Documentary missed secrets of Lermontov sinking, says critic

The truth behind the sinking of the Russian cruise ship Mikhail Lermontov may never be known, says a Marlborough man who helped to rescue passengers.

Dave Fishburn said a television documentary shown on Monday left many questions unanswered.

In the TVNZ documentary, passengers who survived the sinking called for answers or at least an apology from former Marlborough Harbour Board pilot Don Jamison, who was the pilot on board when the Russian cruise ship ran aground just off Cape Jackson in February, 1986.

Yesterday, Mr Jamison refused to discuss the documentary.

The only inquiry held, a preliminary one, claimed to have established the facts leading to the grounding of the 20,000-tonne ship.

Mr Fishburn believes the answer to the mystery may be contained in papers of the then-Transport Minister, Richard Prebble, which have been deposited with the National Archives and cannot be opened until after Mr Prebble's death.

Mr Prebble has refused to give permission for them to be released earlier.

Mr Fishburn said that if nothing was being hidden, there was no reason to withhold documents relating to the sinking, in which one crewman died.

"For an incident of that nature to be kept under wraps creates mystery and suspicion."

He had been running charter trips in the Marlborough Sounds for 10 years, and on every trip someone had asked him about the sinking.

It seemed inconsistent that Mr Jamison was not punished over the incident, while some Russian officers were.

"If I ran my boat on to rocks at Cape Jackson - I wouldn't even have to lose anybody - I would be crucified," Mr Fishburn said.

Marlborough author Michael Guerin, whose book The Mikhail Lermontov Enigma was published in 1998, has pursued Mr Prebble's papers without success and has questioned why a full inquiry was not held.

Mr Prebble said he had not seen the documentary.

There were no more documents on the sinking, he said, "but you can't answer the conspiracy theorists".

- NZPA