A ‘horrific’ scene from the Showboat Branson Belle: ‘It was not a good sight to see’

The sky grew dark. Fierce winds turned the waves on Table Rock Lake into whitecaps. Hard rain fell.

From the deck of the Showboat Branson Belle, Brayden Malaske, 20, pointed his cellphone camera at the two Ride the Ducks boats lurching forward, rising and falling, as the whitecaps crashed over their bows.

In the end, he would describe the scene as “horrific.” His sister remembers passengers screaming when they plunged into the water. Those with life vests on seemed to make it to shore. Those without thrashed in the waves, struggling to survive.

“These two (boats) were taking on water,” he said Friday. “You could tell they were trying to get out of there. They had the sides pulled down trying to keep the rain out. You could see that one of them, for some reason, was having more trouble. It was going slower, hitting the waves harder.”

Even then Malaske didn’t think either of the World War II-style boats would go down — until one did. He didn’t see it happen.

He watched what happened next.

“People were swimming,” he said. “You could see life vests floating around. It was not a good sight to see.”

The wind was so powerful, said his sister, Lexi Malaske, 15, that it took both her and her mother to open the door on the Belle. They and their family were on their last night of vacation in Branson, up from Harrah, Okla.

“There was a lot of screaming,” she said.

Standing on the top deck of the Belle, she and her mom felt all but helpless. Spotting victims from their perch, they yelled to crew members to find them and pull some aboard.

“I didn’t see very many with life jackets on,” she said. “Those that did were on the shore.”

The winds, she said, pushed bodies against the hull of the Belle.

“A very eerie sight that you don’t want to see again,” she said.

Her mother, Sonja Malaske, called it a “horrific moment that is just indescribable. ... You felt helpless, other than directing the rescue people. We did, we were up high. If we saw somebody alive, we would just yell.”

They saw a woman hanging onto a paddle. Rescuers didn’t see her. Their yelling led to her rescue.

“We kept pointing where she was,” Sonja Malaske said.

The Malaskes had planned to continue their vacation, perhaps head from Branson to Kansas City for a few days.

“We just want to go home now,” she said. “You’re glad to be alive.”

This story was originally published July 20, 2018 at 3:45 PM.