For most of us, when we think of maritime disasters, the first image that comes to mind is the colossal hull of the RMS Titanic, sinking in the North Atlantic. Thanks to popular culture and the sympathy of all the world for this truly tragic event, the name of the ocean liner has become eponymous for a gruesome maritime disaster. Most of us have heard of her, most of us know the details of how she sank, and whether we admit it or not, most of us have watched Jack and Rose fall for each other, only to see their love disappear in the dark, icy waters. For one reason or another, her sinking has fascinated people for more than a hundred years. Yet, the last two centuries have seen far worse disasters at sea. We have never heard of them and they are rarely mentioned in history books. It is time to change this.

13. SS Sultana, Death Toll: 1,700  

The capitulation of the Confederate Army in April 1865 marked the end of the American Civil War. Thousands of liberated POWs who had served in the Union forces were stuck in the southern states. They were taken to Vicksburg, Mississippi, from where they were shipped back up north by steamboats on the Mississippi River.

Built in 1863 in Cincinnati, Ohio, the SS Sultana was one of the many steam paddle ships that had normally carried passengers, mail and goods between New Orleans and St. Louis, and now functioned as troop transporters.

At 2 pm on 26 April 1865, the Sultana, originally designed to carry a maximum of 356 people, left Vicksburg with about 85 crew members, 70 travelers, and 2,300 returning soldiers. Heavily overloaded, she travelled upstream. At 2:40 am on April 27th she was 13 kilometers from Memphis, when one of the ship’s four boilers exploded. Sharp-edged, glowing-red steel parts pierced the decks, crowded with sleeping soldiers. Within minutes, two more boilers exploded, turning ship and passengers into cinder and causing the decks above to collapse. Hundreds of panicked people jumped into the water in a desperate attempt to survive, but many were squashed under the ship’s falling funnels or drowned by the current.

The explosion most likely happened because the crew operated the boilers at an exceedingly high pressure, in order for the overloaded ship to make it upstream against the strong river current. With an estimate of 1,700 deaths, the SS Sultana remains the worst ship disaster in US history.

12. MV Le Joola, Death Toll: 1,863

The MV Le Joola was a Senegalese roll-on/roll-off passenger ferry, that sailed regularly between the city of Ziguinchor and the city of Dakar. The ship was designed to sail only on routes of up to 50 nautical miles off the coast. It had a length of 79.5 meters, a beam of 12.5 meters and was designed to carry 550 passengers, thirteen vehicles and 250 tons of cargo.

On 26 September 2002, around 11 am, with an estimated 2,000 passengers on board, the Le Joola hit a storm off the coast of Gambia and capsized in less than five minutes. She drifted on the water surface for more than 20 hours before she sank, taking 1,863 people to the bottom of the ocean.

According to the investigation reports on the incident, there were three main causes for the sinking of the ferry – the poor maintenance of the government-owned vessel, the grossly negligent overloading of passengers, and the fact that on that day the Le Joola sailed on a high sea route, which it was not designed for. 

11. SS Principe Umberto, Death Toll: 1,926

The SS Principe Umberto, built in 1909, was a passenger ship owned by the Navigazione Generale Italiana. During the First World War, she was converted into a troop ship. She had a length of 145.1 meters, a beam of 16.3 meters and a tonnage of 7,838 GRT. On 8 June 1916, while sailing in the Adriatic with 1,926 aboard, she was torpedoed by an Austro-Hungarian U-5 submarine and sank only minutes later, leaving no survivors behind. The Principe Umberto was the maritime disaster with the greatest number of lives lost during the First World War.

10. The Mont-Blanc in Halifax, Death Toll: 2,000

On 6 December 1917, off the Canadian East Coast at Halifax, the French ammunition freighter SS Mont-Blanc collided with the Norwegian ship SS Imo, caught fire and exploded. At least 2,000 people met their death and thousands more suffered gruesome injuries.

The explosion was so powerful that it caused a tidal wave and violent tremors which uprooted trees out from the ground, damaged railroad tracks, and destroyed numerous buildings whose debris were scattered hundreds of yards away. The Halifax explosion was one of the most violent non-nuclear explosions in history. It is considered the world’s largest accidental man-made explosion.

On no other day between the American Civil War (1861-1865) and the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center (2001), have so many people been killed in a single man-made incident on the North American continent.

9. Yamato Battleship, Death Toll: 2,498

Built in 1941, the Yamato was a Japanese battleship that served in the Second World War. On 7 April 1945, about 300 kilometers south of the Japanese island of Kyushu, the Yamato was bombed and hit by US carrier-based aircraft, causing it to capsize. The capsizing caused the ammunition on board to explode, tearing the ship in two. After 13 torpedo hits and 8 heavy bombing hits, the ship finally sank with the loss of 2,498 lives. ​The light cruiser Yahagi and four destroyer escorts were also sunk in the same attack, killing over a thousand additional crew members.

