Passengers recount close calls aboard ‘cruises from hell’

A traumatized mom has told of the moment she was sucked underneath a burning cruise ship when a dream Thai getaway turned into a nightmare.

Gina Moss was traveling in Asia with husband Les and her two kids when the boat they were traveling on spluttered to a halt before bursting into flames.

After jumping overboard with her two kids, a powerful current dragged Gina underneath the flaming hull — but she battled her way to the other side after telling herself “I’m not dying like this.”

She opened up about the ordeal as part of the UK’s Channel 4’s “Cruises From Hell” show, which chronicled some of the worst cruise mishaps.

Gina said: “It was about 30 minutes into the journey and suddenly the boat stopped and as I turned around a big gulf of flames came from the lower deck.

“I said to my son and daughters ‘you have to jump.’ We jumped into the water and that was the last thing I remember because I was swept underneath the boat.

“I opened my eyes and thought ‘I’m not dying like this’ and I pushed myself out, I had cuts all up my arm. The last time I saw Les, he was on the boat. I wasn’t sure if he was dead or alive.”

Les told how he saw a “distraught” mom and dad being consoled after their daughter died on the lower decks.

Gina added: “Ten minutes before my son was down below in the toilets, that could have been my son. That’s always in the back of my mind.”

Also recounting a horror cruise trip abroad, Irish couple Bill and Tanya Powers recalled how they were trapped on a huge Norwegian cruise liner as it sailed through a so-called “bomb cyclone.”

Horrifying footage shows furniture strewn across decks and water running down the massive ship’s corridors.

Tanya said: “I’ve never felt more scared and there was nobody to reassure me that it was going to be OK.

“I just had in my mind: ‘The boat’s going to capsize. Will we get to the lifeboats? Am I going to die here with my family?’ It was the most frightening experience of my life.”

Bill joked: “I told her it was going to be OK but she never listens to me. Tanya was curled up in a ball in complete terror and she looked at me sincerely and said ‘you know if we don’t get home you’ve given me a wonderful life.’

“And I’m thinking I can come home drunk for the next year and I’ll be able to use this. That was worth the price of the cruise, even with the storm!”

Another video shows a couple in red life jackets desperately clinging to a handrail as a storm pummels the boat they’re on.

Another shows a ferry engulfed in flames and thick black smoke.

In other scenes, 30-foot waves crash against the window of a Royal Caribbean ship in 2017 — at one point submerging the entire window.

“We’re staying in one place hoping not to die,” one of the men can be heard saying half-jokingly as 120 mile-per-hour winds whip up the sea.

Huge waves crash against the glass as people in the background can be heard laughing nervously.

Passengers had earlier been warned to stay in their cabins by the captain, who told them the ship was at a standstill in an effort to ride out the storm.