On the 10th of April, 1991, the Moby Prince
- an Italian passenger ferry - collided with another ship, resulting in an oil
fire on the deck of the Moby Prince. The crew promptly radioed for help and herded
passengers to a fireproofed room within the ship. The Moby Prince was mere minutes
from a Port Authority base, and the fire was spreading relatively slowly.
It seemed all but certain that they would be rescued in plenty of time... and yet as
the minutes ticked by, help never came. The fire on board the Moby Prince would turn
out to be one of the worst maritime disasters in Italian history, in part because of a few tiny
human errors and one tragic miscommunication. The Moby Prince was built in 1967 in an
English shipyard near Liverpool, and was originally operated by a dutch company, sailing
the route between Harwich and Hook of Holland. In 1984 the vessel was sold to NAVARMA,
an Italian shipping company that operated numerous routes between the mainlands
and islands of France and Italy. On the day of the disaster the Moby
Prince was sailing a route between Livorno (a destination popularly known
by English-speakers as "Leghorn") and Olbia in Sardinia - a journey that would normally
take just under seven hours. Visibility was clear and the seas were calm as 75 passengers boarded
the vessel, joining 66 crew already in place. Given that the ferry had a maximum capacity of
1,200 persons it was a relatively quiet service. At 22:03 the Moby Prince departed. Nothing seemed
to miss as it took its usual route out of the harbour at Livorno. However, before it could
get fully clear of the harbour it collided with another ship that was sitting at anchor. The Agip
Abruzzo was a tanker ship loaded with thousands of tons of crude oil. The Moby Prince's prow
sliced directly through its number seven tank, spraying a huge quantity of oil
onto both boats and into the water. The two craft were briefly stuck together
by the collision. The captain of the Agip Abruzzo was able to maneuver in such a way as
to unstick them, although doing so caused even more oil to be ejected from the damaged tank.
While the crew of the Agip Abruzzo managed to maintain control after the collision, the
crew of the Moby Prince were not so lucky. The oil which had sprayed onto their ship had
almost immediately caught fire, creating a blazing inferno on the prow. The crew were forced
to flee the control room - indeed they had to do so with such haste that there was not time even to
cut power to the engines. Thus, blazing fiercely, the Moby Prince remained in motion, spiraling
slowly away from the sight of the collision. With the crew forced out of the control room by
the blaze the situation on board the passenger ferry was chaotic. The fire soon spread across
most of the deck, making evacuation into life rafts an impossible task. Instead crew members
mustered passengers in the De Luxe Hall in the interior of the ship. This was a room specially
constructed with fireproof doors and walls. Meanwhile the radio operator was making repeated
calls for help. Of course he could not reach the fixed radio set in the control room, and so
was broadcasting using a portable transmitter. "Mayday. Mayday," he called. "Moby Prince.
Moby Prince. We are in a collision. We are on fire. Firemen needed." And
then, more plaintively, he continued, "Mate, if you do not help us
we will burn. Mayday. Mayday." As the fire consumed the ship the De Luxe
Hall remained unaffected. Temperatures were initially tolerable even as waves of fire
ate through the surrounding structure. The crew and passengers waited. They had barely
left the harbour. Help was only minutes away. They could not escape their situation by themselves,
but it seemed certain that rescue would come. What the passengers and crew on
board the Moby Prince did not realize was that a terrible failure in communications
was, at that very moment, taking place. Rescuers had indeed been mobilized from the
mainland... but they were attending to the Agip Abruzzo. The tanker was now ablaze, and intense
efforts were being made to extinguish the flames. Nobody was looking for the stricken Moby Prince,
as the captain of the Agip Abruzzo had mistakenly reported that the collision had been with a small
tugboat and not with a large passenger ferry. To those on scene, extinguishing the fire and
rescuing the approximately 30 crew on board the Agip Abruzzo took priority over looking for
the other vessel involved in the collision, which they believed to be a small
tugboat with only a few crew on board. Authorities might have been alerted by
the mayday call from the Moby Prince, but the transmission was weak and
thready. If they heard it at all they may have misunderstood the garbled message
as a report of the burning Agip Abruzzo. The end result of these failures of communication
is that nobody was looking for the Moby Prince. Nobody realized that there were souls on
board who urgently needed rescue. Indeed it wasn't until an hour had passed that the
burned hulk of the Moby Prince was discovered. The tugboat which located it also rescued the
only survivor of the disaster, Alessio Bertrand, a ship's boy who had thrown himself from the
stern of the ship when the fire first broke out. Finally realizing that another large craft was in
need of assistance, firefighting boats converged on the Moby Prince. The flames were extinguished
and fire hoses were used to cool the hull as quickly as possible. Eventually a lone rescuer
was able to board and attach a tow line. By the time any meaningful rescue could be affected the
morning of the following day had almost dawned. By this time there was nobody left alive to save.
It was discovered that all 140 people on board were deceased... but they hadn't been killed by
the flames. Instead they had suffocated to death. It was discovered that as the crew of the Moby
Prince fled the control room there had not been time to switch off the air conditioning system. As
the ship burned this system had circulated carbon monoxide and other poisonous gases into the De
Luxe Hall, suffocating those who sheltered there. While the vast majority of victims were found
in the fireproof hall, some bodies were seen on the deck itself. Despite the devastation around
them they too were unburned. It was speculated that they had survived the choking fumes in the De
Luxe Hall and subsequently attempted to escape... only to be overwhelmed by the heat radiating
from the hull as they tried to cross the deck. A videotape found in the ruins of the De Luxe
Hall confirmed suspicions that for almost an hour the heat and fumes within the shelter had
been tolerable. If the radio operators call for help had been heard, if the Moby Prince
had been found, if rescue had been swifter, there is every chance that the majority
of those on board would have lived. In the aftermath of the disaster
an investigation was launched. It was a complex one, with few clear conclusions. Poor visibility caused by localized fog
was said to be a contributing factor in the initial collision... but some qualified
witnesses disagreed with this assessment, stating that visibility on the night was clear. Likewise the Agip Abruzzo might have been
anchored in a zone where it should not have been anchored... but conflicting reports prevented
a conclusion from being reached on this point. A rumor that the crew of the Moby Prince had been
distracted by the broadcast of a football match appeared in newspapers... but
this notion was discredited following questioning of the lone survivor. It was noted that military ships might have
been maneuvering in the area at the time of the collision, with some believing that covert ship
movements might have caused the moby prince to go off course and collide with the tanker. Again,
however, this could not be concretely proven. With this multitude of uncertainties, apportioning
responsibility for the tragedy was almost impossible. Several individuals were charged,
including crew members from the Agip Abruzzo, and members of the Port Authority...
but ultimately all charges were dropped, or the people accused were absolved of any
wrongdoing. To this day the tragedy still looms large in the public consciousness, with many
feeling that questions have been left unanswered and those responsible have gotten
away without proper punishment. While the exact truth of every aspect of the Moby
Prince disaster may never be known, one thing is certain: this was a disaster wherein several small
errors had catastrophic consequences. A missed mayday call, a collision incorrectly reported,
rescue efforts focused on the wrong vessel. Were it not for any of these mistakes things
might have ended very differently. The destruction of the Moby Prince was a disaster that came
heartbreakingly close to being averted altogether.
