Final Voyage

by Eyers, Jonathan

  Twice a week the Doña Paz travelled the route from Tacloban City to Manila, the capital of the Philippines, nearly 400 miles away. At around 6.30am on 20th December 1987 she left Tacloban with, according to official records, a full complement of 1,493 passengers. In truth, she was probably carrying three times as many. This was the Doña Paz’s last trip before Christmas, and thousands of people wanted to reach loved ones in Manila for the holiday. Entire families travelled together. While the shipping line only had a finite number of tickets, the Doña Paz didn’t stop taking passengers on board until it was standing room only.

  At about 8pm the day before, the oil tanker MT Vector had left Limay, Bataan, en route to Masbate, over 200 miles away. She carried a cargo of 8,800 barrels of gasoline, diesel and kerosene. Her operation licence had expired and her master was not properly qualified. She didn’t even have a proper lookout on board.

  On the bridge of the Doña Paz a lone apprentice crew-member monitored the ship’s progress.

  By 10.30pm on the 20th, most of the passengers on the Doña Paz who could sleep were doing so. The ship being so overcrowded, people slept several to a single cot. Some of those without a bed slept in the open air. Throughout the ship’s three decks people filled the corridors. Some had brought mats to sit or lie on because they knew how packed the ship would be. It was difficult to move around, but most didn’t need to. They expected to arrive at Manila’s port in the early hours of the next morning, ready to meet their waiting relatives.

  Meanwhile on the bridge of the Doña Paz a lone apprentice crewmember monitored the ship’s progress. Other officers took advantage of the benign summer sailing conditions to sit down with a beer and watch some television. The captain was watching a video.

  Nobody who witnessed the collision survived to explain to investigators how it happened. None of the Doña Paz’s 60 crew were rescued, and the only two survivors from the Vector both claimed to have been asleep at the time. At around 10.30pm both ships passed Dumali Point on the Tablas Strait. Given their respective courses (the Vector heading eastward, the Doña Paz heading north), and the fact that the Vector’s hull suffered such a catastrophic breach, it is more than likely that the Doña Paz struck the starboard side of the Vector with her bow. This does not mean the Doña Paz was necessarily at fault, however, because whilst there are no ‘right of way’ laws of the sea, it is generally accepted that the vessel on the left (the Vector in this case) should give way.

  The sea on fire

  Several thousand sleeping passengers on board the Doña Paz awoke in a panic. On the lower decks of the ship nobody knew what had happened, but the impact felt and sounded like an explosion. Two things happened in quick succession which ensured most of the people on board both the Doña Paz and the Vector would not get off the ships alive: the Doña Paz suffered a power failure that plunged the ferry into darkness, and the Vector’s ruptured hull began to leak copious quantities of burning oil into the waters around both vessels.

  Two things happened in quick succession which ensured most of the people on board both the Doña Paz and the Vector would not get off the ships alive.

  The few survivors who made it out from the lower decks of the Doña Paz reported the chaos fuelled by terror as thousands of people in the hopelessly overcrowded belly of the ship tried to find a way up and out in complete darkness. Nobody could see anything, and nobody could give instructions to the surge of people trying to push in every direction at once because of the constant screaming.

  Not that the crew of the Doña Paz co-ordinated an evacuation. None of the survivors saw or heard any crewmembers giving orders to help people escape. The lockers containing lifejackets remained locked – a precaution previously intended to prevent them from being stolen. Invariably there weren’t enough for everyone on board, anyway.

  The fire had spread on to the Doña Paz and her wooden lifeboats could not be launched into the burning waters below.

  Those from below who made it up to the top deck discovered the true horror of the unfolding disaster. No lifeboats were being launched. It was impossible to do so. Whilst the fire probably started on the Vector, the oil slick had now spread so far so quickly that it looked like the sea itself was aflame. The fire had spread on to the Doña Paz and her wooden lifeboats could not be launched into the burning waters below.

