17 Lives Lost. The Branson Duck Boat Tragedy. A No AI Disaster Documentary transcript

On Thursday the 19th of July 2018, Pam and Steve Smith were enjoying a family [snorts] holiday in Branson, Missouri with their two children, 14-year-old Lauren and 15year-old Lance. The family lived around 200 miles away in Oola, Arkansas, and had been coming to Branson for years, so there was nothing particularly unusual about this trip. That afternoon, Pam decided to spend some time shopping, while Steve took Lauren and Lance to one of the area's popular tourist attractions, Ride the Ducks, where unusual amphibious vehicles carried visitors through the streets of Branson before driving straight into the waters of Table Rock Lake.

It was simply a chance for Steve and the kids to have some fun while Pam did something else before the family came back together later. But as the afternoon wore on, the weather around Branson began to change, and before long Pam would be trying to reach Steve by phone. When he finally answered, she could hear the wind behind him. And Steve had just four words for his wife. It's not good, Pam. [music] Branson had been offering duckboat tours for decades, although the vehicles themselves had a history stretching back much further.

The DUKW had been developed during the Second World War as an amphibious military vehicle capable of transporting men and supplies across both land and water. When the war ended, some of the surviving vehicles found a very different purpose. Their ability to travel along an ordinary road before driving directly into the water made them an obvious novelty for sightseeing tours, and over the following decades, many were extensively modified to carry tourists.

Some were lengthened to accommodate more passengers and became known as stretch ducks. One of them was Stretch Duck 7. Originally built in 1944, it had been substantially altered during its long life. Rows of passenger seats now filled its elongated hull beneath a fixed canopy supported by a metal frame with clear vinyl curtains along the sides that could be lowered against rain and spray. By 2018, Stretch Duck 7 was part of a fleet carrying visitors around Branson.

Through the streets of the town and then straight out onto Table Rock Lake. Among the visitors hoping to experience it that Thursday was another family who had traveled much further to spend some time together in Branson. Tia Coleman had made the journey from Indianapolis with 10 members of her family, including her husband Glenn and their three children, 9-year-old Ree, 7-year-old Evan, and one-year-old Ari. It was a large family trip with several generations traveling together, and Ride the Ducks was just one of the attractions they had planned to enjoy while they were there.

By early evening, the Coleman's were preparing to take their tour. While elsewhere in Branson, Steve Smith was doing the same with Lauren and Lance. Between the two families, 14 people were about to board the same duckboat. But while they were making their way towards stretch duck 7, a line of severe thunderstorms was moving towards Branson. The possibility of bad weather had been known for much of the day. At around 11:20 that morning, more than 7 hours before the accident, the National Weather Service had issued a severe thunderstorm watch for the area.

By early evening, the threat had become much more immediate with damaging winds of around 60 mph possible. It was issued just 1 minute before Stretch Duck 7 left the Ride the Ducks boarding facility around 6 mi from the lake. The approaching weather had already been noticed by the company. Rather than cancel the tour, the decision was made to change its usual order. Normally, passengers would first be driven around Branson before reaching Table Rock Lake for the water portion.

That evening, the lake would come first, allowing the boats to complete that part of the tour before the storm arrived. And Stretch Duck 7 wasn't the only one. Three other duck boats also began their water tours after the severe thunderstorm warning had been issued. For the passengers climbing aboard, however, the weather around them still appeared relatively calm. The intention was to reach the lake, complete the water portion of the tour, and be safely back on land before the worst of the weather arrived.

They were trying to beat the storm. At the Ride the Ducks boarding facility, 29 passengers climbed aboard Stretch Duck 7. Two crew members would accompany them. 73-year-old Bob Williams was the driver responsible for the road portion of the tour, while Captain Kenneth Scott McKe would take control once they reached Table Rock Lake. Before entering the water, McKe gave the passengers a safety briefing, pointing out the life jackets stored above their seats.

Tia would later remember being told that they wouldn't need them. There was little at that moment to suggest otherwise, although some passengers had noticed darker clouds and lightning in the distance. They had also been reassured that the crew were watching the weather and would not take them onto the lake if it wasn't safe. Another duckboat, Stretch Duck 54, was making the same journey and would enter the water around 2 minutes ahead of them.

