Tragedy Strikes Popular Chinese Cruise Route

At the offices of the Xiehe Travel Corporation in Shanghai, distraught relatives of some of those on board the Eastern Star gather for any snippets of news.

Shanghai is 600 miles downstream from the spot where the boat sank. It is where nearly 100 of the 458 on board were from.

They had bought their tickets for their Yangtze cruise at the Xiehe Travel Corporation and then travelled west to the city of Nanjing where they boarded the "luxury cruiser".

The Eastern Star is one of hundreds of similar river cruisers which navigate a particular stretch of the Yangtze every week of the year.

The boats take passengers along one of the most spectacular stretches of water in the world - through China's Three Gorges and past the Three Gorges Dam, the world's largest, and an engineering wonder.

Some vessels begin their journey in Chongqing and sail downstream through the gorges followed by the dam. Others begin their journey in Yichang, Wuhan or Nanjing and head upstream instead.

I took the journey downstream from Chongqing last September.

The boats themselves are like floating hotels. They differ in quality but all essentially offer the same service.

The Eastern Star, like its four sister ships, all owned by the Chongqing Eastern Shipping Corporation, has three classes of cabin, restaurants, a bar and a karaoke stage.

According to local media reports, the Eastern Star was built in 1994. It has a service check every two months and the most recent was conducted on 10 April.

The boat owner's vice general manager, Wang Jianhua, has said that this is the first time the company has had an accident "of this magnitude".

Poor maintenance and overcrowding are often to blame with maritime accidents in Asia. However, in this instance, there is no suggestion that the vessel was overcrowded.

The company has released the passenger manifest which suggests it was carrying fewer passengers than it was designed for.

All the passengers were Chinese. The youngest was just three years old and the eldest 83. Most were recently-retired couples in their 60s.

The last accident on the Yangtze was in January when a tug undergoing sea trials sank killing 22 of the 25 people on board.