Riga - A Swedish company on Monday sent a powerful towboat to help free a German cruise ship that ran aground off the coast of Latvia in the Baltic Sea, Latvian officials said. Swedes will work to free the ship at the request of the ship's owner, Germany's Lord Nelson Seereisen shipping company, Latvian navy coastguard service head Hermanis Cernovs was quoted by the Baltic News Service as saying.
Earlier on Monday, the Latvian coastguard began evacuating nearly 1,000 people aboard a stranded cruise ship in the Baltic Sea off the coast of Latvia, officials said.
The 747 passengers who were mostly elderly Germans, and the crew boarded two naval ships which would take them to the seaport city of Ventspils in northwestern Latvia, Cernovs said.
"Everything is taking place peacefully and the weather is suitable," coast guard spokeswoman Liene Ulbina told Deutsche Presse- Agentur dpa.
The passengers will be checked into hotels and are expected to stay in Riga tonight, the German Embassy's press office told dpa.
"People are very calm. They have a lot of humour about it. They didn't pay a lot for the cruise," a ship employee, Martins Mironovs, told Latvian National Radio on Monday.
The Bahamas-registered vessel was en route to Riga with 981 people aboard when it ran aground Sunday, officials said.
The captain decided to evacuate the passengers off of the 173-metre (567-foot) Mona Lisa after unsuccessful efforts to pull it free on Sunday and Monday, Ulbina said. The Latvian coast guard tried to free the 42-year-old ship with four tugboats during the night.
The air force and border guards were on standby although there were no signs of damage to the Mona Lisa, which was stranded in the Irbe strait between Latvia and the Estonian island of Saaremaa, 17 kilometres from the shore. The cause of the accident remains unclear.
The captain of the ship is a Greek national and the officers are from Ukraine, the Baltic News Service reported.
In the evening, passengers will be taken by a specially-organised train to the Latvian capital, Riga, 160 kilometres east of Ventspils. They would be booked into hotels and sent home by plane, officials said.