  Though oil tankers like the Vector had been designed so that their cargo holds would not explode, the ship had become a raging inferno. Flames spread rapidly through the Doña Paz too. Her lower decks, where thousands were already trapped by darkness, filled with smoke. Those who still managed to escape from below recalled not being able to see anything but flames. They may have put it down to God’s mercy that they survived, but luck certainly played a part. There were no means to fight a major fire aboard the Doña Paz, least of all an oil-based fire that spread as quickly as fuel spilled.

  Only 24 people on board the Doña Paz when she collided with the Vector survived, and most of them suffered horrific burns. With the lifeboats unusable, fire spreading quickly through the ship and no rescue vessels forthcoming, there was only one way off the Doña Paz. All of those who survived the disaster jumped off the ship and into the burning waters. Hundreds of people attempted it. Most failed. Not only did they have to survive the leap through the flames but they then had to hold their breath long enough to swim under the burning oil slick on the surface. A point came when the burning oil had spread so far that it was impossible for anyone to swim far enough without needing to come up for air. Those who managed it were heavily outnumbered by the charred bodies of those who hadn’t.

  A point came when the burning oil had spread so far that it was impossible for anyone to swim far enough without needing to come up for air.

  The unknown dead

  The Doña Paz sank in 1,800ft (550m) of water at around 12.30am, roughly two hours after the collision, and the Vector went down a further two hours after that. It wasn’t until after 6am that morning, when the Doña Paz was now several hours overdue in Manila, that the Filipino maritime authorities learned of the disaster. It took yet another eight hours for a proper search and rescue operation to be launched, by which time it was mostly too late anyway.

  Other vessels in the vicinity of the Tablas Strait responded to the distress calls from the stricken ships, but these small merchant vessels would have been even less capable of tackling the inferno than the crews of the Doña Paz and the Vector themselves. Arriving on the scene as the ships sank, the merchant ships pulled 26 survivors from the water: the two crewmen from the Vector who had slept through the collision, and the 24 passengers who had survived jumping from the decks of the Doña Paz. Another passenger ship, the Don Eusebio, which would have been big enough to take on board a large number of survivors, circled the area for seven hours, but found nobody else alive.

  Officially the death toll of the Doña Paz’s sinking still stands at 1,749. Initially the shipping line maintained the ship’s manifest was accurate, and that there were only 1,493 passengers and 60 crew aboard when she collided with the Vector. However, it quickly became apparent that there were many people unaccounted for, not least young children, who had not been listed on the manifest at all.

  Even the generally accepted figure of 4,375 deaths remains an estimate. Investigators came to this number based on the claims of those who reported they had friends or family members sailing from Tacloban to Manila on board the Doña Paz. Of course, this figure would not necessarily include those who were travelling with their entire family, or alone, or who had not told anyone where, when and how they were going.

  Of the 21 bodies picked up in the immediate aftermath of the disaster, only one person was identified as having been on the official manifest.

  Only 270 bodies washed up on the shores of the Tablas Strait. While the Strait is notorious for being rife with man-eating hammerhead sharks, there are no confirmed reports of either survivors or corpses being attacked, despite the popular theory. The more likely r
eason why so few bodies were recovered is because the rest went down with the ship. Most people probably died trapped in the dark, overcrowded lower decks of the Doña Paz, overcome either by smoke or flames, and unable to make it up top to try and jump and swim to survive.

  The true number killed aboard the Doña Paz will never be known and may in fact be considerably higher than the 4,375 estimate. After all, of the 21 bodies picked up in the immediate aftermath of the disaster, only one person was identified as having been on the official manifest.

