teen age for me.

• 10:03John Hopkins?

  Trying to move on from a tough time at school, John quickly threw himself into another challenging environment, though this one was very different.

• 10:11Speaker 01

  I actually got a job working on a freighter. Freighters in those days, this is like 1959, were not container ships. They were just big ships and they were run by 50 or 60 really tough guys with muscles and tattoos and everything. They took one look at me, at this scraggly know-nothing kid, and they said to themselves, wow, we got life lessons to teach this kid.

• 10:37John Hopkins?

  Work on the freighter took John to the Far East, where he learnt about the world in ways he could never have imagined growing up in suburban Tacoma. His time with the ship's crew toughened him and gave him an appetite for thrills and adventure. He spent his college holidays hitchhiking around Europe. And it was while in Switzerland, as he was preparing to climb the Matterhorn, that something caught his eye.

• 11:03Speaker 01

  I picked up a newspaper in the youth hostel and it said that there was a war going on in Algeria and that a bunch of rebels were trying to take control of the country from the French colonials. And I said to myself, wow, a war? I'd never been in a war before.

• 11:20John Hopkins?

  With all the naivety of youth, John hitchhiked to Morocco and walked across the border into Algeria. He wore an American flag on his chest so as not to be mistaken for a Frenchman and shot on sight. He was picked up by rebels, who turned out to be surprisingly welcoming, even helpful. They secured John lifts wherever he needed to go, albeit in a manner that was less than plight.

• 11:46Speaker 01

  The rebels were really kind to me. They would stop cars going in my direction at gunpoint and then tell the driver to take me wherever I wanted to go.

• 11:55John Hopkins?

  John then spent time in Algeria with the French Foreign Legion, a group of men who reminded him of the freighter crew.

• 12:01Speaker 01

  They seemed to be incredibly brave and it was just another example of what real men did. Real men were tough and violent and it just underscored my push to be that kind of a man.

• 12:17John Hopkins?

  John's high-risk lifestyle soon solidified into a career. He became a freelance war reporter for the Boston Globe, travelling around the world, sending stories back from some of its most dangerous combat zones. When John landed a job with the US Foreign Service, he became known as the guy you could send to places where no one else wanted to go.

• 12:40Speaker 01

  Soon after I joined, they sent me to the revolution in Libya. Everybody else at the embassy was freaking out because there were cars burning in the public square and there were rock-throwing mobs, but for me, I was in my element. I was then six and a half feet tall and really strong and nobody was messing with me anymore.

• 12:58John Hopkins?

  The Foreign Service noticed his aptitude for risk and sent him to the most dangerous spot they had, right in the middle of the Vietnam War.

• 13:07Speaker 01

  I became advisor to the city of Huay. Huay was famous for the tent massacre. It's a small city, just a few miles, 50 miles short of the DMZ, the demarcation line that then divided North and South Vietnam. So it was an incredibly dangerous place to be.

• 13:26John Hopkins?

  In 1972, with American troops finally withdrawing from South Vietnam, John found himself in the middle of a highly volatile event, an advance of North Vietnamese troops known as the Easter Offensive. The North Vietnamese crossed the border, surrounding the city of Huay. John and a handful of civilian members of the US Foreign Service were stranded without hope of extraction. If Huay fell, they would fall with it. With the enemy at the gates, the South Vietnamese soldiers within Huay started to defect, causing chaos in the streets. Defectors set the marketplace ablaze and as a thick pall of smoke covered the city, riots broke out.

• 14:11John Hopkins?

  John was one of the people chiefly responsible for law and order, so he marched into the mayor of Huay's office and demanded violent retributions to punish the deserters. But even as he barked his recommendations in the mayor's face, John's words began to falter.

• 14:30Speaker 01

  This is a real life-turning moment. I'll never forget slamming my fist down on this guy's desk, the mayor's desk, with the artillery booming and people screaming and demanding that he set up a firing squad. And somewhere, it suddenly dawned on me, what the hell was happening? I was 29 years old, so no longer a kid. And here I was, demanding that one Vietnamese start shooting a second set of Vietnamese so they could get together and start shooting a third set of Vietnamese. My home was 6,000, 7,000 miles away. I knew the war was lost. I knew that from the beginning. I didn't go to Vietnam as a patriot. No, I went there more or less as a mercenary.

