The attempt to find survivors from the Norwegian bulk carrier which capsized in a freak accident in a fjord near Bergen was abandoned yesterday.
Salvage experts said they had lost hope of pulling anyone else out of the vessel alive.
Eighteen of the 30 crew of the MS Rocknes are presumed dead.
With the water temperature at minus 6C, and no noises being heard from inside the ship, the rescuers conceded the desperate operation to save those trapped in the hull was futile.
”The rescue is called off,” said Trygve Sveen, the emergency team leader.
”There is no hope of finding survivors in the water.”
The rescue attempt, which involved mini-submarines and helicopters from a local naval air base, made a breakthrough on Monday night, hours after the vessel flipped over.
Three of the crew were cut from the hull of the upturned freighter, after surviving in an air pocket for about seven hours.
The rescuers found them after hearing tapping on the hull.
They then exchange hastily scribbled notes with the survivors through a hole.
One of the notes written by the trapped men read: ”Hurry up! My friend is dying.”
Leif Linde, a member of the fire department in Bergen, said: ”As the hours passed the notes got more and more dramatic.
”In the end we just had to cut through the hull.”
But the hope of finding anyone else alive dwindled as the rescue resumed on Tuesday morning.
”I think we have to be honest enough to say it would be a wonder if we found people alive in the ship under these conditions,” Harald Andersen, the Bergen sheriff, said on national radio.
A police spokesperson added: ”There is no hope for people in the water.”
Most of the survivors were in hospital last night being treated for hypothermia.
The majority of the missing crew are from the Philippines, although the Norwegian captain and a German member of the crew are also presumed dead.
An official inquiry into the incident has begun.
The 12 survivors believe the ship keeled over because it hit an obstacle under the water.
This damaged the hull and displaced the cargo of stone it was carrying to Germany.
The stone, they said, slid towards one end of the ship, throwing the entire vessel off balance and flipping it over.
The 166-metre, 25 000-ton displacement bulk carrier was built in 2001 to German specifications.
It barely had time to send out a brief distress call before capsizing less than 200 metres from the coast.
Several local residents saw it happen.
”All of a sudden the boat started to heave wildly and then it tipped over,” Erlend Tveito told a local Norwegian newspaper.
”After a few seconds it was lying upside down in the water.”
Atle Jebsen, the ship’s Bergen-based owner, told the Norwegian broadcaster NRK that he was deeply shocked by the accident.
He said the vessel had been constructed to the highest standards.
”It’s gruesome that something like this can happen to such a modern ship,” Mr Jebsen said.
The prime minister of Norway, Kjell Magne Bondevik, said his thoughts were with the families of the missing crew.
”All conceivable resources will be mobilised to help the families of those killed and missing after this deeply tragic accident,” he said.
”The families are in a terrible situation and we will do what we can to help.”
In Bergen, the biggest town on Norway’s western coastline, flags flew at half-mast yesterday.
Booms were placed around the capsized ship to contain leaking oil. – Guardian Unlimited Â