Sinking of MV Princess Victoria - Our Space 56
Many readers will have travelled happily by car ferry to Scotland. But tomorrow marks the 73rd anniversary of the shocking loss of 135 lives when the Stranraer-Larne car ferry MV Princess Victoria sank, victims of the 1953 ‘North Sea Flood’ - the UK’s worst natural disaster of the 20th century. 2,551 people died in Netherlands, Belgium and the UK.
MV Princess Victoria was one of the earliest car ferries. Captain James Ferguson had sailed that route for 17 years and left Stranraer at 7:45am with 128 passengers, 51 crew and 44 tons of cargo. But in the open sea huge waves damaged the low stern doors and water entered the car deck. By about 2pm it sank 5 miles north-east of the Copeland Islands, Co Down.
The Court of Enquiry into the sinking found two causes: the stern doors were not strong enough; and water could not drain off quickly from the car deck. The duty destroyer HMS Tenacious based at HMS Sea Eagle (later Ebrington Barracks) Derry, had not had enough crew available to put to sea.
So the design of car ferries was improved; and the duty destroyer from the 3rd Squadron was subsequently based "on station" at the mouth of Lough Foyle on one hour readiness to sail.
Happier news was that one of the 33 people rescued by the Donaghadee lifeboat was a certain Derry man, George Wilson, returning home on three weeks army leave from Germany. He would become the longest lived survivor of the disaster.