Hong Kong’s Jumbo floating restaurant sinks at sea

(CNN) — An iconic Hong Kong floating restaurant has sunk, just days after it was towed out to sea en route to an unspecified destination.

The restaurant’s main boat was traveling to an undisclosed shipyard when it capsized on Saturday after meeting “adverse conditions” near the Paracel Islands (also known as the Xisha Islands) in the South China Sea, Aberdeen Restaurant Enterprises Limited said in a statement Monday.

The boat sank more than 1,000 meters (3,280 feet), making salvage work “extremely difficult,” the statement said.

It added that Aberdeen Restaurant Enterprises was “very saddened by this accident,” and was working to gather more details from the towing company. No crew members were injured.

On Tuesday, the Hong Kong government asked the owners for a report on how the vessel came to capsize, public broadcaster RTHK reported, amid calls for a more thorough investigation into the circumstances that led to the sinking.

The news of the sinking was met with consternation online, with many Hong Kong social media users bemoaning the inelegant end to one of Hong Kong’s most recognized historic icons.

Some posted art depicting the restaurant underwater, while others shared farewell messages or fond memories of visits past.

Hong Kong political party Third Side described the incident as baffling and accused the government and those involved in the restaurant’s management of indirectly causing the capsizing of “Hong Kong people’s collective memory,” RTHK reported.

Others saw the sinking ship as a darkly comic metaphor for Hong Kong’s alleged fortunes, as the city — still largely shut off from the rest of the world — clings on to pandemic restrictions following several years of political turmoil.

The 260-foot long (about 80 meters) restaurant was the main boat of Jumbo Kingdom, a more than 2,000 person capacity eatery which included an older and smaller sister restaurant boat, a barge for seafood tanks, a kitchen boat, and eight small ferries to transport visitors from nearby piers.