A BritON who was aboard a cruise liner which ran aground after hitting a reef in the Pacific Ocean yesterday described the chaotic scenes which followed the impact.

Mr David Wright was one of eight British passengers on the US-owned World Discoverer, which got into trouble off the Solomon Islands, developing a 20-degree list, and was run aground by its captain to stop it sinking further.

Lifeboats failed to operate correctly as the vessel listed to one side, said Mr Wright, 52, who paid nearly #8000 for his first cruise.

''There was a shake and a loud noise,'' he said from his hotel in the Solomons capital, Honiara.

''We were all startled. I don't think we were in any danger but we had to get off the ship into the lifeboats. ''Not all the lifeboats worked satisfactorily and some of them had to go back and forwards between the island and the ship several times.

''We climbed into one lifeboat on the deck and they couldn't get it to work, so we had to get out and go down some stairs to a lower deck. The stairs were sloping, so it was a bit dodgy.

''The passengers were red in the face and sweating a bit but there was no panic.''

Mr Wright, from Hackney in London, lost all his luggage apart from the clothes he was wearing.

Passengers were ferried from the 3274-tonne World Discoverer to nearby Ngella island and later taken to the main Solomon island of Guadalcanal by charter vessel.

From the lifeboat, Mr Wright saw the captain deliberately run his vessel on to the island to prevent it sinking.

''It was just rammed into the beach, breaking trees in the forest which stretches down to the shore.

''It was quite spectacular. And when we reached the beach, we could see a tree hanging from the prow of the ship.

''They chartered a cargo and passenger ship to take us to the main islands. I was sitting on the linoleum floor of this ship for hours, drenched to the skin, just wearing shorts, a T-shirt, and carpet slippers,'' said Mr Wright.

''We didn't get to a hotel until after 4am, more than 12 hours after the collision happened.''

Mr Wright joined the ship at Fiji on April 23 and was due to visit Papua New Guinea and Hawaii later in the 18-night cruise.

Mr Michael Lomax, president of Society Expeditions, which runs the World Discoverer out of Seattle, said the ship struck an uncharted coral reef in Sandfly Passage, 20 miles north of the Honiara on Sunday.

The area was the scene of heavy fighting between US and Japanese forces in the Second World War and up to 50 ships are said to be wrecked in the sound.

The 99 passengers comprised 47 Americans, 44 Germans, and eight Britons, he told New Zealand's National Radio.

The double-hulled ship has been used for cruises in Antarctic waters. Surveyors were on the way to the scene to assess damage to the 80-cabin vessel.

''She is on the beach for the most part but her stern is floating,'' Mr Lomax said, adding that no oil, petrol or other pollutants had escaped the hull into the water.