Tag: Maritime History

On 21st March 2021, the grounding of the giant container ship ‘Ever Given’ at the Suez Canal, one of the world’s busiest maritime routes, made headlines all over the world.

It’s been 40 years since the large bulk carrier SS Marine Electric tragically sank on February 12, 1983, off the Virginia coast, remembers Mr. James Scheffer, Strategic Advisor, NTSB Office of Marine Safety. 

Despite the high death toll, the casualty is less known for the fatalities and mostly known for its contribution to the fueling of the anti-German sentiment that set off a chain of events leading to World War I.

Two years after the Titanic sinking made headlines, Liverpool suffered another shipping tragedy, when the state-of-the-art passenger ship “Empress of Ireland” sank in St. Lawrence River, Canada, killing over 1,000 people.

It has been over a century after a ship collision shook the entire city of Halifax, killing almost 2,000 people and injuring more than 9,000. The blast was the largest human-made explosion at the time, releasing the equivalent energy of roughly 2.9 kilotons of TNT (12 TJ) and not surpassed until an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima 3 decades later.

It has been over 34 years since the Doña Paz ferry collided with a tanker, burnt and sank in Philippines waters five days before Christmas, adding the darkest page in the country’s maritime history.

Have you ever wondered which is the deadliest maritime incident ever recorded? When googling for an answer, the well-known tragedy of Dona Paz ferry in the Philippines appears first, but the biggest death toll in a single ship sinking in history occurred when the German military vessel Wilhelm Gustloff went down with 9,000 people in January 1945.

More than 40 years have passed since the Indonesian ferry Tampomas II burned and sank in the Java Sea, leading to death of hundreds of people and claiming the title of Indonesia's worst ship disaster at that time and one of the deadliest maritime accidents until today.

In January 2015, the car carrier ‘Hoegh Osaka’ listed off south England due to stability issues, leading to cargo damage of over 400 units. Investigation showed that, despite a change in its itinerary, the plans for cargo loading had not been changed and no calculation of the vessel's stability had been made, a practice which was highlighted as a common malpractice in the car carrier sector.

September 2021 marked 41 years since MV Derbyshire was lost at sea adding a black page to UK’s maritime history and redefining safety of bulk carriers.