The MS Scandinavian Star Fire - April 7th, 1990
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In 1968, venerable French shipping company Nouvelle Compagnie de Paquebots SA (doing business as Paquet) placed an order with Groupe Dubigeon-Normandie SA in Nantes, France for a fairly luxurious new passenger-vehicle ferry for long distance service to Morocco. The keel for the new vessel was laid in 1969, and the ship was delivered in 1971 as Massalia. Measuring 10,513 gross tons and 467 ft. long, Massalia featured a pair of 16-cylinder Pielstick 16PCV-400diesels, built under license by Chantiers de l'Atlantique SA in Sainte Nazaire, France, making a combined 15,800hp, giving a service speed of 20 knots. Accommodations were for 874 passengers, with room for 250 cars and 420 lane meters for tractor-trailers, plus about 100 crew.
Massalia entered service with Paquet on July 13th, 1971, setting out on her maiden voyage from Marseille, France to Casablanca, Morocco, via Malaga, Spain. Massalia remained on her original Marseille-Malaga-Casablanca service for about 3 years, until 1974, when she transitioned to Paquet's traditional core Senegalese service, sailing from Marseille-Dakar, which only lasted a year. 1975 saw Massalia return to Marseille-Casablanca service, now sailing via Alicante, Spain and Sète, France.
In 1981, Paquet opted to send Massalia to the T. Mariotti shipyard in Genoa, Italy for conversion into a cruise ship. Upon redelivery, she now carried just 465 passengers, and was based out of Toulon, France, running a round-trip vacation cruise itinerary to Ceuta, Tangier, Casablanca, Safi, Agadir, Tenerife, and Funchal. Although Paquet was reasonably well-established in the cruise industry with their other vessels, for whatever reason, Massalia's new service was not a success, and, in August of 1983, she was laid up in Toulon and offered for sale.
On October 1st, 1983, Stockholm-based Stena Cargo Line (part of the Stena Line group of companies) acquired Massalia, transferred her to the Bahamian flag, and moved her to Marseille, where she remained in lay-up. In January of 1984, Massalia was transferred back to French registry and renamed Stena Baltica, for possible service with Stena Line in Northern Europe, but, this also did not happen. Finally, in November of 1984, Stena Baltica was renamed Island Fiesta and sailed to Tampa, Florida where she was overhauled by International Ship Repair and entered service running gambling cruises into the Gulf of Mexico for Fiesta Cruise.
In early 1985, she was chartered to US-based, Danish-owned Scandinavian World Cruises, returned to the Bahamas flag, and entered service with them in January of 1985, running a gambling/cruise ferry service between Tampa and Cozumel, Mexico, with a new name – Scandinavian Star. Over the course of 1985, Scandinavian World Cruises gradually rebranded themselves as SeaEcape, taking the same name as their corporate parent, SeaEscape Ltd. During December of 1987, her base of operations shifted slightly, from Tampa to St. Petersburg, but the 3-day/2-night itinerary to Cozumel remained unchanged.
At 1am on March 15, 1988, while en route from Cozumel, a fuel line broke, spraying oil over the hot engine, causing a severe fire to break out in the engine room, while Scandinavian Star was about 35 miles off the coast of Isla Mujeres, with 449 passengers and 266 crew on board. The fire was brought under control after 16 hours, but the engines were completely disabled. The US Coast Guard cutter Vigilant, Crowley Maritime freighter Ambassador, and two other cruise ships – Canada Star of the Bermuda Star Line and Vera Cruz I of Bahama Cruise Line – were nearby and responded for assistance, quickly joined by the Mexican Navy patrol boats D-11 and D-20 and oceanographic research vessel HO-2. Passengers were summoned to muster stations, but, ultimately, it was decided that the fire was well contained in the engine spaces, so no evacuation was required. HO-2 towed Scandinavian Star into port in Cancun, with Vigilant escorting, and the passengers were flown home from there.
The badly damaged Scandinavian Star was towed by Gulf Ace II to Miami, where extensive repairs were completed pierside, at a cost of $3.5 million. The US National Transportation Safety Board conducted the investigation, which faulted SeaEscape and Stena Line with poor crew training and management practices that lead to a haphazard and slow response to contain the fire and bring passengers to safety, while poor maintenance practices were blamed for the fuel line rupture in the first place. The ship's carbon dioxide-based fire suppression system was also found to have been faulty, despite a recent inspection to the contrary, and failed early on, hampering firefighting efforts.
Scandinavian Star returned to service for SeaEscape in late 1988, and SeaEscape bought her outright from Stena in January of 1990, however, they wouldn't keep her long.