• 15:14Speaker 01

  It was all because of the adrenaline rush and also because being in a war was what real men did and I wanted to be a man. And suddenly, what hit me was how shallow my life had become. My life had become nothing but a thirst for risky adventures, a thirst for violence. Part of it, a good part of it, was my mistaken belief in what it took to be a man. And that suddenly dawned on me that that was wrong.

• 15:46John Hopkins?

  Luckily for John, the next day the skies cleared and American bombers lifted the siege. He escaped with his life. When he returned home, he started to make a change. It wasn't easy. His experiences had left him with deep scars.

• 16:02Speaker 01

  I had a healthy dose of what we now would call PTSD. I would walk across the street in Palo Alto, California to avoid sniper fire. That's how bad it was, how messed up I was.

• 16:16John Hopkins?

  Through therapy and a new job, working with the UN on behalf of the US State Department, John was able to heal and devote himself to peace rather than war. Incredibly, he oversaw US policy towards the entirety of what was then known as the Third World. He had power and he wielded it for good. Working with the UN in the 1970s, he was part of the fight to end apartheid in South Africa. But life moves fast in global politics. A new administration was moving into the White House, one John didn't align with, so he left his post. He found himself without an income and with limited savings. A particular problem, as he now had two children to support.

• 17:00John Hopkins?

  He began giving anti-war speeches, buoyed by his innate idealism and optimism for the future, but he could not live on optimism alone.

• 17:09Speaker 01

  I was happier than I'd ever been in my life, but I was also going rapidly broke. So a friend of mine comes up to me and he says, hey, John, you've always had this good ability to give a good speech. You know you can get paid by lecturing, giving lectures on cruise ships? I say, you're kidding. You're kidding. And he says, no, no, no. And so the very first time I tried, I got a job lecturing on a cruise ship, the Princeton Dam, which was leaving from Vancouver.

• 17:40John Hopkins?

  It was perfect. It was the answer to John's financial troubles and an opportunity to give his idealistic lectures all while travelling the world. And the best bit of all, he didn't have to go alone.

• 17:52Speaker 01

  All I had to do was give a couple of speeches on the voyage over to Japan and they paid me an absurd amount of money and I got to take my daughter, then 13 years old, my daughter Mallory, with me.

• 18:11John Hopkins?

  Right now aboard the Princeton Dam, Mallory's eyes are wide as smoke fills the ship's corridors.

• 18:19John Hopkins?

  Like her dad, she has something of a taste for excitement. A few months earlier, John had taken her to see The Empire Strikes Back, and she'd practically bounced home, beaming and swinging an invisible lightsaber. Looking down at his child now, John sees a familiar glint in her eye. To her young imagination, this is just another grand adventure. John relaxes his furrowed brow and softens his worried expression. They may well be in danger, but she doesn't need to know that. Not yet, anyway. Suddenly, the thirteen-year-old turns and, calling for her dad to follow, heads back up the landing away from the barricaded fire door.

• 18:59Speaker 01

  Mallory goes in the other direction to the rear of the ship and discovers another stairway not far away. And we take that stairway up to the deck where the ship's lounge is. Everybody else is up there too, and they're all chattering. Nobody has warm clothes, and more to the point, the ship's lounge is just as full of smoke as the rest of the ship. So you couldn't stay in the ship's lounge, even with free drinks.

• 19:23John Hopkins?

  It's impossible to stay here. The smoke is too thick, and so passengers begin to filter out, coughing as they go. In little groups, people head out on deck, where the North Pacific air chills them to the bone.

• 19:37Speaker 01

  We're October, Gulf of Alaska, and so people are trying to stay warm. And they start pulling tablecloths off the tables in the ship's lounge, or even ripping down curtains and wrapping themselves in the curtains, all the while looking a bit more anxious than they did when they came up there.

• 19:55John Hopkins?

  What had sounded like a small hiccup, a technical issue the crew would soon remedy, is clearly much more. John scans the drawn and worried faces, pale with cold, the unmistakable flash of fear behind their eyes. Braving the icy temperature, he and Mallory walk around the deck and scan the horizon. The sea stretches out, infinite in every direction. The passengers of the MS Princeton Dam have been warned of a coming storm, typhoon Vernon, and were given precautionary seasickness tablets over dinner. Right now, though, John stands in the freezing October air and stares out at the calmest of seas and the most beautiful of night skies.

• 20:41John Hopkins?

  Other worldly colors and lights dance across the heavens.

