Ferry disasters - al-Salam Boccaccio 98 nine years on

On this day............9 years ago, the al-Salam Boccaccio 98, a roll-on, roll-off ferry, set sail from Duba in Saudi Arabia across the Red Sea to Safaga in southern Egypt, carrying 96 crew and 1,312 passengers. It would never get there.

A couple of hours into the voyage, a fire broke out among the 220 vehicles on the car deck. Repeated attempts to put it out failed, and at about one o' clock on the morning of 3 February, 2006, the ship began to list alarmingly.

Within a few minutes she sank, without any of her bigger lifeboats getting launched, and people had to get away as best they could in rubber dinghies. More than 1,000 perished. For the full story see A Disastrous History of the World.

IHS Maritime and Trade Intelligence says that over the last ten years, 4,784 lives have been lost in accidents involving large ferries.  The worst year was 2011, when IHS says 1,642 people died. On September 10 of that year, the Spice Islander 1 sank off Zanzibar, with a death toll estimated at up to 1,500.

 

Almost a reckoning

Just over three years since she sank at the cost of more than 1,000 lives, the Egyptian owner of the al-Salam Boccaccio 98 ferry has been sentenced to seven years in jail for involuntary manslaughter. Mamduh Ismail, a former member of the Egyptian parliament’s upper house, which is appointed by President Mubarak, had been acquitted in an earlier trial.

Hundreds of victims’ relatives applauded the verdict, though there is no certainty that Mr Ismail will serve his sentence as he left Egypt soon after the disaster, and is now believed to be in Europe, possibly London. Two other defendants, also absent, were sentenced to three years in gaol.

The roll-on-roll-off ferry, which was carrying mainly Egyptian migrant workers and pilgrims home from Saudi Arabia, went down in the Red Sea on the night of February 2, 2006. A fire broke out on the car deck, and the crew were never able to get it under control. Passengers who were alarmed about the thick smoke were told by crew members to go back to bed.

By the time the crew had decided everyone had to abandon ship, she was listing so badly that it was difficult to launch the lifeboats, and more than 1,000 people drowned, with just 388 surviving. At the initial trial in July 2008, Mr Ismail and four other defendants from the ferry company were acquitted, while the captain of another ferry was gaoled for six months for failing to help the al-Salam.