Moby Prince

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Moby Prince was an Italian ferry owned by Navarma Lines (today Moby Lines) crashed near Livorno in April 10, 1991.

Built in 1967 by the English shipyard Cammell Laird of Birkenhead as Koningin Juliana for ferry operator Stoomvart MIJ of the Netherlands, it was used on the Harwich to Hook of Holland route until 1989.

[edit] Disaster

The ship at 22.23 collided with the oil tanker Agip Abruzzo in Livorno harbour and it caught fire killing 140 people. Not all the deaths were caused by the fire; is has been reported that a large portion of the victims died intoxicated by massive toxic inhalations, while they were gathered in the main internal room of the ship. The operations of rescue were managed badly; the may day sent from the Moby Prince, very weak, wasn't apparently heard from the radar officers of Livorno. The rescue teams were deployed only on the Agip Abruzzo. Initially the commander of Agip Abruzzo thought that the ship hit was a small bettolina, and also said to the rescuers "Not to exchange our ship with that". Only some volunteers managed to approach the ferry, rescuing only a single survivor, a mariner from Naples. Despite this mariner said that there were still survivors on the burning ferry, nobody climbed on the wreck to rescue them. When the rescuers entered the wreck the following morning, they found only dead bodies. Initially the cause of the crash was accosted to a very thick fog, but some amateur video footage excluded this possibility.