MANAMA: Clad in a sequined dress for what was supposed to be a pleasant night out, a Western-looking woman tried desperately to revive a loved one aboard a rescue boat off Bahrain.

A dinner cruise had turned into tragedy when a leisure boat with some 130 passengers on board, including many foreigners, sank off the coast of the Gulf kingdom late Thursday, killing at least 57 people.

The woman escorted the stretcher which carried the man to an ambulance. When the door was slammed shut, she put her head on the vehicle and broke into tears.

A body, apparently that of a woman wearing a white top, clung to the overturned hull of the doomed ship as a rescuer used a hammer to remove pieces of wood and try to pull it.

Other bodies were brought aboard rescue boats to the shore, where they were wrapped in white sheets and carried on stretchers.

Shocked survivors who arrived on shore were wrapped in wool blankets and given water to drink. Others, who lost their shirts in the accident, were dressed in hermetic plastic yellow shirts by rescuers.

The vessel’s owner attributed the disaster to overloading.

The boat “has a capacity of 200 but it is allowed to carry only 100 passengers,” Abdullah al-Qubaisi of the Al Dana company said on Bahrain state television.

He said the boat was rented to a local company called Island Tours which arranged the dinner and cruise.

“They loaded the boat with more than its capacity. The captain refused to sail but they forced him to leave,” Qubaisi said.

He said the captain and two of his assistants who survived the accident said the two-level traditional wooden boat known as a Banoosh capsized when too many passengers gathered on one end of the 100m-long vessel.

The passengers, including Europeans, Americans and Asians, were employees of a local company out for a weekend dinner aboard the boat, of a kind favoured by foreigners for its traditional character.

“It’s a tragic incident. We are all traumatised,” said Brian Bruce, chief executive of Murray and Roberts, the company employing the victims. He said the company has called for an independent investigation into the disaster.

Murray and Roberts and its partner Bahraini firm Nass hired the boat to celebrate completing the concrete outside structure for a new $150mn World Trade Center which is being built there.

“They were celebrating a major milestone. My feeling is that they would not have done something like this if they felt it was in any way dangerous,” he said.

Blood flowing from his nose and wetting his beard, a man was taken to the coastguard post. He sat on the floor near another sobbing survivor, as an Asian-looking woman tried to comfort the latter by patting him on the shoulder.

Nurses tried to calm an Asian man who sobbed hysterically.

“Four psychiatrists will look after the survivors,” said Bahraini Health Minister Nada Haffadh.

A British woman left a hospital saying her husband had gone missing. She was about to collapse. Police held her and moved away journalists.

“The boat was sailing slowly when it tilted around 30 degrees on one side, then tilted suddenly on the other side and started to sink,” said Kunjumon Kuzhiyilthekkathil, an Indian survivor.

“I was on the second floor when I suddenly fell in the sea,” said the 48-year-old employee of the firm which organised the ill-fated cruise.

“One of the passengers saved me. I consider myself lucky,” he said, holding back tears.- AFP