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Nectar Gan

Andrea Chen

Lawrence  Chung

Rescue teams have righted the Eastern Star cruise ship, after it capsized in stormy weather on the Yangtze River on Monday night, as relatives of the more than 300 passengers and crew still missing complained of slow progress to learn the fate of their family members.
The decision to right the ship was made at about 8pm last night after President Xi Jinping - chairing a meeting of the Politburo Standing Committee - ordered an increase in search efforts and "a thorough investigation" into the disaster.
Watch: More survivors unlikely from China's Yangtze river boat disaster

The transport ministry said the decision was made to right the ship after it assessed that there were no survivors.
"In a situation in which the overall judgment is that there is no chance of people being alive, we could start the work of righting the boat," transport ministry spokesman Xu Chengguang told a news conference late on Thursday.
The work on rolling the ship upright was completed on Friday morning, Xinhua reported. 
Salvage workers had cut their way into the hull on Wednesday night but later found no survivors.
Fourteen survivors and 97 bodies had been found as of Friday morning. The ship was carrying 456 people when it capsized on the Jianli section of the river in Hubei province.
Rescuers, many from the military, worked through the night to right the ship. 
More than 200 divers have groped through murky water after cutting through the hull, searching every cabin on board, but have found no more survivors.
The weather is expected to improve on Friday, after days of heavy rain, which should help rescuers.
Four bodies were found in the Yueyang section of the river in neighbouring Hunan province after salvage workers on Tuesday expanded their work to cover 220km of the lower reaches of the river.
Yin Yanxiang, whose 56-year-old sister was on board with a tour group from Changzhou , Jiangsu province, questioned the efficiency of the rescue operation. "Why did they wait until the third day to cut the hull?" asked Yin, 68.
Another woman surnamed Chen, 73, from Nanjing, whose husband, 78, was in a third-class cabin, agreed: "The rescue was way too slow."
Louis Szeto Ka-sing, a Hong Kong-based marine engineering expert, said the salvagers should have cut into the ship as soon as they had arrived. "They should have cut the hull and injected oxygen into it much earlier to rescue the passengers there who might have been alive," he said. It was almost impossible for the divers to enter cabins three to four floors' deep, he added.
An expert who took part in rescue efforts after a TransAsia plane plunged into the Keelung River in Taiwan in February noted that it took more than two hours for mainland authorities to be notified of the Eastern Star's distress.
"This was a serious lapse in shipwreck crisis handling by the [Eastern Star's] crew," he said.
Additional reporting by Reuters
 


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Hoists lift the capsized cruise ship in the Yangtze River. Photo: Reuters

Hoists lift the capsized cruise ship in the Yangtze River. Photo: Xinhua

Rescue workers spent the night lifting the vessel. Photo: Xinhua

Rescuers work to right the capsized cruise ship Eastern Star. Photo: Xinhua

An aerial view of rescuers working on righting the capsized cruise ship Eastern Star in Jianli, Hubei. Photo: Reuters

Relatives of the victims hold a candlelight vigil for the victims on the cruise ship Eastern Star. Photo: EPA

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Transport ministry’s assessment is there are no more survivors on the sunken vessel


Transport ministry says there are no more survivors on the sunken vessel


Update | Body count rises as Chinese rescuers right capsized cruise ship Eastern Star

Transport ministry’s assessment is there are no more survivors on the sunken vessel