 One hundred passengers and crew escaped unhurt after their cruise ship hit ice in the Antarctic and started sinking on Friday, the ship's owner and coast guard officials said. A Norwegian passenger boat in the area safely picked up all the occupants of the MS Explorer from the lifeboats they used to flee the ship when it ran into problems off King George Island in Antarctica at 0524 GMT, the Explorer's owners said. "All are aboard my vessel," Captain Arnvid Hansen of the Norwegian ship the Nordnorge told Britain's BBC Television. "There are no afraid passengers or anything like that." The passengers were being taken to Chile's Eduardo Frei base in the Antarctic from where they would later be flown to Punta Arenas in southern Chile, a Chilean navy commander told local television. The stricken vessel, owned by Canadian travel company Gap Adventures, had set sail from the southern Argentine port of Ushuaia last week and was heading south toward the barren, icy continent, officials said. "Apparently they crashed into an iceberg," Pedro Tuhay, of the Argentine coast guard, told local radio as operations continued to save the vessel. "The boat's got a 23-degree list, but it's keeping steady very well." Pictures on local television showed the vessel listing severely amid dark gray waters. Gap Adventures spokeswoman Susan Hayes told CNN the vessel's evacuation was "very calm" and the passengers were never in danger. The vessel "didn't hit an iceberg, it hit some ice ... There are ice flows, but it didn't hit a huge iceberg," Hayes said. CLIMATE CHANGE Gap Adventures said in a statement a total of 100 passengers and crew were on board the ship. Earlier reports had put the number at 154, but a spokesman said that was the ship's maximum capacity. It said the passengers included Americans, British, Canadians, Australians, Dutch, Japanese, Argentines and other nationalities, and that the families of those on board were being contacted. The ship, built in 1969, was carrying 85 passengers and 15 crew on the luxury cruise, the spokesman said. The Explorer usually makes two-week cruises around the Antarctic, costing some 4,000 pounds ($8,000) per cabin. Smaller than most cruise ships, it is able to enter narrower bays off the continent and scientists are on board to brief passengers on the region's geology and climate change, the spokesman added. King George Island lies about 700 miles (1,127 km) south of Cape Horn, the tip of South America, and is the largest of the South Shetland islands. Cruise trip travel has grown in Antarctica in recent years and Tuhay said 52 cruises were expected at the southern port of Ushuaia during this year's peak season from October to April.