Moss Hills is a Zimbabwe-born musician and cruise industry veteran best known for his heroic role in the 1991 sinking of the MTS Oceanos. Working as a guitarist and singer alongside his wife Tracy, a bassist, Hills was part of the ship’s entertainment team when the vessel began to founder off South Africa’s Wild Coast. With the captain and senior officers having abandoned ship, Hills and his wife Tracy and a small group of entertainers and cruise staff took charge: they launched lifeboats, reached the bridge to send a Mayday call, organized passengers on the tilting decks, and coordinated the forward helicopter airlift that ultimately helped save all 571 people on board.
After the Oceanos disaster, Hills continued his career at sea, eventually becoming a cruise director and later joining Silversea Cruises in 2014, where he has sailed to all seven continents in that role. He has been recognized with bravery awards for his actions in 1991, and he remains closely associated with the Oceanos story, often speaking and writing about the rescue and maintaining a presence as a digital creator and public figure.
Remarkably, the Oceanos was not the only maritime disaster Moss Hills experienced. Six years earlier, in 1985, he and his wife Tracy were passengers aboard the Achille Lauro when it was hijacked by terrorists in the Mediterranean. They survived that terrifying four-day ordeal, only to find themselves leading passengers to safety during the sinking of the Oceanos in 1991. Few people have found themselves at the center of two such extraordinary events at sea.
Another Ship, Another Disaster
You would think that surviving the sinking of one cruise ship would be enough for a lifetime. But Moss Hills and his wife Tracy weren’t finished with maritime disasters. In November 1994, they were working aboard the Achille Lauro when a fire broke out. The ship was abandoned and sank two days later off the coast of Somalia. It was the same vessel made infamous by the 1985 hijacking. For Moss and Tracy, it was their second sinking in just over three years. What are the odds of that happening to the same couple?