Cruise Law News : Maritime Lawyer & Attorney : James M. Walker : Walker & O'Neill Law Firm : Admiralty Law, Cruise Ship Accidents & Injuries

A commuter ferry slammed into a dock in lower Manhattan this morning during rush hour, injuring more than 50 people commuting into New York City. Newspapers report that at least two of the ferry passengers were critically injured.

CBS News states that the accident involved the Seastreak Wall Street. The New York Times states that the ferry is operated by Sea Streak Ferry, and provides daily service from New Jersey to Lower Manhattan. It can accommodate several hundred passengers. There were over 300 passengers aboard at the time of the accident.

At the time of the impact the ferry was proceeding at a high rate of speed (with one passenger estimating around 60 MPH) when it violently struck the pier. Scores of people who had been standing up and waiting to disembark were hurled to the deck, into poles and walls, and down stairs. 

Some people described the accident like a big car crash.

57 people were reportedly injured according to the New York Times which showed dramatic photographs of passengers lying on flatboards with their heads and necks immobilized.

The Times mentions compares this incident to the October 15, 2003, accident when a Staten Island Ferry hit a maintenance pier at full speed, killing 11 and injuring 70 people.  A pilot, who had been incapacitated at the time of the crash, pleaded guilty to manslaughter. The investigators also faulted training and enforcement of safety rules. 

The National Transportation Safety Board will be investigating and gathering information about this latest incident. 

You can review the Seastreak's website here and its twitter page here.  One of the last tweets on Seastreaks page is by New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg "Thanks to @SeaStreakNJNYC  . . . residents of the #Rockaways have an affordable & reliable way to get to #Manhattan."

Photographs of the scene in lower Manhattan look like a war zone:

Photo credit: Mark Lennihan / AP via New York Times.   

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A fire erupted on an Anek Lines cruise ferry (ro-ro) off the coast of Greece earlier this week.

On November 19th, a blaze started on the car deck of the Kriti II (built 1979) while the ferry approached Patras after sailing from Venice, Italy. 

There were around 113 passengers on board, plus a crew of 87.  

The vessel was brought into port with black smoke billowing from it, with cars and trucks aboard the vessel catching fire. No casualties or injures were reported. 

VesselTracker.com states that the ferry "suffered severe damage to its interior. The fire had been slowly burning already hours before the ship reached the port of Patras and it was purely a matter of luck that the open fire did not emerge on open sea where winds had been blowing . . . "

The video shows firefighters trying to extinguish vehicles which were driven out of the ferry on fire.

Photo credit: Turkey SeaNews.

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ERR News reports that a man was rescued from frigid waters in Finland after being spotted falling from Eckerö Line's cruise ferry Nordlandia which sails between Helsinki and Tallinn.

Two witnesses observed a man fall into the Gulf of Finland. A sea rescue mission involving two ships and a rescue helicopter was launched. After 45 minutes, the helicopter located the man and delivered him on board. The man was resuscitated and transported to a local hospital.

Photo credit: Wikimedia / Bin im Garten

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Cruise industry expert Professor Ross Klein's website, Cruise Junkie, mentions an incident this last Sunday involving a passenger ferry in France.

High winds broke a dozen mooring lines to the Napoleon Bonaparte, a passenger and vessel ferry. The impact with the pier ripped a 30-metre long hole in the stern, causing water to flood compartments below the waterline.  The vessel is listing at port in Marseille. 

The Daily Mail in the U.K. has the full account and a number of photographs of the stricken vessel.

Photo credit: EPA via Daily Mail

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Eight passengers from the cruise ferry Bahuga Jaya are reported dead after a collision in Indonesian waters.

The LPG tanker Norgas Cathinka struck and sank the Bahuga Jaya, which is a Ro-Ro passenger cruise ferry vessel, near the port of Merak, Indonesia. 

The accident took place on Wednesday. Eight passengers on the cruise ferry were initially reported missing. Seven bodies were located and one passenger was found still alive but later died in the hospital.

The large LPG tanker is operated by IM Skaugen Group member Norgas Carriers Pte Ltd of Singapore.

September 29, 2012 Update: Vessl Tracker has this information:

"30 people were still missing on Sep 28, two days after the sinking of the 2Jaya Bugha" with more than two hundred people on board off Sumatra. Eight bodies have been recovered so far, while 207 people have been rescued. The number of passengers and crew was not accurately known. 30 people were reported missing by relatives. The possibility that they survived was very low. The ferry was carrying about 78 vehicles in which passengers might have remained trapped."

Photo credit: Harian Terbit

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Norwegian Broadcasting reports that the cruise-ferry Stena Saga, which operates between Oslo and Fredrikshavn in Denmark, was hit by an explosion in its engine room over the Easter weekend.  The explosion sparked a fire. 

A newspaper in Norway reports that "alarmed residents south of Drøbak called emergency services when they saw smoke billowing from the ship and noted that it was off course in the sound leading into the inner Oslo Fjord."

A Stena Line spokesman confirmed that the explosion created a lot of smoke but claimed it was contained by the vessel’s sprinkling system in the engine room.  The vessel drifted for a brief period but was able to continue sailing towards Oslo, where it arrived around 30 minutes late.

