Flashback in maritime History – Sea Diamond sinking at Santorini 5 April 2007

The cruise ship, owned by Louis Hellenic Cruises, sank on April 5 2007 after ramming a reef near the Aegean island of Santorini with 1,195 passengers and 391 crew on board. All onboard were safely evacuated except a French man, Jean Christophe Allain (age 45) and his daughter Maud (age 16), who were never found.

Originally named Birka Princess, the ship was built by the Finnish state-owned company Valmet at their Vuosaari shipyardin Helsinki at a cost of 350 million Finnish mark (€58,9 million). She was delivered in 1986 and operated for Birka Line in the Baltic Sea cruiseferry market, sailing on 24-hour cruises between Stockholm in Sweden and the ?land Islands in Finland. Between 1990 and 2003 she also made longer cruises around the Baltic Sea during the summer season.

Between 1992 and 2002, the ship’s exterior was used to portray the fictional ship MS Freja in the Swedish TV soap operaRederiet.

As built, she had a small car deck, with space for 80 passenger cars and a rampon the port side in the rear. Like most cruiseferries in the Baltic Sea, she was built to ice class 1A.

In 1999 she was extensively refitted at Lloyd Werft in Germany at a cost of approximately US$26 million. The fore superstructure was extended and streamlined and 62 new passenger cabins were added, including a new deck of cabins above the bridge. In October 2004, when the new MS Birka Paradise was delivered, the Birka Princess started making two-night cruises from Stockholm to Turku, Helsinki and Tallinn, as well one weekly 24-hour cruise from Stockholm to Mariehamn. The new itineraries proved largely unsuccessful, and on January 2, 2006, the ship was laid up in Mariehamn and put up for sale.

In February 2006 she was sold to the Cyprus-based Louis Cruise Lines for US$35 million (€29.4 million). As built, the ship only had an indoor pool in the sauna section on deck 2 in the bow of the ship. A new outdoor swimming pool was installed and the sundeck area increased at Turku Repair Yard, Naantali. She entered service in the Mediterranean Sea as the second former Birka Line ship in the Louis Cruise Lines fleet, after MS Princesa Marissa, the former MS Prinsessan/Finnhansa. After the sale she was registered in Valletta, Malta. She changed flags in late 2006. At the time of her sinking she was owned by Elona Maritime Ltd, a company based in Malta,but registered at Piraeus, Greece.

Sinking

On April 5, 2007, at around 16:00 EEST (13:00 UTC) the ship ran aground on a well-marked volcanic reef east of Nea Kameni, within the caldera of the Greek island of Santorini, began taking on water, and listed up to 12 degrees to starboard before her watertight doors were reportedly closed (a report which was later refuted when the wreck was examined).  The 1,195 passengers, mostly Americans and 60 Canadians, were initially all reported to be safely evacuated in three and a half hours, with four injuries. Some passengers, including a group of 77 students from Paisley Magnet School in North Carolina, were evacuated from the car ramp through the former car deck onto boats, but some passengers had to climb down rope ladders from the higher decks. The ship was towed off the rocks, and her list stabilized. Later, it was reported that two French passengers were missing...

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