A pod of killer whales sank a yacht in the Mediterranean Sea in a “terrifying” attack that lasted for two hours, with passengers saying the animals hunted like “wolves.”
Robert Powell was supposed to be celebrating his fifty-ninth birthday aboard the $128,680 boat, called the Bonhomme William, on a ten-day trip from Vilamoura, Portugal, to Greece, but the attack began just 22 hours into the vacation, the New York Post reported.
The British captain told SWNS that the orcas knew “exactly what they were doing” when trying to sink the boat.
“To me, they were not playing at all. They knew exactly what they were doing. They knew the weak points of the boat, and they knew how to sink it,” Powell said. “Their sole intention was to sink the boat, and that was it.”
The captain said he initially thought the ship had run into a rock when he felt a bump coming from the bottom of the boat.
“Whilst I was looking around the boat to see if I could see anything — I was doing about five to six knots — it got hit again,” he recalled. “On the second hit, I looked over the back of the boat, and I could see the dark shape of a killer whale in the water.”
It turned out to be a pod of five orcas.
They first directed their aggression at the rudder, effectively rendering the boat’s steering capabilities useless.
They then separated and hit other parts of the yacht’s exterior.
“They were circling. It was like watching wolves hunt,” Powell said.
“They were taking it in turns to come in — sometimes two would come in at the same time and hit it. So, obviously, pretty terrifying.”
After an hour and a half, water began filling the main living area of the boat.
While the Bonhomme William was only two miles from the coast of Spain, it took two hours for a Spanish salvage vessel to arrive, just minutes before the damaged yacht sank.
“It was a very long attack, and it was really the violence of the attack that surprised me,” Powell said.
