MT Vector
Ship involved in deadliest peacetime maritime disaster
Vector was a Philippine oil tanker that collided with the passenger ferry Doña Paz on December 20, 1987, in the Tablas Strait, Philippines, resulting in the deaths of an estimated 4,385 passengers and crew from the two ships. The incident is considered the deadliest peacetime maritime disaster in history.
Description
Vector was a small motor tanker, built in Manila, Philippines in 1980 as Oil Nic-II, with a tonnage of 629 gross register tons (GRT) and a length of 51.7 m (169 ft 7 in). The tanker was designed to transport petroleum products such as gasoline, kerosene, and diesel. Prior to December 1987, the tanker was acquired by Vector Shipping Inc., owned by Don Francisco Soriano, a shipping entrepreneur from Manila.
Collision with MV Doña Paz
On December 19, 1987, at about 8:00 p.m., Vector left Limay, Bataan en route to Masbate with a crew of 13, and loaded with 8,800 barrels of petroleum products shipped by the ship's charterer, Caltex Philippines, now Chevron. The following morning, at about 6:30 a.m., the passenger and cargo ferry Doña Paz left the port of Tacloban headed for Manila with a complement of 59 crew members, including the master and his officers, and passengers totaling 1,493 as indicated in the Coast Guard Clearance, though in fact it is estimated to have been well over 4,000. Doña Paz was a passenger and cargo vessel owned and operated by Sulpicio Lines, plying the route of Manila/Tacloban/Catbalogan/Manila/Catbalogan/Tacloban/Manila.
At about 10:30 p.m. on December 20, 1987, the two vessels collided in the open sea in the vicinity of Dumali Point in Tablas Strait between Marinduque and Oriental Mindoro.
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This entry incorporates text from “MT Vector” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.