1,392 passengers and a crew of 180 were on on board at the time of the explosion and fire, although no evacuation took place.

A cruise line spokesperson stated that the incident involved a "minor" explosion which caused "no major damage."  The vessel was cleared to sail back to Denmark Saturday night.

If you were on the ferry and have information, photos or video to share, please leave a comment below. 

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Numerous news sources in the UK are reporting that a passenger is missing overboard from a high speed ferry this afternoon in England. 

The passenger was aboard the Condor Rapide Fast Ferry, which was en route from Guernsey to Poole in Dorset. The ferry's crew raised the alarm at 5.35 PM, British time.

The Guardian newspaper reports that British and French coastguard, as well as lifeboats from Weymouth and Alderney and a search plane from the Channel Islands, are searching the route of the ferry to find the missing passenger, according to the HM Coastguard.

A spokesman for Condor Ferries said: "At 5.35pm today crew were made aware of a possible missing person situation onboard Condor Rapide.

"The captain raised a Pan Pan with the coastguard and a full search was conducted of the vessel.

"The passenger was unable to be found and the Pan Pan was upgraded to a Mayday."

Other newspaper are reporting that several helicopters are also involved in the search.

The passenger is a woman.  Her name has not been released.

Photo credit:  Condor Rapide Fast Ferry via Guardian

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A fire broke out yesterday aboard an Egyptian bound ferry, the Pella, in the Gulf of Aqaba, which is the northeastern tip of the Red Sea.

There were approximately 1240 passengers aboard the cruise ferry at the time of the fire.  The ferry was ten miles off of the coast of Jordan.  A number of military vessels and helicopters responded to the emergency.  There are conflicting news accounts whether the rescue operations were conducted solely by Jordan or a combination of Jordanian and Egyptian vessels.  

One passenger died.  All other passengers were rescued and various news sources are reporting between twelve and twenty-five passengers were hospitalized for smoke inhalation injuries. 

The Pella is owned by the Al-Jisr Al-Arabi company, which is described as a shipping company owned by Egyptian and Jordanian businessmen.

The AP reports that in February 2006, about 1,000 passengers, mostly Egyptian workers returning home from Saudi Arabia, died when a fire broke out on a ferry. 

Photo credit: Abraham Farajyan / EPA (via MSNBC photoblog)

For aditional information about cruise ship fires, consider reading:

Ten Years of Cruise Ship Fires - Has the Cruise Industry Learned Anything?

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This morning I was trying to find articles with real time and genuine insight into the ferry disaster off Tanzania.  

An old vessel called the Spice Islander grossly overloaded with over 1,000 passengers sank.  There have been around two hundred people pulled from the water dead and some 600 rescued.

I kept finding one detached articles after another from the mainstream press, many erroneously publishing a photograph of a ferry from the Philippines.  Finally I stumbled across an article "Tragedy Unfolds as Passenger Ferry Capsizes off Zanzibar" which was published by Storyful which aggregates content from Twitter.

The Twitter hashtag following the disaster is #Zanzibarboataccident as well as #Zanzibar

I then began to follow @Tanganyikan who has been tweeting updates and uploading compelling photographs of children rescued from the water as well as tense families waiting for word on whether their loved ones are dead or alive.

I also ran across a tweet from @GregHuntoon "Thanks to those who've been trying to deliver the signal over the mass media's noise"  He referred to @mpoppel @Arabinizer @Rasahi as well as @Tanganyikan. 

@Rasahi uploaded an accurate photo of Spice Islander which looks like an old rust bucket.

Twitter has indeed delivered information and photographs over the mass media noise.  Images of children thought to be lost at sea yet held high above jubilant rescuers, some wearing wet suits. 

You won't find these type of stories and images of joy and sorrow in Reuters or the AP.

Survivor List

Zanzibar Outreach Program

Photo credit: @Tanganyikan

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News sources in the U.K. are reporting on the dramatic rescue of a 23 year old passenger who fell from what is being described as a cruise ferry which was heading from England to the Netherlands. 

The incident reportedly occurred, according to the Whitley Gazette, on Monday night around 9:00 PM when the young woman trying to light a cigarette near a railing.

The ship in question is the Princess Seaways which, according to the Journal Live in the U.K., was built in 1986  and is a "large cruise ferry," subsequently renovated in 2006, with the capacity for 580 cars and can more than 1,500 passengers."  

The passenger was in the water for thirty minutes.  The ship turned around and the crew rescued her and she was evaluated by the ship doctor.  

A RAF helicopter then transported the lucky passenger back to England where she was checked for hypothermia.  The video below shows the helicopter hoisting the young woman from the deck of the ferry.  

Don't you wish that all overboards turned out like this? 

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Over 200 passengers were rescued after an explosion rocked the Lithuanian passenger and car ferry, Lisco Gloria, which was on route from the German port of Kiel to Klaipeda in Lithuania. A fire then engulfed the ferry which had 236 passengers and crew on board. Over 20 people on the ferry reportedly were injured.  Several nearby vessels rescued the passengers, many of whom were swimming in the water.

Video Credit:  Reuters

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