"On the 7th of April, 1990, the MS Scandinavian Star – a passenger and vehicle ferry – was on its way from Oslo in Norway to Frederikshavn in Denmark..."
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► In this video I say that Vognmandsruten was a Dutch company. This is incorrect; it was actually Danish.
#Documentary #History #TrueStories
As always, THANK YOU to all my Patreon patrons: you make this channel possible.
https://www.patreon.com/fascinatinghorror
SOCIAL MEDIA:
► Twitter: https://twitter.com/TrueHorrorTales
► TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@fascinatinghorror
► Suggestions: hello@fascinatinghorror.co.uk
MUSIC:
► "Glass Pond" by Public Memory
► "No. 7 Alone With My Thoughts" by Esther Abrami
CORRECTIONS:
► In this video I say that Vognmandsruten was a Dutch company. This is incorrect; it was actually Danish.
#Documentary #History #TrueStories
Category
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LearningTranscript
00:00On the 7th of April, 1990, the MS Scandinavian Star, a passenger and vehicle ferry, was on its
00:19way from Oslo in Norway to Frederikshavn in Denmark when a fire began on board. At the time
00:26the ship carried 395 passengers and 97 crew. Approximately one-third of the people on board
00:33would not live to see the morning. An extremely high death toll, which, it was found, could be
00:39attributed in large part to the dilapidated and ill-maintained state of the ship. The Scandinavian
00:48Star started life as the MS Marsalia, built in 1971. It was a fairly large ship amongst those
00:57of its type, with eight decks for passengers and vehicles and capacity enough to carry 1,152 people
01:04in total. Onboard facilities included a sun lounge, a restaurant, a discotheque, and many passenger
01:12cabins of varying classes and levels of comfort. The vessel was put to work as a cruise ship,
01:20carrying passengers between destinations in the Mediterranean and then later in the Caribbean.
01:25Like many ships she changed hands several times over the course of her life,
01:30spending brief periods under different names. One year she was the Island Fiesta, and the next
01:36the Stena Baltica. It was 1984 before she became the Scandinavian Star, a name which seemed to stick.
01:46For a few years she ran cruises off the coast of Florida and further afield down to Mexico,
01:52before being sold in March of 1990 to Wundmannsruhten, a Dutch company who put her to work ferrying
01:58passengers between Norway and Denmark. Just one month after being acquired by Wundmannsruhten
02:05a severe fire would almost put an end to her days on the water. This fire began on Deck 3,
02:11just after two o'clock in the morning of the 7th of April 1990. Smoke was spotted by a passenger
02:18who quickly reported it to a member of staff. By the time the captain was made aware of the emergency
02:24the fire had made good inroads to Decks 4 and 5, and was spreading rapidly from there.
02:30An evacuation began. A chaotic, ineffective evacuation. The problems faced by those on board
02:37were numerous. For starters, many passengers weren't even woken up by the fire alarm.
02:44The bells were placed so far apart and so far away from some cabins that the sound they made
02:50was simply nowhere near loud enough to be heard over the normal background noise of the ship.
02:55For those that were fortunate enough to be woken by an alarm, escape was difficult. The Scandinavian
03:02star had been refitted many times during her lifespan, leaving her with numerous dead ends
03:07and confusing corridors, including routes which looked as though they should lead to an exit
03:13but instead simply sent panicking passengers back into the belly of the ship. Passengers undoubtedly
03:20looked to the crew to help them evacuate, but here again they were out of luck. The ship had
03:26been acquired only a month ago, leaving no time for the brand new crew to be trained or familiarized
03:32with it. Many crew members were as lost as passengers were, and crucially few of them shared
03:39a common language. The vast majority of passengers were Norwegian, and the vast majority of the crew
03:46could not speak Norwegian, or English, or Dutch. Communication difficulties made an already fraught
03:54situation significantly more deadly. None of this should have mattered, of course. The ship was
04:02supposed to be fireproof, and yes, most of the materials used for the interior of the ship were
04:08designed to resist flame, but these had in many places been coated with a thin layer of decorative
04:14veneer made of melamine resin, a material that was not only highly flammable but which produced
04:22poisonous gases on combustion. Other fire safety features simply weren't up to code.