In March of 1990, Scandinavian Star was sold to Nassau-based Vognmandsruten A/S, owned by a consortium of Norwegian investors, and given a hasty refit in Freeport, Bahamas, back into a passenger-auto ferry for service under charter to DA-NO Line, between Frederikshavn, Denmark and Oslo, Norway.
At 2am on April 7th, 1990, with Scandinavian Star outbound from Frederikshavn, loaded with 395 passengers and 97 crew, a passenger noticed fire on deck 3 and alerted staff. Flames spread quickly, with the stairwells and gaps in between the lowered ceilings and structural overheads acting as chimneys. The captain attempted to close the fire doors, but the door mechanisms required manual engagement of fire alarms in each area, which had not been triggered, so many doors remained open (and some of those that did close malfunctioned and didn't shut all the way).
When it became apparent that the ship's ventilation system was fanning the flames, the captain shut it down to starve the fire, which had the unintended consequence of causing a buildup of toxic smoke, asphyxiating passengers. Although the ship was theoretically built to fireproof standards, with a steel superstructure and asbestos wall boards, during various refits over the years, highly flammable melamine laminate paneling had been added on top of the original asbestos sheets, which acted like a wick, drawing flames down halls and releasing toxic clouds as it burned. Ultimately, the abandon ship order was given, but crew members panicked and began entering lifeboats and leaving before all passengers had been evacuated.
The ship was taken under tow and brought into port at Lysekil, Sweden, where the local fire brigade eventually extinguished the flames, some 10 hours later. Amazing, some passengers were found, still alive, on board after the ship was brought into port. 158 passengers, roughly 1/3 of those on board, ultimately died, either from the fire itself, or from asphyxiation, with 136 of them being Swedish nationals.
The investigation revealed that, in addition to the well-publicized 1988 fire, Scandinavian Star had had two other serious fires – one in 1985 caused by a defective deep fryer, and an earlier one in 1988 that was also caused by a broken oil line in the engine room, but both had been contained and left unreported to authorities. It also revealed that the ship's insurance company, Oslo-based Assuranceforeningen Skuld, had inspected the ship in port a week prior and declared the fire safety insufficient, citing, among other things, the broken and inoperable fire doors that ended up being a big problem on the fatal night.
Inadequate crew training was also faulted, with the disorganized, haphazard evacuation and general panic. Scandinavian Star had been refitted from a cruise ship back into a ferry in a very short period of time, with DA-NO Line's newly hired crew given just 10 days of training and familiarization, vs the two months that would normally be required. Crew members were also recruited principally from Portugal, and very few were able to speak Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, or English, the four most common languages of the ship's passengers.
In the aftermath, the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea was heavily amended in 1992 to further strengthen fire safety regulations for passenger ships in international service. Scandinavian Star was initially declared a total loss, towed from Lysekil to Copenhagen in late April, then to Hull, UK in August, where her name was shorted to Candi. After sitting idle for several years, Candi was sold at auction to ship management and chartering firm International Shipping Partners in April of 1994, renamed Regal Voyager, and sent to Industrie Navali Meccaniche Affini SpA in La Spezia, Italy for a through rebuilding, returning to service in late 1994, sailing under charter to Moroccan-based Comarit Ferries for service between Tangier and Port-Vendres.
This lasted until 1997, when Regal Voyager was charted to Saint Thomas Cruises, for service between Port Isabel, Texas and Puerto Cortes, Honduras for two years.
In 1999, she was chartered again to Dominican-based Ferries del Caribe for service between Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic and San Juan, Puerto Rico, which lasted 4 years, with Regal Voyager being laid up in Charleston, South Carolina in 2003. International Shipping Partners initially tried to market her for further charter service, but she was ultimately sold for scrap in 2004, renamed Regal V for the final voyage, and beached in Alang, India on May 14th, 2004.
The 1990 fire remains highly controversial with survivors and families of victims, who have long questioned the Swedish and Norwegian investigations, with a conspiracy theory of deliberate insurance fraud on the part of the ship's owners being commonly cited, based on eyewitness recollections of the appearance of multiple origin points, with little fires breaking out everywhere. However, a further inquiry by the Norwegian parliament in 2021 failed to find any conclusive evidence of foul play.
More from Scandinavian World Cruises/SeaEscape:
https://opposite-lock.com/topic/1091/ms-scandinavia-and-the-failed-east-coast-ferry-service -
This is another significant case study we go over.
Something to watch is how quickly the fire grows with the materials and ventilation that were found in the Scandinavian Star Accommodations. It is fully enveloped in less than 3min.
You can reason why SOLAS was amended with regards to fire safety shortly after what they found.
The conditions on board the ship were reconstructed in the 1:1 test mock up in NBLs laboratory, with exactly the same materials and dimensions as in the real ship. The ventilation conditions were also reconstructed.
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@Exage03040 Well, that was terrifying!