An investigation has been launched after a pleasure boat carrying a party of 33 City bankers started sinking on the River Thames on Wednesday afternoon.

High Society, a 25-foot luxury cruiser, had to be beached, evacuated and then pumped free of water by emergency services near Hampton Court Bridge at around 3.45pm.

The luxury cruiser, owned by Chelsea-based company Connoisseur Charters, was sinking fast and had taken in around a metre of water in the engine room.

The crew had tried to get the boat, on a leisure trip from Richmond to Sunbury, to Hampton Court Pier but were forced to beach it 20 feet short of the pier.

According to Martin Betts, a banker from Essex and passenger on the £1,000-a-day cruiser, the situation got so bad the crew asked the passengers to move to the front of the boat to help keep it afloat.

A RNLI lifeboat, three fire engines and an ambulance rushed to the scene after receiving a call from the London Coastguard warning them a boat was sinking.

At the time of going to press, the cause of the leak was not known, but an investigation has been launched by the Coast Guard.

Peter Lewis, a volunteer helmsman for the RNLI , one of the first on the scene said: "There was no real danger. This stretch of the Thames is not so wide, so they are never going to be in any trouble."

Referring to the 1989 Marchioness disaster, he said: "This is one of our big fears, if one of these went down again."

The boat had been chartered by an events company, Personal Allies, for a group of city bankers.

The director of the company Charlotte Wilson, a passenger on the boat, was furious with Connoisseur.

She told the Comet: "I think obviously, with the past disasters that have happened on the Thames, that most companies would be so concerned with the safety of their passengers that they wouldn't allow this sort of thing to happen."

Ms Wilson said she saw water coming in at the back of the boat and was very worried.

She added that the charter company had left the passengers on the riverbank while they attended to the boat and were "nowhere to be seen to make an apology". Now she intends to seek compensation.

Connoisseur Charters said the matter was being investigated, but refused to make any further comment.

July 12, 2002 09:30