• 20:45Speaker 01

  We were heading into a typhoon, but at the moment, when we were out there on deck looking at the smoke, the sea was relatively calm, and you could see the aurora borealis stretched across the sky, and it was just beautiful and a surreal moment.

• 21:01John Hopkins?

  Gradually, the night slips by, and the smoke only increases. Clearly, there's still a fire on board. Heat begins to grow from the bowels of the ship. Around 3:00 AM, the captain appears on deck. He asks all passengers to move to the stern of the ship. Dutifully, they obey.

• 21:21John Hopkins?

  As the crowd shuffles towards the rear of the vessel, crew in firefighting uniform streak past in the other direction, jaws set, deep concern in their eyes. And still, the heat grows.

• 21:36John Hopkins?

  Then, at around 4:00 AM, the captain decides enough is enough.

• 21:40Speaker 01

  The order is given to go up to our lifeboat stations. Whoa, wow, now this is getting serious.

• 21:47John Hopkins?

  It's a sudden melee of shuffling bodies as the crowd on deck shifts towards the lifeboats. John and Mallory manage to make their way back to the first lifeboat on the port side, lifeboat number two.

• 22:01John Hopkins?

  Quickly, Mallory counts around ninety people waiting to board this single craft. Yet on its side, written clearly, are the words, "Maximum capacity, forty-five."

• 22:12Speaker 01

  This is a new cruise ship, so no one thought anything like this had any possibility of happening. And so everybody on the ship's crew was poorly trained and poorly organized, so the lifeboats were either underloaded or overloaded.

• 22:26John Hopkins?

  As people jostle for position, John sticks tight to Mallory. In the scramble, people are being pushed perilously close to the edge of the deck. Go too far, and you could fall overboard into the deadly waters below.

• 22:39Speaker 01

  If you fell over into the ocean, well, it's like in the Titanic. You got, what, five or ten minutes, and you freeze to death because this is ice water out there.

• 22:48John Hopkins?

  John turns to Mallory, attempting to give her a reassuring smile. When suddenly, an almighty crash splits the air above their heads, followed by a roar of heat and bright orange light.

• 23:01Speaker 01

  The fire burns through, blows out the windows in the ship's lounge and in the ship's dining room, and the fire has this huge gulp of air, oxygen. And all of a sudden, flames are shooting twenty feet high from the center of the ship into the night sky. And now people are really freaking out, and for a good reason. So then the captain comes out again on the deck with his bullhorn, and he says, "We have lost the battle with the fire, and we have to abandon ship."

• 23:38Speaker 02

  Ally here with cash when you need it, like after that fantastic meal. And it's time to tip your server, and your wallet's empty. Don't be in... Ally's got you covered with seventy-five thousand fee-free ATMs nationwide. Ally Bank Member FDIC.

• 23:53John Hopkins?

  This October, on the Noiser Podcast Network, Real Dictators Returns. We're in the Dominican Republic for the story of Rafael Trujillo. On Short History Of, we'll uncover the secrets of the Hoover Dam and follow Mary Shelley, the creator of Frankenstein and his monster. On Real Survival Stories, a modern Viking adventure as a replica Norse vessel embarks on a daring voyage across the North Sea, and a man is struck blind, all alone, at the very top of the world. In Jane Austen Stories, Emma continues with Dame Julie Andrews. And in Sherlock Holmes Short Stories, Holmes and Watson unpick an epic mystery of hidden treasure and murder in The Sign of Four.

• 24:36John Hopkins?

  Get all of these shows and more early and ad-free on Noiser Plus.

• 24:47John Hopkins?

  It's early morning on the Fourth of October, 1980. One hundred and forty miles off the coast of Alaska, a massive tanker splits the surf, cleaving the water with its monstrous gleaming bow.

• 25:01John Hopkins?

  This oil-carrying behemoth has made its way down from Port Valdez at breakneck speed in response to a distress call. The crew aboard only hope they haven't come too late.

• 25:12John Hopkins?

  As the first purply hues of dawn creep across the sky, a column of smoke splits the horizon.

• 25:20John Hopkins?

  A fire rages in the North Pacific. Bright orange tongues of flame leap from the MS Princeton Dam. Thick, black smoke billows up into the sky.

• 25:31John Hopkins?

  Everywhere, lifeboats bob listlessly around the fiery cruise liner. Though the oil tanker has arrived quickly, it soon becomes apparent that there's little it can do to help. The tanker is too big to maneuver, its sides too steep to climb. The lifeboats have no engines with which to pull alongside such a massive vessel. All they can do is sit and wait.