  Eye of the storm

  Haiti’s first democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, held office for only nine months in 1991 before the military staged a coup, objecting to Aristide’s attempts to put them under civilian authority. Over the next three years, pro-democracy fighters struggled against the CIA-trained military junta, unrest that led to the deaths of several thousand men, women and children, and which caused tens of thousands to try and flee to the United States. The US Coast Guard patrolled Caribbean waters, seizing control of vessels attempting to reach America, destroying them, and returning those aboard to Haiti. Throughout February 1993, the owners of the 148ft (45m) coastal ferry Neptune feared the ship might be hijacked by desperate refugees, so they cancelled her weekly trip from remote parts of western Haiti to the capital, Port-au-Prince, several weeks in a row. So when they finally agreed to let her sail, on 17th February, there was massive demand for tickets.

  The Neptune was a rusty, rickety triple-deck ferry, built in 1954 and intended as a cargo ship. She had an authorised capacity of only a few hundred, plus 10 crew, but she rarely arrived in Port-au-Prince with less than 650 aboard. Neither the crew nor officials along the Neptune’s route kept lists of those who boarded, but they admitted to frequently ignoring any suggested limits, just filling the decks until they were standing room only. Photos taken of the crowded ferry arriving in the capital on previous journeys showed people clinging to the side or perched on deck awnings. Sometimes there were up to 2,000 aboard. A military official supervising loading of cargo (charcoal, coffee, fruit and livestock) at Jeremie, one of the ports along the route, later said that when she left for the last time, he had never seen the Neptune look so crowded. Many of the passengers were merchants or students, but others were on their way to Port-au-Prince for the annual carnival.

  The Neptune was now severely imbalanced and top heavy.

  Several hours into the journey, hugging the coastline around Haiti’s southern peninsula, the Neptune ran into a bad storm. At about 11pm, about halfway to Port-au-Prince, the storm suddenly worsened. Driving rain and rough seas caused the ferry to take on water. Panicking, passengers poured up from below decks, gathering on the open upper deck. The Neptune was now severely imbalanced and top heavy. The captain wasn’t the only one to notice the ferry start to rock as hundreds of passengers moved from one side to the other to escape the windswept rain.

  Before he could do anything, the top deck suddenly collapsed beneath the weight of so many people. Hundreds below were crushed by those above. Her structural integrity lost, the next time the Neptune rocked to the side, she lacked the balance to right herself again. Capsizing, over a thousand of her passengers were washed into the stormy seas, along with livestock and cargo. She sank rapidly.

  Even if there had been time to evacuate ship, the Neptune had no lifeboats, no lifejackets and no radios. News of the sinking did not reach Port-au-Prince until 24 hours later, and there wasn’t much the military junta could do to help by then anyway. Haiti’s barely operative navy was only able to provide two small motorboats to help the rescue efforts. By that point it was too late for most of those who had been on board.

  The true number of people who were on the Neptune when she capsized is unknown, but was probably well over 2,000. There were 285 survivors, including the captain, who managed to swim to shore using debris to keep himself afloat. Several dozen others also made it to land. Others clung to crates, buckets, bags of coconuts, sacks of charcoal and even dead animals until they were picked up the next day, either by fishing boats or by US Coast Guard ships. The last survivors were picked up two days after the sinking, after which point the USCG crews only found the dead. Some bodies washed up on beaches near where the ferry sank, but most were never found. Fishermen in the area reported a powerful current that may have carried many out to sea, and also prevented all but the strongest swimmers from making it to land.

  Haiti’s barely operative navy was only able to provide two small motorboats to help the rescue efforts.

  Final voyage

  As of 2002, the Casamance region’s fight for independence from the rest of Senegal had dragged on for 20 years. The western African nation is almost split in two by Gambia, a separate country situated in the middle of Senegal along the banks of the Gambia River. Senegal recognises the independence of Gambia, but not the Casamance region, south of the river, despite Casamance having an ethnic make-up more similar to Gambia or Guinea-Bissau. The separatist fighting made travel across Senegal difficult in the early years of the 21st century, not least because Gambia increased its own security as a response to the trouble along its borders. This led to a big increase in demand for ferries that could take people from Casamance to Dakar, Senegal’s capital.

