South Korean ferry sinking leaves 4 dead, almost 300 missing

Hopefully they can rescue as many as they can, but...yeah, this looks bad.

Also, I hope this was an accident, but, it's rather suspicious about how quickly the ship started tilting so suddenly

Not looking good at all. So few seem to have got out before it sank.

As this story is developing it sounds like the ferry sinking in BC from a few years back.

Seems the ship went off course to try to make up for lost time, it hit a reef and then foundered.

On a very sad note: The Principal of the high school that sent so many kids on the ferry has committed suicide. Adding yet another name to the list of victims.

I heard a vice principal hanged himself, and that he was one of the survivors rescued.

And just bad, it looks like South Korea now has it's own version of Captain Schettino. Because it looks like the captain and senior officers were some of the first off the ship all the while speakers told passengers to stay in their cabins and not evacuate.

Cowardice seems to be the order of the day in some organizations.

Unless it was holed in some way, it is more likely of a poor design. Maybe it was overloaded, under-ballasted but the centre of moment should never be so high up in the ship to require mechanical intervention to prevent it from flipping over.

I look at a lot of those massive, box-like cruise ships that are sailing now and really wonder. Engine room fires are all the rage on those things and if the only thing keeping it upright is some powered stabilizer system, eventually, one is going to turtle with 5-6000 people on board. Naval Architects are leaning a little too heavily on gadgets and forgetting first principles so that they can cram thousands more paying punters onto their floating malls.

Unless it was holed in some way, it is more likely of a poor design. Maybe it was overloaded, under-ballasted but the centre of moment should never be so high up in the ship to require mechanical intervention to prevent it from flipping over.



Taking a short cut through some islands, 3rd mate steering, captain somewhere else,

too fast, to hard a turn, hit a reef.


One of the vice principals who was rescued while those kids were drowning,

at least he grabbed a brain cell and hung himself.


Captain should do the same, and then they should string up Schettino.

It looks like ship's Captains need to be reminded what and where their

responsibilities really lie.

How was the accident in any way shape or form his responsibility? Those who were rescued, except for the cowardly officers, survived by chance.

He was responsible for all of the lives of those kids on that trip and he took it to heart, apparently. I don't know how Eastern cultures deal with shock but suicide seems to be an accepted part of the mix. It just piles one more tragedy on top of an already big tragedy.

The cruise ships are typically built with steel in the hull and lower (weight-bearing) decks while the upper decks are composed of lighter materials like aluminum, composites, and sometimes even fireproof honeycombed corrugated boarding.

This blog addresses your comments about how the architecture of the ferry may have impacted this disaster:

http://ferriesdisasters.blogspot.com/fe ... by=updated

Thank you for that interesting link. I certainly remember some of those disasters.

Believe it or not, I took a 7 hour trip on a ferry that eventually sank (not with me on it) It was the William Carson and it went down off of the coast of Labrador. It was a good sized ship. I rode her between North Sidney,NS and Port au Basque Newfoundland.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_William_Carson

Anyway, back to Korea. There are doubts that she hit something and the "crash" that was heard may have been large cargo shifting (a large tractor trailer or two?)and that stability may have been the issue. I don't know if she was a roll-on-roll off ferry but the failure of ramps on this type of vessel has also lead to their capsizing. The worst one that I am aware of is the Estonia, where the ramp literally just opened up in a heavy sea and she went down like a lead billet, killing almost 900 ... more like a sudden plane crash than athe usually gradual sinking.