At approximately 6:55 p.m., Stretch Duck 7 reached the shoreline and began its transition from road vehicle to boat. Lauren Smith remembered the sky being clear and the water calm as they set out across Table Rock Lake. For the first few minutes, there was nothing to suggest that the decision to reach the lake before the storm would fail. Then the wind arrived. Stretch Duck 7 had been on the water for only around 5 minutes when the leading edge of the storm reached Table Rock Lake, bringing powerful straight line winds across the open water.

Within minutes, the calm surface Lauren remembered had disappeared. Waves began building around the duckboats, rising to between 3 and 5 ft, while the strongest gust recorded nearby reached 73 mph. Even the much larger Showboat Branson Bell, morowed close to the duckboat's exit ramp, was struggling. Its crew had to use the vessel's engines to keep it against the dock. Out on the lake, Stretch Duck 54 turned towards the exit ramp.

Stretch duck 7 followed. For a time, duck 7 was actually closer to the ramp, but as conditions worsened, duck 54 began to pull ahead. On board stretch duck 7, the bow was rising and falling into the waves, sending water across the front of the vessel as passengers remained in their seats beneath the canopy. Tia Coleman initially wasn't frightened. The boat was bouncing heavily, but she believed the crew had the situation under control.

Then one of the waves came over the bow. This time the water didn't simply wash away. It began coming inside. Elsewhere in Branson, Pam Smith had seen the weather deteriorating, too. She was still shopping when she became aware of the severe weather warning and immediately thought of Steve, Lauren, and Lance. She picked up her phone and called her husband. Steve answered. Behind him, Pam could hear the wind. She asked if they were okay.

It's not good, Pam. Pam told him that she loved him, and Steve told her that he loved her, too. But before the call ended, she asked him to look after the kids. She tried calling again a short time later. This time, Steve didn't answer. Back on stretch duck 7, water was still continuing to come aboard. A billagege alarm sounded and radio communications from the boat indicated that water was now splashing into the passenger compartment.

Tia could see it gathering around them. The passengers had been told to remain seated, but with each wave, the situation was becoming more frightening, and the shore they were trying to reach was now tantalizingly close. ahead of them. Stretch duck 54 made it to the exit ramp and began leaving the water. Stretch duck 7 was only around 250 ft away. Then its stern began to sink. As the back of the boat settled lower into the lake, its angle changed and still more water poured inside.

The final moments happened with terrifying speed. A crew member watching from the nearby Branson Bell would later estimate that once Stretch Duck 7 began its final descent, it disappeared beneath the surface in perhaps 10 seconds. Inside the passenger compartment, the water surged upwards. Tia remembered being thrown against something and almost immediately losing sight of her family. She could no longer see Glenn or their children, and through the noise and confusion, she could hear people screaming around her.

Then she heard her sister-in-law desperately calling for someone to grab the baby. It was the last thing Tia would remember hearing from any of them. As StretchDuck 7 went beneath the surface, the canopy above the passengers became an obstacle to escape. People who only seconds earlier had been sitting beneath it were now underwater trying to find a way through its metal framework and out of the sides. 14-year-old Lauren Smith was among those who escaped.

She found herself beneath the water swallowing mouthfuls as she struggled to breathe and find a way out. Somehow she reached open water and began fighting towards the surface. Nearby, she saw another person struggling and despite barely having escaped herself, pushed against their feet in an attempt to help them upwards. Tia was fighting her own battle. Unable to see her family and repeatedly struggling beneath the water, she eventually reached the point where she believed she had nothing left.

She stopped fighting and for a moment was ready to let herself go. But something changed. Tia began swimming again. She reached the surface. Lauren had also survived, and the wind and waves eventually carried her towards the dock, where she managed to cling on until somebody pulled her from the water. Behind them, Stretch Duck 7 continued its descent through Table Rock Lake. Of the 31 people who had been aboard, only 14 survived.

Those watching from the shore had seen Stretch Duck 7 fighting its way towards them and then watched as it disappeared. On board the Branson Bell, crew members and passengers immediately began trying to help the people scattered across the water, throwing life jackets and anything else that might keep them afloat. The storm had not passed. Powerful winds were still driving waves across the lake as survivors struggled towards the dock. while people on shore reached into the water to pull them to safety.