  Le Joola had been acquired from Germany by the Senegalese government in 1990. Run by Senegal’s military, the 261ft (79.5m) roll-on/roll-off ferry spent her first decade travelling between Casamance and Dakar twice a week. However, she had been out of operation for a year, her port engine being replaced, between 2001 and 2002, so when she was put back into service she only completed the journey once a week whilst her engines were properly run in. This resulted in considerable overcrowding, as happened when she left Ziguinchor in the Casamance region on 26th September.

  Le Joola had capacity for 536 passengers, 44 crew and 35 cars. Twice as many people had tickets for this particular journey, with 1,046 having been sold. Labourers and students were her usual passengers, but poor women also used the ferry to reach Dakar so they could sell mangoes and palm oil. The ferry was always overcrowded, but at the end of holidays the numbers trying to get on board always spiked. Plenty of people were allowed aboard without a ticket. Crewmen accepted token kickbacks for pretending they hadn’t seen someone board, they let the poorest travel ticketless and without paying out of solidarity, and children under five didn’t need a ticket in the first place. En route, Le Joola stopped at Carabane, where several hundred more boarded, though nobody knew how many, because the town had no formal port of entry. It was later estimated that she had 1,863 on board when she sank, though some organisations in Senegal speculated there could have been over 2,000.

  The ferry left Ziguinchor at 1.30pm. Eyewitnesses on shore later reported that they saw she already had a noticeable list to port. Le Joola was only designed to sail in coastal waters. Her flat-bottomed hull (which was necessary to enter shallow waters) offered less resistance against large waves in rough conditions, so she was unsuited to the open sea. In fair conditions she should have been no further than 23 miles (37km) from the coast. At 10pm, when Dakar received their last communication from Le Joola, she was 22 miles (35km) off the Gambian coast, and conditions were fine. It was a hot night, and even hotter inside the crowded ferry, so more than a thousand people slept on deck. When she sailed into a freak storm at 11pm, Le Joola was top heavy and unstable. Any stability calculations the captain had made before leaving port were now grossly inaccurate.

  The storm only lasted a few minutes, but it brought a fierce gale, rough seas and torrential rain. As the ferry rocked, untethered freight slid to the port side, increasing her list. When she began taking on water on the vehicle deck this contributed to the free surface effect. Le Joola’s centre of gravity began to shift wildly. The water flooded cabins, caused the ferry’s lights to short out, and inspired a mass panic as people tried to escape up on to the top deck, increasing the imbalance and instability even further.

  Some survived by cl
imbing onto Le Joola’s flat hull, where they had to listen to the screaming of those still trapped inside.

  The crew lacked emergency training, and her lifeboats consisted mainly of inadequate inflatable rafts. With no more room on the top deck, people began smashing windows on lower decks to escape through those. Only five minutes after running into trouble, Le Joola capsized.

  At 7am the next morning, a father showed up at the port in Dakar to collect his four children. They had been travelling alone on Le Joola, the eldest being 21. An hour later a police officer told the father that the ferry was running late but would be there soon. Two hours later he was still waiting. He later learnt of what had happened by hearing a radio report. None of his children had survived. It had been their first sea journey.

  It was later that morning before government rescue teams reached the site of the disaster, by which time local fishermen had already rescued most of the survivors. The fishermen had to wait until the storm subsided, and whilst over a thousand people on the ferry survived the capsize, many of them didn’t survive five hours in the heavy seas. Some survived by climbing onto Le Joola’s flat hull, where they had to listen to the screaming of those still trapped inside. The last survivor was a 15-year-old boy, rescued at about 2pm. He confirmed that he had still heard people inside when he was taken off.

  Photographs taken from helicopters above the site show the red hull of the capsized ferry barely above the waterline, with an inflatable liferaft floating nearby. Le Joola stayed afloat until 3pm, then finally sank, settling in 75ft (23m) of water. There hadn’t been time to find a way to release those trapped inside. Divers later retrieved 300 bodies from the wreck. Others washed up on the shore of the Gambian fishing village Tanji.