MV Doña Paz

1987

The worst peacetime maritime disaster ever Location: Tablas Strait, Philippines · Coordinates: 12.50°N 121.58°E · Casualties: 4,386 · Survivors: 24 · Depth: 545 m · Cause: collision · fire — Collided with the oil tanker MT Vector on the night of 20 December 1987. The Vector was carrying 8,800 barrels of petroleum products. Both ships caught fire. The Doña Paz burned and sank within two hours. Only 24 of the passengers aboard survived. · Fate: abyssal · never recovered · Type: passenger ferry · Sulpicio Lines · Tonnage: 2,215 tons · Crew: 58 · Flag: Philippines · Launched: 1963 Philippine ferry, certified for 1,518, carrying at least 4,400 passengers home for Christmas. Collided with the oil tanker MT Vector in the Tablas Strait on 20 December 1987. Both vessels burst into flames. 24 survivors. Three times the Titanic's death toll, almost entirely unknown in the West. Most of the dead were never counted by name. The Vessel The MV Doña Paz was a Japanese-built passenger ferry, 2,215 gross tons, 93 metres long, originally launched in 1963 as the Himeyuri Maru for the Japanese domestic ferry trade between Kagoshima and Okinawa. She was sold in 1975 to the Philippine interisland operator Sulpicio Lines, renamed Don Sulpicio, and worked the Manila-Cebu route until a fire damaged her in a port incident in 1979. She was rebuilt and returned to service in 1981 under the name Doña Paz. Her certified passenger capacity after the 1981 rebuild was 1,518, a figure agreed with the Philippine Coast Guard and published on her bridge ticket. Her actual carrying capacity at any given voyage was larger, because Philippine interisland practice allowed tickets to be sold on deck and in passageway space, and because infant passengers did not count toward the manifest limit. She was typically operated at between 1,800 and 2,500 aboard, depending on the season. The Sulpicio Lines fleet of which she was the flagship had a long record of regulatory violations, fires, and strandings; the Philippine Coast Guard had cited the line for manning, lifeboat, and certification failures in every year since 1979. None of these citations had resulted in the cancellation of her certificate. The Philippine ferry industry in the 1980s was the most lightly regulated major passenger-carrying maritime sector in the world. The Disaster The Doña Paz burned and sank within two hours. The Vector burned longer and sank at around 02:30 on 21 December. The sea surface around both ships burned for most of the night on a sheet of flaming kerosene and gasoline, fed by the Vector's ruptured cargo tanks. The water of the Tablas Strait that night was shark-infested, as the area has long been known to be; the survivors who jumped from the ferry's rails into water that was already on fire had first to clear the burning layer and then to swim in water where survivors were being taken. 24 of the Doña Paz's passengers and two of the Vector's crew were rescued by the passing Philippine ship Don Claudio at dawn on 21 December. No other survivors were recovered. 4,386 people died, by the final count accepted by the Philippine Board of Marine Inquiry; this is the figure preserved on the official marker. Outside analysts, survivor advocacy groups, and independent researchers have argued that the true toll was between 4,500 and 5,000, based on the fact that the Sulpicio Lines manifest was known to exclude at least 700 non-ticketed passengers and that no complete manifest of deck passengers was ever produced. The Doña Paz herself came to rest at 545 metres, in deep abyssal water, and has never been located.