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The Maritime Disaster That Killed 3x As Many People as The Titanic
The tragedy of the MV Doña Paz
The Titanic made history for a number of reasons, but one of the primary shocks of the ocean liner’s sinking was the number of deaths that it produced. 1,517 people lost their lives when the Titanic went down in 1912. Titanic is a household name, but MV Doña Paz is not.
The sinking of the MV Doña Paz was the deadliest peacetime maritime disaster in history and yet its name lives in relative obscurity, especially when compared to ships like Titanic and Lusitania. This is in spite of the fact that the MV Doña Paz killed roughly three times as many people as the Titanic.
The Doña Paz sank on December 20th, 1987, in the waters of the Philippines. The ferry was making its scheduled trip between Tacloban to Manila when the unthinkable happened.
Overloaded and Under Stocked
The official manifest of the Doña Paz listed only 1,493 passengers and 60 crew, but it was the holiday season, and thousands more illegal passengers had crammed aboard the ferry to get home for Christmas. The ferry was understaffed and was operating without a license. They had no radio, no lookout, and no qualified master. Before the sinking, scarce witnesses reported that much of the crew was…
