Moby Prince
 The Moby Prince in the port of Bastia in August 1987
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The Moby Prince was an Italian ferry of the "Navarma Lines" (today's Moby Lines ). On April 10, 1991, she collided with a tanker and caught fire . 140 people died in the accident.
The ferry was built in 1967/1968 under the construction number 1331 at the British shipyard Cammell, Laird & Company in Birkenhead under the name Koningin Juliana . The keel was laid in April 1967, the launch on February 2, 1968. The ferry was used by the Dutch shipping company Stoomvaart Maatschappij Zeeland until 1984 on the connection Harwich - Hook of Holland .
The accident
At 10:23 p.m. on April 10, 1991, the Moby Prince collided 2 nautical miles from the port entrance of Livorno with the oil tanker Agip Abruzzo lying in the roadstead and caught fire. 140 people died in the accident, only one sailor was saved from the burning ferry. Not all of them died directly from the fire; many of the passengers were killed in the main interior, into which they had fled, from smoke inhalation.
The organization of the rescue measures came under massive criticism. The Moby Prince's very weak message for help was apparently overheard by officials from the Livorno port authority. In addition, the rescue teams were only sent to the Agip Abruzzo , whose captain assumed to have collided with a small barge. Only a few volunteers managed to reach the deck of the Moby Prince and rescue a sailor. Although he reported other survivors, no further efforts were made to get on the burning ferry. When the rescue teams pushed into the wreck the next morning , they found only bodies .
The cause of the accident remained unclear. Heavy fog , as initially assumed, was ruled out as the cause by amateur recordings.
The wreck was later scrapped in Turkey .
Web links
- Entry at Faktaomfartyg (Swedish)
- Website to misfortune
Footnotes
- ↑ Raw material as a bomb , Spiegel Online , April 15, 1991