8. SS Kiang Ya, Death Toll: 2,750-3,920

The SS Kiang Ya, originally known as SS Hsing Ya Maru, was a coastal passenger steam ship built in 1939 by the Harima Shipbuilding & Engineering Company for the Tokyo-based shipping company Toa Kaiun Kabushiki Kaisha. In 1947 Toa Kaiun sold the ship to the Chinese shipping company China Merchants Steam Navigation Company, which started operating regular sailings from Shanghai to several cities along the Chinese coast.

On 3 December 1948, the ship left the port of Shanghai on a trip to Ningbo. That evening the Kiang Ya, originally designed to carry up to 1,186 passengers, sailed with 2,250 officially registered passengers aboard.

Due to the on-going civil war at the time, large numbers of people fled from the approaching communist troops and approximately 1,200 additional passengers boarded the ship unofficially. As the ship passed the mouth of the Huangpu Jiang River, an explosion occurred near the stern of the ship, and the Kiang Ya sank in shallow water shortly after. Rescue vessels arrived hours later, as the ship’s radio function had been cut off by the explosion. It is estimated that anywhere between 2,750-3,920 people died that night. The reason for the explosion was never determined, but it was assumed that the ship had hit a Japanese sea mine.

7. Iosif Stalin, Death Toll: 3,849

The Iosif Stalin was a Soviet passenger ship that was converted into a troop transporter during the Second World War. The ship was used in 1941 in the evacuation of Tallinn and later in the evacuation of the Soviet naval base in Hangö, Finland.

On 3 December 1941, with 5,589 soldiers on board, the ship entered the Gulf of Finland and ran into three German mines. While the crew was attempting to salvage the ship from the damage caused by the mines, Finnish forces spotted the ship and opened fire, causing on-board ammunition to detonate. Out of the 5,589 soldiers aboard the Iosif Stalin, 3,849 died and the rest were captured as prisoners of war by the German forces. 

6. RMS Lancastria, Death Toll: 4,000-6,500

The RMS Lancastria was a British ocean liner, owned by the Cunard Line. In April 1940, she was reconstructed as a troopship and under the command of Captain Rudolph Sharp, she was sent off to aid the evacuation of British troops and citizens from France. The ship left Liverpool on 14 June 1940, and anchored near the town of Saint-Nazaire on June 16th. By the following day, the Lancastria took between 4,000 and 9,000 refugees on board, including British civilians, soldiers and other military officials.

At around 4 pm, a German Junkers Ju 88 bombed the ship, causing it to capsize and sink within twenty minutes. More than 1,400 tons of fuel leaked into the water and partly caught fire. While there were 2,477 survivors, it is difficult to determine the exact number of deaths, as loading of the ship was hectic and many passengers boarded off the record. Estimates show that anywhere between 4,000 and 6,500 passengers died in the attack from drowning, suffocating, or by direct hit.

5. MV Doña Paz, Death Toll: 4,386

The MV Doña Paz was a Philippine ferry belonging to the Sulpicio Lines. On 20 December 1987, on the way from Leyte to Manila, the Doña Paz collided with the oil tanker MT Vector, owned by Caltex Philippines. The tanker’s cargo of 8,800 barrels of petroleum products exploded and led to a quickly spreading fire. The Doña Paz took two hours to sink and was followed by the Vector two hours later. Only 24 passengers from the Doña Paz and 2 crew members from the Vector were rescued. As none of the lifeboats could be suspended, the few survivors had to swim through the flames to get to safety.

The official death toll released in the investigation reports was 4,317 passengers, 58 crew members of the Doña Paz and 11 crew members of the Vector. Again, as in some of the cases previously discussed, the ship was overloaded way past its maximum capacity of 1,518 people. In addition, the investigation concluded that the Doña Paz was not equipped with a radio and that the onboard boxes containing the lifejackets were all locked. It was also found that the crew of the Vector was not sufficiently qualified and that the operation license of the tanker had expired. It took all of eight hours for the authorities to learn of the disaster, and another eight hours until a search and rescue operation started, which then proved futile.

The Doña Paz remains the deadliest peacetime maritime disaster of all time, with almost three times more casualties than the Titanic.

4. SS Cap Arcona, Death Toll: 5,000

The SS Cap Arcona was a luxury ocean liner launched in 1927 and was the flagship of the Hamburg-South America line. In April 1945, with the advance of the British army, prisoners from concentration camps were evacuated and brought to Lübeck. More than 9,000 prisoners from the Neuengamme concentration camp and survivors of the death marches were loaded onto ships, amongst them the Cap Arcona.