04:29Sprinklers had rusted over and many fire doors didn't shut securely. These small but significant
04:36details had earned the owners of the ship a stern warning during its last inspection,
04:41but for some reason it had still been issued with the insurance necessary to take on passengers
04:47and set sail. With all these factors working against passengers on board the burning ship
04:53the captain was perhaps the one person who might have been able to help.
04:58However, the captain wasn't there. After making some brief efforts to isolate the fire
05:04he had been among the first people to evacuate into a lifeboat. He'd even gone so far as to
05:10tell rescuers that he believed everyone had managed to get off the ship, when in fact hundreds
05:16still remained on board. Firefighters made their way out to the burning Scandinavian Star.
05:23They boarded and set up a command post on the deck of the ship while tugboats towed it back
05:28towards a small port on the Swedish coast where fireboats could safely approach and damp down the
05:33flames. Within a day the fire was brought under control, but it was too late for many on board.
05:42158 were dead, many of them killed while sheltering in their cabins.
05:50An investigation was launched. There was no doubt at all that the ship had been in poor condition
05:56and that the evacuation had been botched in multiple ways, but investigators revealed a
06:02further shocking possibility. There was evidence that the fire had in fact been caused deliberately.
06:10Multiple points of ignition were found, with evidence that a person
06:13or several persons had intentionally set a fire at each of these points.
06:20Suspicion fell upon Eric Anderson, a truck driver who had been aboard as a passenger
06:25and who had perished in the fire. He had a history of arson, and so for many years was
06:31considered to be the most likely culprit. It wasn't until 2014, however, that it was concluded
06:38that he had actually died fairly early on in the disaster, and that multiple attempts to start an
06:43additional fire had been made after his death. He was ruled out, with a later report noting that it
06:50was likely that many people had worked together to set the fires, and that these people probably
06:56had a good working knowledge of the ship. In this new light the captain's swift escape and the
07:03tragic disorganized evacuation started to seem more sinister. Could the newly purchased ship
07:10have been deliberately set on fire? It could, some posited, have been an attempt to scupper the vessel
07:16in order to claim on the insurance policy taken out against it, an insurance policy the value of
07:21which had recently been doubled despite no noticeable increase in the actual value of the
07:27ship. As it stands it remains uncertain to this day who started the fires on board the Scandinavian
07:34Star, and what their motive was for doing so. Further investigations are underway. What's
07:41certain, however, is that regardless of cause those on board would have stood a better chance
07:47of survival if the ship and its fire safety equipment had been maintained as it should have
07:52been. As with many maritime accidents, the fire on board the Scandinavian Star resulted in a
07:59comprehensive review of the Safety of Life at Sea Convention, and a tightening of regulations for
08:04similar ships around the world. As for the Scandinavian Star, she was renamed again,
08:11this time to The Candy, a name clearly chosen for convenience as the change was affected simply by
08:19painting over part of the previous name. She was then towed to Southampton in the UK, where she
08:25was laid up for four years. She did sail again under yet another new name, The Regal Voyager,
08:33but limped on for only another 10 years before she was finally sold for scrap.
08:38Even 20 years on, the fire on board the Scandinavian Star casts a long shadow.
08:46The relatives of the victims want answers. Why were their friends and family, their children
08:52and loved ones lost in such a needless and inexplicable way? If, as seems increasingly
08:59likely, the fire was a crime rather than an accident, then who is responsible? These things
09:07remain to be discovered. A memorial in Lusashill, the Swedish port where the ship was towed to
09:14extinguish the fire, preserves the memory of those who were lost. But there is another legacy to this
09:20disaster, one of ongoing, painstaking work. Journalists and investigators, legislators and
09:29government officials have over the years poured thousands of hours into bringing about further
09:34investigations into a slow and incremental search for the truth. If answers to the questions
09:41surrounding the fire on board the Scandinavian Star are ever to be known, it will be through
09:46the patient efforts of hundreds of people who refuse to let the incident be forgotten.
10:04you