Final Voyage (21 page)

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 reason 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.

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.

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 climbing 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.

The public wanted to know why a ship that should have been seaworthy for decades sank after only 12 years in service.

There were only 64 survivors, and only one of them was a woman (despite there being 600 aboard). Throughout Senegal the public outrage and demand from the press led to a public inquiry by the government. The public wanted to know why a ship that should have been seaworthy for decades sank after only 12 years in service. Accusations flew as to whether those running the ferry had only performed as little maintenance on her as they could get away with. The inquiry was closed after only a year, having reached conclusions that were unsatisfying to many. Payouts were offered to families of the victims, the Prime Minister and much of her cabinet were sacked, but there were no prosecutions, no formal charges and no legal liability established. The government effectively claimed the disaster was an act of God. It became a political football in Senegal's next elections.

Nationals from many different countries were counted amongst the dead, including numerous African countries,
Lebanon, Spain, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands and France. As a consequence, the French courts also launched their own inquiry, to the ire of many people in Senegal. It indicted many people at high level for the delay in mounting a rescue that could have saved hundreds more lives.

Beyond a few headlines in the immediate aftermath of the disaster, this was the most attention
Le Joola
received from the Western world. It was certainly more than the
Kiangya
, the
Doña Paz
or the
Neptune
had received. All three recent disasters happened in less developed parts of the world, which lack the stringent regulation of maritime industry as is in place in Europe and the United States. Perhaps, then, these are not major news stories because it is not considered surprising that catastrophes of this magnitude will occur sooner or later. More surprising – and therefore more worthy of headlines – is when ships sink in the West, despite the strictest of safety standards, regardless of loss of life. Only 32 people died when the
Costa Concordia
liner ran aground in January 2012, for example, but it dominated headlines for weeks, precisely because it was so unlikely. It is even more unlikely that a maritime disaster will occur in the West on the scale of
Le Joola
, let alone the
Wilhelm Gustloff
, in the future. The worst maritime disasters will still be happening elsewhere, largely ignored, and quickly forgotten.

By the Same Author