MV Doña Paz was a Japanese built and Philippine-registered passenger ferry that sank after colliding with the oil tanker Vector on December 20, 1987. Built by Onomichi Zosen of Hiroshima, Japan, the ship was launched on April 25, 1963 as the Himeyuri Maru, with a passenger capacity of 608. In October 1975, the Himeyuri Maru was bought by Sulpicio Lines and renamed the Don Sulpicio. After a fire on board in June 1979, the ship was refurbished and renamed Doña Paz.
Traveling from Leyte
island to the Philippine capital of Manila, the vessel was seriously
overcrowded, with at least 2,000 passengers not listed on the manifest. It has
also been claimed that the ship did not have a radio and that the life-jackets
were locked away. However, official blame was directed at the tanker Vector,
that collided with the Doña Paz, which was found to be unseaworthy and
operating without a license, a lookout, or a qualified master. With an
estimated death toll of 4,385 people and only 26 survivors, it remains the deadliest
peacetime maritime disaster in history.
Service History
Doña Paz was built in 1963 by Onomichi Zosen of Onomichi,
Hiroshima, Japan. It was originally named the Himeyuri Maru. During the time she travelled Japanese
waters, she had a passenger capacity of 608. In October 1975, she was sold to Sulpicio
Lines, a Filipino operator of a fleet of passenger ferries, and was renamed Don
Sulpicio. She served the Manila to Cebu sector as her primary route. The vessel became one of the company's two
flagship vessels, the other one being
the Doña Ana (later renamed Doña Marilyn).
On June 5, 1979, the
vessel was gutted by fire on her usual Manila-Cebu journey. All 1,164 aboard
were rescued but the vessel was beached and declared a constructive total loss.
The wreck was repurchased from the underwriters by Sulpicio Lines, and
repaired. Structural changes were made and she returned to service under the
new name Doña Paz.
As the MV Philippine
Princess had already become the flagship of Sulpicio Lines serving the
Manila-Cebu sector, the Doña Paz was reassigned to serve the
Manila →Tacloban route, with the return trip having a stop in Catbalogan. Sulpicio Lines operated the Doña
Paz on this route, making voyages twice a week, until the time of
her sinking.
1987 Collision with MT
Vector
On December 20, 1987,
at 06:30, Philippine Standard Time, Doña Paz departed from Tacloban, Leyte,
for Manila, with a stopover at Catbalogan, Samar. Commanded by Captain Eusebio Nazareno, the
vessel was due in Manila at 04:00 the next day. It was reported that it last
made radio contact at about 20:00. However,
subsequent reports indicated that Doña Paz did not have a
radio.
At about 22:30, the
ferry was at Dumali Point, along the Tablas Strait, near Marinduque. A survivor later said that the weather at sea
that night was clear, but the sea was choppy.
While most of the passengers slept, Doña Paz collided
with MT Vector, an oil tanker en route from Bataan to Masbate. Vector was carrying 1,050,000 litres
(8,800 US bbl) or 1041 tonnes (1148 US tons) of gasoline and other
petroleum products owned by Caltex Philippines.
Upon collision, Vector's
cargo ignited and caused a fire on the ship that spread onto Doña Paz.
Survivors recalled sensing the crash and an explosion, causing panic on the
vessel. One of them, Paquito Osabel,
recounted that the flames spread rapidly throughout the ship, and that the sea
all around the ship itself was on fire.
Another survivor, Philippine
Constabulary corporal Luthgardo Niedo, claimed that the lights aboard had gone
out minutes after the collision, that there were not any life vests to be found
on Doña Paz, and that the crewmen were running around in panic with
the other passengers, and none of the crew gave any orders or made any attempt
to organize the passengers. It was later
said that the life jacket lockers had been locked up.
The survivors were
forced to jump off the ship and swim among charred bodies in flaming waters
around the ship, with some using suitcases as makeshift flotation devices. Doña Paz sank within two hours of the
collision. Vector sank within
four hours. Both ships sank in about 545
meters (1,788 ft) of water in the shark-infested Tablas Strait.
Rescue
Officers and the
captain of a passing inter-island ship, MS Don Claudio, witnessed the
explosion of the two ships and, after an hour, found the survivors of Doña
Paz. The officers of Don
Claudio threw a net for the survivors to climb onto. Only 26 survivors
were retrieved from the water: 24 of them were passengers from Doña Paz,
while the other 2 were crewmen from Vector's 13-man crew.
A 25th survivor from Doña
Paz, Valeriana Duma, was not originally accounted for by officials. She
later revealed herself through the GMA Network program Wish Ko Lang! in
2012. At 14, she was the second youngest
passenger of Doña Paz to survive. Often forgotten, one of the originally known
survivors of the Doña Paz was a four-year-old boy, who has never been
named. He was the youngest survivor.
