Five die as whale-watching boat capsizes

A woman and four men, all of them British, have died after the whale-watching boat they were on capsized off the west coast of Canada.

The 20m Leviathan II, which was carrying 27 people, turned over near Vancouver Island on Sunday afternoon local time.

The British Columbia coroner’s office said that three of those killed were tourists, and the other two lived in Canada.

Twenty one people were rescued from the stricken vessel, with one other still missing.

Barbara McLintock, the coroner’s spokeswoman, said: “We can confirm now that they are all British nationals. Three were tourists and two were resident in Canada.’’

She was unable to confirm the dead men and women’s ages apart from that they were adults aged between 18 and 75.

She added that they were in the process of contacting their next of kin.

Video footage online showed the boat bobbing vertically in the water, with what appears to be a large section of it submerged below the waves after it went down at around 4pm local time on Sunday.

The boat, run by Jamie’s Whaling Station, a local tour company, got into difficulty 13km from the small town of Tofino, around 250km west of Vancouver.

The Associated Press reported that the company has suffered a previous fatal accident, with a boat capsizing in 1998, killing the captain and a tourist.

Britain’s foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, had earlier announced that the dead were British, saying: “It is with deep sadness that I can confirm five British nationals have lost their lives when the whale watching boat they were on sank off western Canada on Sunday.

Whale-watching boat sinks off coast of British Columbia: https://t.co/t2bM6dh2NHhttps://t.co/98FKWcyUij

— Mashable (@mashable) October 26, 2015

The Canadian prime minister-designate, Justin Trudeau, said that he was “shocked and saddened” by the deaths.

Aboriginal councillor Tom Campbell described the condition of survivors.

“Their looks tell the whole story,’’ he said. “You can’t describe looks on people that are lost. They look totally lost, shocked and lost.’’

Sheila Simpson said she was strolling on the dock with her husband when rescue boats roared up carrying people from the whale-watching vessel.

“One didn’t make it,” said Simpson, about a man whose body was covered by a blanket.

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