• 25:58John Hopkins?

  On one of the small lifeboats, there is a huddled mass of bodies, far too many souls for a craft this size. Among the group are John Graham and his thirteen-year-old daughter Mallory. Together, they hunker down against the cold.

• 26:13Speaker 01

  Being crammed together is almost a good thing because we don't have warm clothes. A crowded lifeboat helps keep people warm.

• 26:20John Hopkins?

  It wasn't easy getting the lifeboats down into the water, but miraculously, all but one of the dinghies has made it to the ocean. John and some of the other men used their arms and shoulders to buffer the boat as it was lowered and prevent it colliding with the hull. When John's arm touched the steel of the ship, it was hot, almost too hot to touch.

• 26:43John Hopkins?

  The fire is powerful, and it's spreading.

• 26:47John Hopkins?

  In a surreal moment, as the tenders were lowered, the house band struck up a tune.

• 26:53Speaker 01

  The ship's orchestra had come out, but instead of playing "Near, My God, To Thee", they started playing show tunes from Oklahoma. It was like, oh, man, this is like, I've seen this story before.

• 27:05John Hopkins?

  Now, all is quiet. The musicians are in lifeboats, just like everyone else.

• 27:11John Hopkins?

  The specter of the Titanic looms over the situation. The air is thick with the parallels, the lifeboats, the icy water, the dread.

• 27:21John Hopkins?

  John pulls his daughter in tight. There's nothing to do now but wait and hope. And then a sound, faint at first but unmistakable, the growing thud, thud, thud of propellers.

• 27:36Speaker 01

  Helicopters start arriving from shore bases. Canadian and Air Force rescue helicopters, but they're 140 miles away, so they don't have a lot of time. The helicopters start hovering over a lifeboat, and the only way they can operate is they lower a chair, a metal chair on the end of a chain, and then people in the lifeboat grab it, and one person gets into that chair, and then the helicopter uses a winch to take that person off. Then when they get seven or eight people, or whatever a load is, they then fly to the deck of the tanker and drop those seven or eight and come back for seven or eight more. I make it sound easy, but it's not.

• 28:14John Hopkins?

  When the metal chair is lowered into John's lifeboat, the shivering mass has a decision to make. Who gets to go first? With no obvious protocol and little time to debate, the freezing survivors turn to the past for guidance. Women and children first. And so they begin. It's a laborious process. As the chair dangles from the helicopter, it relentlessly bucks and sways. The lifeboat is constantly moving as well. There is low visibility, and it's difficult to hear over the constant roar of propellers. And unfortunately, everything is about to get even harder.

• 28:54John Hopkins?

  Because as the sun rises and morning creeps across the ocean, Typhoon Vernon finally arrives. The rescuers move as quickly as they can. Before long, it's Mallory's turn, but there's no time for sentiment. John helps as his young daughter is secured in the metal chair. The sea starts to roughen and the wind starts to whip, but as Mallory is airlifted to safety, John's face briefly cracks into a smile of relief. Mallory disappears into the chopper, and John scans the remaining passengers on the lifeboat. The crowd is thinning out.

• 29:30Speaker 01

  The seas are getting rougher, and so that chair is swinging more widely, and it gets harder and harder to get people into that chair. But the helicopters move as fast as they can, seven, then eight, then another seven, then another eight, and finally, in lifeboat number two, there's just eight men left.

• 29:47John Hopkins?

  John is one helicopter trip away from the place on the oil tanker, from Mallory and safety. But then word comes down from the chopper. The storm is well and truly here, and any further air rescue is no longer an option. In these conditions, it will be suicide. John tilts his head, shielding his eyes from the driving rain as the rescue helicopter banks to one side and flies away. His shoulders sag. He and the remaining men on lifeboat two must now face the typhoon alone. John squints into the tempest.

• 30:25Speaker 01

  The visibility is closing in, maybe 200 meters at that point, and the seas are getting strong enough to keep the helicopters from flying anymore, and we have to wait for a coast guard cutter to find us.

• 30:37John Hopkins?

  The only hope now is that a rescue boat locates them. But 140 miles out, with a storm swirling all around, there's no knowing how long it will be, or if they will be found at all. The typhoon is gathering momentum. The sea bubbles and broils. John's boat dips and heaves as the waves rise and tumble. He clings on, gripping the side, his stomach flipping, his face as white as his knuckles. It isn't long before the other men are heaving over the side of the lifeboat, and with a sudden lurch, John joins them. But nausea isn't the main thing they need to be worried about.