On 3 May 1945, with more than 6,000 people on board, the ship was attacked by fighter-bombers of the British Air Force. The Cap Arcona capsized but did not sink because of the shallow water. Around 5,000 of the prisoners aboard drowned, burned alive, or were shot dead. Those who attempted to swim away from the shipwreck were shot at by soldiers from the British Forces.

In the same attack, shortly before the Cap Arcona was hit, the SS Thielbeck, a cargo steamship also filled with prisoners, was bombed and sunk, killing 2,750 of the 2,800 people aboard.

3. HS Armenia, Death Toll: 5,000

The HS Armenia was a Soviet passenger ship launched in November 1928 in Leningrad at the Baltic Shipyard. The ship had a length of 112.15 meters, a beam of 15.54 meters and a maximum capacity of 980 passengers. During the Second World War, the Armenia was used as a troop transporter.

From 9 October 1941, the Armenia would evacuate soldiers, workers and materials from Odessa. Due to the invasion of German troops in November 1941, a rushed evacuation of the hospitals in the city of Sevastopol was ordered and the Armenia was converted into a hospital ship.

On 6 November 1941, the Armenia took on board about 4,000 wounded and medical personnel from a total of eleven hospitals in Sevastopol and sailed towards Yalta. Once there, she took on board around 1,000 additional passengers, none of which were officially recorded during the rushed boarding. On November 7th, the Armenia was attacked by a German Heinkel He-111 bomber and sank in just four minutes, killing approximately 5,000 people. Only eight people survived the disaster.

There is no mention in German records from the attack that the Armenia was a hospital ship. She was perhaps mistakenly believed to be a troop carrier.

2. MV Goya, Death Toll: 7,000

The MV Goya was a cargo ship built in 1940 for the shipping company A/S J. Ludwig Mowinckels Rederi in Bergen (Norway). After the German occupation of Norway in April 1940, the Goya was seized by the Kriegsmarine. During the last months of the war, the ship was deployed to evacuate the German eastern provinces. By mid-April, the ship had already evacuated 19,785 people to the west in only four trips.

On April 16th, the ship was to evacuate more wounded soldiers and fleeing civilians from West Prussia. At 11:52 pm, with more than 7,000 passengers on board, the ship was hit by the Soviet submarine L-3 and sank within seven minutes. Only 176 people survived.

1. MV Wilhelm Gustloff, Death Toll: 9,400

Towards the end of World War II, the Nazi regime had rejected an early evacuation of East Prussia. Hence, after the breakthrough of the Red Army on the Eastern Front at the beginning of 1945, many inhabitants of the province were cut off from the rest of the Reich.

On January 21st the same year, a series of transfers began, jointly known as Operation Hannibal, during which wounded soldiers and civilians, were transported by ship through the Baltic Sea to the western Reich territory. The former cruise ship MV Wilhelm Gustloff, transformed to serve as a troop transporter was also part of the evacuation. On 30 January 1945 at around 1 pm, the Wilhelm Gustloff, began her journey from Gdynia with an estimated 10,300 people aboard, both soldiers and civilians, including many children. The exact number of passengers and crew could never be determined with certainty, as the boarding was chaotic and hasty.

The ship originally left escorted by two torpedo boats and by the passenger ship Hansa, also filled with civilians and soldiers. Shortly after the departure, one of the torpedo boats and the Hansa encountered mechanical complications and could not sail further. This sudden change in the situation left the Wilhelm Gustloff with only one escort, the torpedo boat Löwe.

At the time of the departure, some of the military officials on board suggested to Captain Friedrich Petersen that it would be best to sail through dark shallow coastal waters where submarines could not operate. Captain Petersen, however, decided to take a route through the deep water due to the heavy overloading of the ship. In addition, a supposed radio message from the Navy warned the ship to turn on its lights in order to avoid a collision with one of the mine searching vessels on the route. Due to this message, whose sender was never identified, the Wilhelm Gustloff sailed with her lights on, making it easy for anyone to spot her.

Around 9 pm, the Wilhelm Gustloff was sighted by the Soviet submarine S-13. The submarine fired four torpedoes at the ship, three of which hit the Wilhelm Gustloff at the bow, under the E-deck and in the engine room. At 10:15 pm, the ship finally sank about 23 nautical miles off the coast of Pomerania, taking 9,400 people with it, many of which were women and children. In terms of the number of lives lost, the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff remains to this day the worst maritime disaster in human history.

The Shipyard