None of the crew of Doña
Paz survived. Most of the survivors
sustained burns from jumping into the flaming waters. Doctors and nurses aboard the rescue vessel
tended to their injuries. It reportedly took eight hours before Philippine
maritime authorities learned of the accident, and another eight hours to initiate
search-and-rescue operations.
Investigation of the
causes of the incident
According to the
initial investigation conducted by the Philippine Coast Guard, only one
apprentice member of the crew of Doña Paz was monitoring the ship's bridge
when the accident occurred. Other
officers were either drinking beer or watching television in the crew's
recreation quarters. The ship's captain
was watching a movie on his Betamax machine in his cabin. A similar testimony was given by one of the
survivors, Luthgardo Niedo, wherein he stated that a fellow constabulary
soldier informed him of "an ongoing party with laughter and loud
music" on the ship's bridge with the captain as one of the attendees.
Survivors claimed that
it was possible that Doña Paz may have carried as many as 4,000
passengers. The signs that they
considered were that they saw passengers sleeping along corridors, on the boat
decks, and on bunks with three or four people on them.
Casualties
In the initial
announcement made by Sulpicio Lines, the official passenger manifest of Doña
Paz recorded 1,493 passengers and 59 crew members aboard. According to Sulpicio Lines, the ferry was
able to carry 1,424 passengers. A
revised manifest released on December 23, 1987, showed 1,583 passengers and 58
crew members on Doña Paz, with 675 persons boarding the ferry in
Tacloban, and 908 coming aboard in Catbalogan.
However, an anonymous official of Sulpicio Lines told UPI that, since it
was the Christmas season, tickets were usually purchased illegally aboard the
ship at a cheaper rate, and those passengers were not listed on the manifest. The same official added that holders of
complimentary tickets and non-paying children younger than the age of four were
not listed on the manifest.
Of the 21 bodies that
had been recovered and identified as passengers on the ship five days after the
accident, only one of the fatalities was listed on the official manifest. Of
the 26 passengers who survived, only five were listed on the manifest.
On December 28, 1987,Representative
Raul Daza of Northern Samar claimed that at least 2,000 passengers aboard Doña
Paz were not on the ship's manifest.
He based that number on a list of names furnished by relatives and
friends of missing people believed aboard the ferry, the names having been
compiled by radio and television stations in Tacloban. The names of these 2,000+ missing passengers
were published in pages 29 to 31 of the December 29, 1987, edition of the Philippine
Daily Inquirer. At least 79 public
school teachers perished in the collision.
During February 1988
the Philippine National Bureau of Investigation stated, on the basis of
interviews with relatives, that there were at least 3,099 passengers and 59
crew on board, giving 3,134 on-board fatalities. During January 1999 a presidential task force
report estimated, on the basis of court records and more than 4,100 settlement
claims, that there were 4,342 passengers.
Subtracting the 26 surviving passengers, and adding 58 crew, gives 4,374
on-board fatalities. Adding the 11 dead from the Vector crew,
the total becomes 4,385, almost 3 times the design load.
Reactions and aftermath
President Corazon
Aquino described the accident as "a national tragedy of harrowing
proportions...[the Filipino people's] sadness is all the more painful because
the tragedy struck with the approach of Christmas". Pope John Paul II, Japanese Prime Minister Noboru
Takeshita and Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom conveyed their official
messages of condolence. Given the
estimated death toll, Time Magazine and others have termed the sinking
of Doña Pa z "the deadliest peacetime maritime disaster of the 20th
century".
Sulpicio Lines
announced three days after the accident that Doña Paz was insured for ₱25,000,000
(US$668,780 in 2021 dollars), and it was willing to indemnify the
survivors the amount of ₱20,000
(US$574 in 2021 dollars) for each victim.
Days later, hundreds of the victims' kin staged a mass rally at Rizal
Park, demanding that the ship owners likewise indemnify the families of those
not listed on the manifest, as well as to give a full accounting of the
missing.
Nonetheless, the Board
of Marine Inquiry eventually exculpated Sulpicio Lines of fault in the
accident. Subsequent inquiries revealed
that Vector was operating without a license, lookout or
properly qualified master. During 1999
the Supreme Court of the Philippines ruled that it was the owners of Vector who
were liable to indemnify the victims of the collision.
Some of the claims
pursued against either Sulpicio Lines or the owners of Vector, such as
those filed by the Cañezal family (who lost two members) and the Macasas family
(who lost three members) were adjudicated by the Supreme Court, which found
that even the families of victims whose names did not appear on the official
manifest were entitled to indemnity. Caltex
Philippines, which had chartered Vector, was likewise cleared of
financial liability.
Memorial
A memorial honoring the
victims of Doña Paz is at the Pieta Park in Catbalogan. Located at adjacent to St. Bartholomew Church
and Saint Mary's College of Catbalogan, the park now serves as a public space
for families and friends of the victims.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Do%C3%B1a_Paz
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