• 31:20John Hopkins?

  It's not even the dehydration and the exhaustion. It's the bitter, life-sapping cold.

• 31:26Speaker 01

  We were all freezing to death from hypothermia. Again, no warm clothes. Waves were now breaking into the lifeboat, and the winds were increasing. And finally, at the height of the storm, we are in waves that are 30 feet high. The winds are hitting 60 knots, and the lifeboat is rocking and rolling.

• 31:45John Hopkins?

  John's body convulses again as he retches over the gunnel. He has nothing left to bring up, but that doesn't ease the sickness. Depleted, he huddles in the corner of the boat. He grips the other men, teeth chattering, shivering violently. A fellow passenger is growing desperate. John does what he can to reassure him. As long as they feel cold, they're okay. It's feeling warm that they should worry about.

• 32:13Speaker 01

  I know a lot about hypothermia, and the way it works is you get really cold, but then, oddly enough, you start feeling warm again, and you go to sleep, and you don't wake up.

• 32:26John Hopkins?

  John stretches his eyes wide. He tries to take a deep breath, a steadying breath, to oxygenate the brain. He must stay awake. Hours pass agonizingly, and there's no sign of help. Morning turns into afternoon, afternoon becomes evening, and still, the typhoon rages. Alongside the howling winds, driving rain, and waves the size of office blocks, a new and even greater danger is just around the corner.

• 32:59Speaker 01

  Visibility is now down to 100 meters perhaps, and the coast guard cutters are frantically searching for us, using all of their equipment, but we don't have any lights, no flares, no radio, of course. We have no way of communicating. We're tiny specks in a huge ocean. And so we're sitting there, and I'm beginning to realize that this is an adventure that I may not survive. I mean, the odds on us being found by a coast guard cutter are small, but the thing is, the real factor that's important is light, because the odds are small enough with a bit of daylight left in the storm, but once it gets dark, which would be about 6:30, once it gets dark, we're dead.

• 33:40John Hopkins?

  It's now around 5:30 PM. In less than an hour, night will fall, and these eight men will be impossible to see. In all likelihood, they will die of hypothermia, drifting alone in the dark and endless ocean. Desperate, John begins to mutter to himself. Quiet at first, then louder. Then, with a great heave of his powerful shoulders, he tilts his head back and bellows out into the storm.

• 34:15Speaker 01

  I'll tell you, you're in a situation like that where you see death approaching and no way out. You're led to what religious people would call prayer. And so I try to quote "pray," but my prayer quickly turns into an angry bleat. I look up into the storm, and I say, hey, look, whoever you are, I don't know what I called it, God, whatever, I didn't believe in God, but something out there, I said, did that something. I don't get it. I turned my life around. You know perfectly well that at the United Nations, I did a lot of good work. I helped end apartheid, for example. I've got another 50 years left in my life, and now I'm being wiped out. It makes no sense whatsoever.

• 35:00John Hopkins?

  John rails at the injustice of his situation. He pleads with this invisible power as the wind and rain lash his face and another wave carries the boat aloft. And then, suddenly, John's expression softens. Something seems to pierce through the raging squall.

• 35:19Speaker 01

  I got an answer. Now, the other seven guys, of course, didn't hear anything, but for me, it was like it was piped in by loudspeakers. God talked back to me. This voice talked back to me, and that voice said, you have to make a choice. Either you can go back and commit yourself to the ideals that finally became apparent in your life at the United Nations, ideals of peace and justice. You can go back, and you'll survive, but if you don't make that choice, if you continue to keep going down this path, you'll lecture on another cruise ship, you'll be totally consumed by money, whatever. You might as well die out here, because the next 50 years won't be worth anything. I didn't think about it very long, because the answer was pretty obvious, and I just

• 36:03Speaker 01

  looked up into the teeth of the storm. I was beaten. My famous ego was completely flattened, and I looked up into the storm, and I said, yes, okay, it's a deal. And at that instant, and here I know, all your listeners are going to say, oh, no, it couldn't have happened that way, but it did, in that instant, the coast guard cutter comes crashing through this wild storm, and we're saved.

• 36:39John Hopkins?

