Deadlier Than the Titanic: A Ferry Set Out With About 1,900 Aboard. Only 64 Survived. (Published 2022) (2024)

Africa|Deadlier Than the Titanic: A Ferry Set Out With About 1,900 Aboard. Only 64 Survived.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/25/world/africa/senegal-ferry-joola.html

You have a preview view of this article while we are checking your access. When we have confirmed access, the full article content will load.

Tourists, vendors, babies, hundreds of university students and a soccer team from Senegal perished in a little-known ferry disaster 20 years ago. Survivors and families of victims still want justice.

In the sea approaching Dakar, Senegal. Frequent accidents on small boats lead many to ask if anything has changed in the country since the 2002 ferry disaster.Credit...Carmen Abd Ali for The New York Times

Supported by

SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT

By Elian Peltier

Published Sept. 25, 2022Updated Sept. 26, 2022

ZIGUINCHOR, Senegal — Up on the deck, dozens of university students played cards. In the first-class cabins below, passengers watched the movie “Air Force One.” In an overcrowded third-class compartment, a teenage soccer team on its way to a tournament belted out songs.

All were aboard a ferry named the Joola when it set out 20 years ago on a 17-hour journey from a city in southern Senegal, along the west coast of Africa, headed for the capital, Dakar.

As night fell, the festivities suddenly stopped. Rain began to drum on the Joola’s deck, hundreds of passengers rushed inside, the ferry tilted left, and then it capsized — with most of the travelers trapped.

More people died on the Joola on Sept. 26, 2002, than on the Titanic, making it the second deadliest maritime wreck ever recorded in peacetime. Only 64 people survived out of more than 1,900 — on a ferry designed to carry a maximum of 580. None of the 46 babies and toddlers on board survived.

Deadlier Than the Titanic: A Ferry Set Out With About 1,900 Aboard. Only 64 Survived. (Published 2022) (3)

Yet after two decades, no one has been held accountable. Outside of Senegal, little is known about the Joola, and even in Senegal, many blame the bad weather or some uncontrollable force.