JIANLI, China — Zhu Hongmei, 65, had somehow managed to work her way into an air pocket in the capsized cruise ship. She stayed there for 15 or so hours, despite the cold and the currents and the darkness.
She kept her head above water. She did not lose consciousness. And Tuesday, a rescue diver appeared with scuba equipment to guide her, after just five minutes of instruction, through the murky waters and out of the Yangtze River, back into the light.
The account of that rescue, given during a televised briefing by Chen Shoumin, the commander of the local military district in this remote part of central China, was one of the few moments of triumph after a nautical disaster likely to rate as one of the worst in recent memory.
Chinese state broadcaster CCTV reported that 18 bodies had been pulled from the boat, which was floating with a sliver of its hull jutting from the gray river water. Fourteen people have been rescued, but the vast majority of the 456 people on board, many of them elderly tourists, were unaccounted for . Chen, the military commander, said more people might still be alive in the ship and additional rescuers were on their way to the scene, in Jianli County of Hubei province.
The ship keeled over Monday night local time in severe weather that the captain and engineer described to investigators as a tornado, state news media reports said.
Two people besides Zhu were pulled from the water here in a remote swath of central China on Tuesday, the Chinese state news media reported. One was Chen Shuhan, a 21-year-old crew member.
The diver who found him, Guan Dong, told a television reporter that he searched three times in the 251-foot-long, four-story ship, which had come to rest upside down, before finding the crewman. “Once I dove in, I found him stuck inside,” Guan said. “It was completely dark, and he was alone.”
The death toll will probably exceed that of Asia’s last such disaster of this magnitude, the sinking of the South Korean ferry Sewol in April 2014, in which 304 people died, most of them high school students. Many of the passengers who boarded the Oriental Star in Nanjing on Thursday for a trip to last 10 or more days were older people on group tours, although there were also children among the passengers, including a 3-year-old.
Some anxious relatives of the passengers said they had been kept in the dark throughout the ordeal.
The offices of the Xiehe Tourism Agency in Shanghai, where many of the tourists had booked their trips, were closed Tuesday, with a note taped to the door saying the managers had gone to the site of the accident.
The captain of the Oriental Star, identified as Zhang Shunwen, was pulled alive from the river at 11:50 p.m. Monday, more than two hours after the vessel capsized, The Hubei Daily reported. He and the chief engineer, who was also rescued, were taken into police custody for questioning.
Images released Tuesday afternoon by the state news media showed boats clustered around the capsized vessel and rescue workers on the ship’s underside. The muddy water was about 50 feet deep. Rescuers cut into the ship in an attempt to reach possible survivors.
Beneath a shroud of gray clouds, the air sticky with early summer humidity, divers put on suits and went one after the other into the waters of the Yangtze, the world’s third-longest river.
Plans called for 183 divers to arrive here by Wednesday. Other rescue workers were seen on state television tapping hammers on the hull, then listening for any response that could indicate survivors.
In the main Jianli hospital, several police officers blocked journalists Tuesday evening from going to the rooms in which survivors were resting. One officer said survivors had been brought in with multiple fractures. The hospital will send a psychologist to talk to the survivors, he said. Earlier, Premier Li Keqiang had visited them.
The central government ordered all Chinese journalists, except for those from the official Xinhua news agency and China Central Television, to refrain from going to the scene, some reporters said. The government often issues such orders when unexpected and politically delicate events occur.
The sinking has become the most prominent transportation accident in China since a high-speed train crash near the eastern city of Wenzhou in 2011, in which 40 people died. At the time, ordinary Chinese asked tough questions about which officials should be held responsible.
Tornadoes are not as common in China as they are in the United States, but the China Meteorological Administration said Tuesday a tornado was reported in the area around the time that the ship capsized.