  This October on the Noiser Podcast Network, Real Dictators returns. We're in the Dominican Republic for the story of Rafael Trujillo. On Short History Of, we'll uncover the secrets of the Hoover Dam and follow Mary Shelley, the creator of Frankenstein and his monster. On Real Survival Stories, a modern Viking adventure as a replica Norse vessel embarks on a daring voyage across the North Sea and a man is struck blind, all alone, at the very top of the world. In Jane Austen Stories, Emma continues with Dame Julie Andrews. And in Sherlock Holmes Short Stories, Holmes and Watson unpick an epic mystery of hidden treasure and murder in The Sign of Four.

• 37:22John Hopkins?

  Get all of these shows and more early and ad-free on Noiser Plus.

• 37:29John Hopkins?

  Just before sunset in the North Pacific Ocean, a fast-response cutter of the United States Coast Guard crashes through another enormous wave. Sheets of rain blow sideways across its prow as yet another swell breaks over the starboard side, sweeping foamy brine across the deck. Suddenly, a voice cries out from on high. A lookout has spotted something ahead. The crew turn to peer into the typhoon, a blizzard of wind and rain, their eyes searching for movement, a sign of life. Slowly, a dark shape coalesces in front of their eyes. Visibility is so poor that before they know it, they're upon the small craft, veering hard a port to avoid collision.

• 38:14John Hopkins?

  They come up alongside what is now, clearly, a lifeboat. As the crew peer into the open top, eight, drawn, pale, terrified faces stare back. The coastguards get to work. Someone throws a line down to the lifeboat, and one of the eight survivors, a tall, broad-shouldered man, grabs it and starts tying it off.

• 38:36Speaker 01

  I attach the lines because I'm the only one whose hands still work. I attach the line to the cleat on the side of the lifeboat. But the next big wave not only pulls the cleat off, it pulls the whole side of the lifeboat off. And so we start to found it.

• 38:50John Hopkins?

  Anchored to a larger vessel, but at the same time dragged forcefully away from it by a mighty wave, the side of the lifeboat gives way. Wrenched off, it plummets into the sea. Water rushes into the lifeboat. John's feet are soon submerged, and the level is rising. He watches as the boat begins to sag, sinking deeper into the freezing ocean. It's now or never.

• 39:17Speaker 01

  The coastguard guys are really well-trained, and a bunch of guys in frogman suits lower themselves into the lifeboat. And they grab each one of us and put us in a kind of a horse collar thing.

• 39:28John Hopkins?

  Otherwise known as a rescue strop or survivor sling, these padded horse collars are wrapped around the men's chests and tightened. Each collar is attached via a line to a bamboo pole on the deck of the coastguard cutter. John can just make out several blurry forms stood on the deck of the cutter, gripping the bamboo poles, waiting, watching for the perfect moment.

• 39:52Speaker 01

  Up and down, up and down. The little lifeboats going up and down relative to the side of this coastguard cutter. They wait until just the right moment, and they pull hard on bamboo poles attached to lines attached to this horse collar. And they grab each one of us, and we go flying through the air from the lifeboat onto the deck of the cutter.

• 40:14John Hopkins?

  John slams onto the deck of the cutter like a prize catch, closely followed by the rest of the passengers of Lifeboat Number Two. At last, they can breathe a collective sigh of relief. They're safe.

• 40:33John Hopkins?

  Once they're all aboard, the men are thrown into a hot shower to bring their body temperatures up and halt the onset of hypothermia. Meanwhile, the cutter turns and speeds towards Sitka in Alaska. Initially, the steaming hot water stings John's frozen skin, but soon his shivering begins to abate. Once warmed, John goes in search of someone who can help him. He needs to send a message.

• 41:00Speaker 01

  I didn't see Mallory for like three days because she was taken to Valdez and I was taken to Sitka. But we knew, of course, that each of us was alive, and that was a huge relief.

• 41:10John Hopkins?

  The message gets through to John that Mallory is okay. She's safely aboard the tanker heading to land. We'll be able to see her soon. It's painful to be apart, but all that matters is that they've both made it. John and Mallory are eventually reunited at Seattle Airport before flying back to New York.

• 41:32John Hopkins?

  On John's return, he wastes no time fulfilling the promise he made on that lifeboat in the middle of the North Pacific. He finds a nonprofit organization he can throw his weight behind, one that seeks to make the world a better place.

• 41:45Speaker 01

  I came back from the Princeton Dam and found Anne Medlock on the Giraffe Heroes Project very quickly. It's about getting people to stick their necks out, hence the metaphor giraffe. Getting people to stick their necks out to make their world a better place, whether it's in their own community or something big like working to halt global warming or getting food packets to refugees in Gaza or something. But we find people sticking their necks out and tell their stories, and in that way inspire others to stick their necks out too.

