Have you ever zoned out on your phone and missed half a conversation? Maybe even dropped the ball at work? Odds are the fallout wasn’t nearly as humiliating as beaching a long-distance ferry and stranding 267 people on a deserted island.

A car ferry was running its regular four-hour-plus route from the South Korean island of Jeju to the port city of Mokpo when everyone aboard heard a deafening bang. It was just after 8 p.m.

Kim, 51, said, “I thought I might die. The sound was too loud.” Several passengers remembered the 2014 sinking of the Sewol ferry, which claimed 300 lives. “But having seen the Sewol ferry, I knew that in situations like this, you have to stay calm, move outside, wear a life jacket, and wait.”

The 246 passengers and 21 crew members stepped onto the deck and found their 26,500-ton boat beached on an uninhabited island. Five passengers had minor injuries. President Lee Jae Myung ordered “swift rescue efforts.”

How the crew lost control

The coast guard transported everyone to safety and towed the ship to port the next day.

Authorities later told the press, “The officer responsible for steering had been looking at his mobile phone and allowed autopilot to take control in an area where the ship should have been manually operated.” The commissioner said the coast guard will conduct an investigation.