Here’s another look at this past weekend’s scuttling of the Vis, a former Yugoslav Navy ship, at a marine park off the coast of Croatia. The video is significant for two reasons. One, it gives a spectacular look at a spectacular scuttling. Two, you can clearly see the two men who were still stuck on the ship when the explosives went off!
That’s right, for some the men were still on board the ship when the scuttling began, and even with thousands of spectators, no one seemed to tell the detonator that critical piece of info.
Incredibly, both survived by racing to the stern and basically swimming for their lives, but it certainly was a scary ordeal. A closer look shows exactly how it went down.
Here’s one of the guys standing above the bridge when the first explosives went off (on right in red):
And here he is after the blasts, racing to the stern:
Here’s another view taken from a different video. Again you can clearly see one guy standing above the bridge and another (in red) on the stern:
With both men now at the stern, the secondary blasts go off, knocking them over:
Amazingly, both men were able to swim to safety as the ship went down and boats raced to their rescue. If you look closely, you can clearly see the men in red. The pressure wave then sends them away from the center, luckily not sucking them down with the sinking:
As for the Vis, it will now serve as a dive site and wildlife habitat for generations to come. Let’s just this is the ship’s last real adventure.