• 42:14John Hopkins?

  In fact, when John discovers the Giraffe Heroes Project, he ends up with more than just a new job.

• 42:20Speaker 01

  I feel madly in love with Anne. We got married, and the two of us have been husband and wife and business partners running the Giraffe Heroes Project ever since. Now it's getting on 45 years.

• 42:35John Hopkins?

  The fire aboard the MS Princeton Dam was a major naval disaster that made international news. It began with a leak in the oil line, and what started as a small burn grew into a deadly blaze, in part due to a poorly-equipped ship and poorly-prepared crew. There was an inquiry into the fire, with the captain, first mate, and chief engineer shouldering the bulk of the blame. They were stripped of their licenses. The ship's owner, Holland America Line, also faced severe scrutiny. The event exposed gaps in maritime safety, prompting vast overhauls in nautical fireproofing. The rescue effort, however, was remarkable. Every one of the souls on board was saved

• 43:19John Hopkins?

  without loss of life or serious injury. It is often called "the greatest ever rescue at sea" due to the distances involved, the typhoon, and the coordination of several independent organizations. Nine days after the fire began, the Princeton Dam sank, its charred skeleton dropping 9,000 feet to the bottom of the North Pacific. As for John, when he considers what kept him going in the darkest moments, seasick and freezing to death in that lifeboat, he comes back to his calling in life, his certainty that he was put here to help others.

• 43:56Speaker 01

  I don't believe in luck at all. Some higher power was keeping me alive. And there was a quid pro quo. And the quid pro quo was made explicit on that lifeboat, devoting my life to service. And that's what I was being saved for. I was saved for doing what I've been doing the last 50 years. I'm utterly convinced of that.

• 44:16John Hopkins?

  John's certainty and his purpose and his marriage to Anne aren't the only positives to come out of the fire. It solidified a strong and lasting bond with his daughter Mallory, one that continues to this day.

• 44:29Speaker 01

  Mallory and I were close then, and that episode in the Princeton Dam cemented a relationship that has only deepened over the years. And she is an incredibly important part of my life. Not that I don't love her brother just as much, but just that it was the experience on the Princeton Dam that was really different and that has brought us together in a totally unique way. There's a picture, and it's become rather famous, of me coming out to Seattle Airport. I got back down to Seattle before she did. So I was able to go back out to the airport and wait for her plane to come in from Valdez. There's a picture of her leaping into my arms that made the front page of just about every newspaper in the country. And that kind of says it all.

• 45:22John Hopkins?

  Next time on Real Survival Stories, two brothers are pushed to the brink in the mountains of British Columbia. In December 2000, Chad and Brad McDonald are enjoying a day of snowmobiling on the slopes near their hometown, keen to spend some much-needed time together. But the lighthearted atmosphere soon dissipates when a simple piece of misjudgment lands them in serious trouble.

• 45:46Speaker 03

  As I was jumping off the edge, it was a strange sensation that the base of the mountain was kind of coming with me at the same time. It almost went in slow motion. I'm looking around, and I see these huge boulders of snow break off the side of the mountain, and they're coming with me. And I'm like, oh, this isn't going to be good.

• 46:08John Hopkins?

  One bad decision soon spirals into a battle for survival. Trapped with minimal provisions and facing the prospect of a freezing night in the open, their courage, ingenuity, and brotherly bond will be tested like never before.

• 46:25John Hopkins?

  That's next time on Real Survival Stories.

• 46:30John Hopkins?

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• 46:35John Hopkins?

  This October on the Noiser Podcast Network, Real Dictators returns. We're in the Dominican Republic for the story of Rafael Trujillo. On Short History Of, we'll uncover the secrets of the Hoover Dam and follow Mary Shelley, the creator of Frankenstein and his monster. On Real Survival Stories, a modern Viking adventure as a replica Norse vessel embarks on a daring voyage across the North Sea and a man is struck blind, all alone, at the very top of the world. In Jane Austen Stories, Emma continues with Dame Julie Andrews. And in Sherlock Holmes Short Stories, Holmes and Watson unpick an epic mystery of hidden treasure and murder in The Sign of Four.

• 47:18John Hopkins?

  Get all of these shows and more early and ad-free on Noiser Plus.