Among those fighting to reach the surface was 12-year-old Alysia Dennison. She had been traveling with her 64 yearear-old grandmother Leslie. And as the boat went down, Alysia would later remember her grandmother beneath her in the water, pushing her upwards towards the surface. Alysia survived. Leslie did not. Gradually, survivors were brought from the water, and families waiting on shore began to discover who had been found.

For Tia Coleman, the news was almost impossible to comprehend. She had boarded stretch duck 7 with 10 members of her family. Only Tia and her 13-year-old nephew, Donovan, had survived. Her husband Glenn was gone along with all three of their children. Angela, Belinda, Irvin, and Horus Coleman had also died along with 2-year-old Maxwell. Nine people from one family. Pam Smith learned that Lauren was alive and had been taken to hospital.

When she reached her daughter, she later remembered kissing her over and over again. But there was still no Steve and no Lance. Steve was 53, a church deacon who Pam described as someone who never met a stranger. He and Pam had been married for almost 28 years. Lance was just 15. Only four days earlier, he had stood before his church congregation and spoken about the importance of being a good example. Now neither of them was coming home.

William and Janice Bright, William Asher, and Rosemary Hammond were also lost along with 73-year-old Bob Williams who had driven Stretch Duck 7 towards the lake that evening. 17 people had died. And while the families were only beginning to comprehend what had happened, Stretch Duck 7 was lying upright on its wheels approximately 80 ft beneath Table Rock Lake. Investigators now needed to understand why it had sunk just 250 ft from safety.

One important comparison was stretched duck 54. It had entered the lake only 2 minutes earlier and encountered the same storm, yet had made it back to the ramp. Duck 7 sat lower in the water and lacked sufficient reserve buoyancy. As waves broke over its bow, water entered through an air intake hatch that was not weathertight, and once enough accumulated inside, there was nothing to keep the vessel afloat. The NTSB would later conclude that with sufficient reserve buoyancy, stretch duck 7 likely would not have sunk.

But there was another problem. The fixed canopy above the passengers became a barrier to escape. One side curtain was released as the vessel went down, but the starboard curtain remained closed, and investigators concluded that it likely contributed to additional deaths. Even wearing a life jacket beneath that canopy could create difficulties, forcing someone upwards against the roof when they needed to find a way out.

And none of this was entirely new. 19 years earlier, another duck boat, the Miss Majestic, had sunk on Lake Hamilton in Arkansas. 13 people died, including three children. Seven victims were found inside the vessel, four of them trapped beneath its fixed canopy. The NTSB investigation identified the same two dangers: insufficient reserve buoyancy and the difficulty of escaping. Warnings and safety recommendations followed, but crucial measures were not fully implemented. 19 years later, those same vulnerabilities were present on Stretch Duck 7.

The NTSB ultimately found that the probable cause of the Branson sinking was the decision to continue waterborne tours despite a severe thunderstorm warning. Criminal charges were later brought against Captain Kenneth Scott McKe and two other employees. Federal charges were dismissed over jurisdiction and subsequent Missouri state charges were also dismissed after a judge found the evidence did not establish the level of criminal recklessness required by law.

Survivors and families also pursued civil claims, many of which were resolved through settlements. But the disaster did eventually lead to wider change. Legislation passed in 2022 introduced new safety requirements for amphibious passenger vessels, including measures covering weather monitoring, reserve buoyancy, fixed canopies, and crew training. Ride the Ducks Branson never resumed operations with its old fleet. Amphibious sightseeing tours would eventually return to Branson, but with a different type of vehicle and under very different scrutiny.

For Tia Coleman, the loss was almost impossible to comprehend. For the Smith family, Lauren had survived, but her father and the brother she had described as one of her best friends had not. Pam had been elsewhere in Branson when the weather began to change, and had called Steve to make sure they were all right. Behind his voice, she could hear the wind, and the four words Steve had spoken during that final conversation would come to mean far more than the worsening weather around Table Rock Lake.

It's not good, Pam. And it wasn't. I had never really heard of duckboats before coming across this tragedy. My overwhelming feeling is of sadness that it took two fatal incidents before measures were legally brought in to safeguard future operations. Our condolences go out to the families and friends of all of those who lost their lives and our best wishes to everyone else who was otherwise affected by the tragedy. Despite the nature of the information, I hope you appreciated the way it was presented.

I'll see you on the next one and I'll wish you bye-bye for now.