The Philippines has a long history of fatal maritime accidents. This time, SAFETY4SEA focuses on the deadly sinking of the ‘Princess of the Orient’. The ferry sank off Fortune Island, near the provinces of Cavite and Batangas, on September 18, 1998, claiming the lives of 150 people. Extreme weather conditions, along with ‘’erroneous maneuvering of the vessel by the captain’’, were the immediate causes of the accident.
SAFETY4SEA remembers the hijacking of the cruise ship ‘Achille Lauro’ in 1985 by four heavily armed Palestinian militants who posed as passengers, resulting to the brutal murder of one passenger. The attack lasted only two days but spurred a global concern over the shaping dimensions of maritime terrorism.
Taking lives of over 1,000 people, the sinking of the RoRo ferry Al-Salam Boccaccio 98 remains a good example of study as poor emergency procedures resulted to deaths of over 1,000 people and spurred widespread criticism of the crew, as well as the owner company.
As part of its ‘Learn from the past’ series, SAFETY4SEA is focusing today on the fatal capsizing of the oil platform Alexander L. Kielland in the North Sea, the worst disaster in Norwegian offshore history since World War II. Losing one of its five legs amid a storm, the platform took lives of 123 people.
It has been over two years since the US Navy was shaken by two successive collisions involving US navy ships and claiming lives of 17 sailors. As part of its lessons learned series, SAFETY4SEA focuses today on the collision between the USS Fitzgerald with a merchant ship which pushed the US Navy to redefine its approach on safety.
Researchers discovered the wreck of the Imperial Japanese Navy carrier ‘IJN Kaga’ which sank at the Battle of Midway in June 1942. The wreck is located in the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument off the Midway Atoll.
Over 30 years after the Piper Alpha oil platform suffered multiple explosions off Scotalnd taking lives of 167 people, SAFETY4SEA analyzes the North Sea disaster which made the oil and gas industry to look safety in new terms.
Last week, SAFETY4SEA remembered the Torrey Canyon oil spill, which claimed the title of the worst environmental tanker disaster in March 1967. The sinking of the Amoco Cadiz more than a decade later came to claim again the title of the world’s worst oil spill, putting another dark spot in the environmental record of shipping.
The sinking of the ferry vessel MS Estonia in the Baltic Sea marks the second-deadliest peacetime sinking of a European ship, after the Titanic, as well as the deadliest peacetime shipwreck to have taken place in European waters. At the time of the incident, the ship was carrying 989 people, of whom 852 lost their lives. When the MS Estonia sank it shook the shipping industry, due to its unprecedented extent in the number of victims, and the damage it was caused.
More than 50 years after the supertanker ‘Torrey Canyon’ ran aground off England, spurring every drop of its crude oil cargo into the Atlantic, SAFETY4SEA attempts to analyze the world’s first major oil tanker disaster that put the meaning of environmental conservation in a new context.
