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 when a fire began on board.
At the time the ship carried 395 passengers and 97 crew. Approximately one-third of the
people on board would not live to see the morning - an extremely high death toll which it was found
could be attributed in large parts to the dilapidated and ill-maintained state of the ship.
The Scandinavian Star started life as the MS Massalia. Built in 1971, it was a fairly
large ship amongst those of its type with eight decks for passengers and vehicles and capacity
enough to carry 1,152 people in total. On-board facilities included a sun lounge, a restaurant,
a discotheque, and many passenger cabins of varying classes and levels of comfort.
The vessel was put to work as a cruise ship carrying passengers between destinations in
the Mediterranean and then later in the Caribbean. Like many ships she changed hands several times
over the course of her life, spending brief periods under different names. One year she was
the Island Fiesta and the next the Stena Baltica. It was 1984 before she became the Scandinavian
Star, a name which seemed to stick. For a few years she ran cruises off the coast of Florida
and further afield down to Mexico before being sold in March of 1990 to Vognmandsruten, a Dutch
company who put her to work ferrying passengers between Norway and Denmark. Just one month after
being acquired by Vognmandsruten a severe fire would almost put an end to her days on the water.
This fire began on deck three just after 2:00 in the morning of the 7th of April, 1990.
Smoke was spotted by a passenger who quickly reported it to a member of staff.
By the time the captain was made aware of the emergency the fire had made good inroads to
decks four and five and was spreading rapidly from there. An evacuation began... a chaotic
ineffective evacuation. The problems faced by those on board were numerous.
For starters, many passengers weren't even woken up by the fire alarm:
the bells were placed so far apart and so far away from some cabins that the sound they made
was simply nowhere near loud enough to be heard over the normal background noise of the ship.
For those that were fortunate enough to be woken by an alarm, escape was difficult. The
Scandinavian Star had been refitted many times during her lifespan, leaving her with numerous
dead ends and confusing corridors including routes which looked as though they should lead
to an exit but instead simply sent panicking passengers back into the belly of the ship.
Passengers undoubtedly looked to the crew to help them evacuate... but here again they were out of
luck. The ship had been acquired only a month ago, leaving no time for the brand new crew to
be trained or familiarized with it. Many crew members were as lost as passengers were and,
crucially, few of them shared a common language. The vast majority of passengers were Norwegian,
and the vast majority of the crew could not speak Norwegian... or English... or Dutch.
Communication difficulties made an already fraught situation significantly more deadly.
None of this should have mattered, of course. The ship was supposed to be fireproof.
And, yes, most of the materials used for the interior of the ship were designed to resist
flame, but these had in many places been coated with a thin layer of decorative veneer
made of melamine resin - a material that was not only highly flammable but which produced
poisonous gases on combustion. Other fire safety features simply weren't up to code:
sprinklers had rusted over and many fire doors didn't shut securely. These small but significant
details had earned the owners of the ship a stern warning during its last inspection, but for some
reason it had still been issued with the insurance necessary to take on passengers and set sail.
With all these factors working against passengers on board the burning ship the captain was perhaps
the one person who might have been able to help. However, the captain wasn't there.
After making some brief efforts to isolate the fire he had been among the first people
to evacuate into a lifeboat. He'd even gone so far as to tell rescuers that he believed
everyone had managed to get off the ship, when in fact hundreds still remained on board.
Firefighters made their way out to the burning Scandinavian Star.
They boarded and set up a command post on the deck of the ship, while tugboats towed it back towards
a small port on the Swedish coast, where fireboats could safely approach and damp down the flames.
Within a day the fire was brought under control... but it was too late for many
on board. 158 were dead, many of them killed while sheltering in their cabins.
An investigation was launched. There was no doubt at all that the ship had been in poor condition,
and that the evacuation had been botched in multiple ways. But investigators revealed
a further shocking possibility: there was evidence that the fire had in fact been caused
deliberately. Multiple points of ignition were found, with evidence that a person or several
persons had intentionally set a fire at each of these points. Suspicion fell upon Erik Andersen,
a truck driver who had been aboard as a passenger and who had perished in the fire.
He had a history of arson, and so for many years was considered to be the most likely culprit. It
wasn't until 2014, however, that it was concluded that he had actually died fairly early on in the
disaster and that multiple attempts to start an additional fire had been made after his death.
He was ruled out, with a later report noting that it was likely that many people had worked together
to set the fires and that these people probably had a good working knowledge of the ship. In this
new light the captain's swift escape and the tragic disorganized evacuation started to seem
more sinister. Could the newly purchased ship have been deliberately set on fire? It could,
some posited, have been an attempt to scupper the vessel in order to claim on the insurance
policy taken out against it - an insurance policy the value of which had recently been doubled,
despite no noticeable increase in the actual value of the ship.
As it stands it remains uncertain to this day who started the fires on board the Scandinavian Star,
and what their motive was for doing so. Further investigations are underway.
What's certain, however, is that regardless of cause those on board would have stood
a better chance of survival if the ship and its fire safety equipment had been maintained
as it should have been. As with many maritime accidents the fire on board the Scandinavian
Star resulted in a comprehensive review of the Safety Of Life At Sea Convention,
and a tightening of regulations for similar ships around the world.
As for the Scandinavian Star, she was renamed again ,this time to the Candi - a name clearly
chosen for convenience as the change was affected simply by painting over part of the previous name.
She was then towed to Southampton in the UK, where she was laid up for four years. She did sail again
under yet another new name (the Regal Voyager), but limped on for only another 10 years before
she was finally sold for scrap. Even 20 years on the fire on board the Scandinavian Star
casts a long shadow. The relatives of the victims want answers. Why were their friends and family,
their children and loved ones lost in such a needless and inexplicable way?
If, as seems increasingly likely, the fire was a crime rather than an accident,
then who is responsible? These things remain to be discovered.
A memorial in Lysekil, the Swedish port where the ship was towed to extinguish the fire,
preserves the memory of those who were lost. But there is another legacy to this disaster,
one of ongoing painstaking work. Journalists and investigators,
legislators and government officials have over the years poured thousands of hours into bringing
about further investigations - into a slow and incremental search for the truth. If answers to
the questions surrounding the fire on board the Scandinavian Star are ever to be known it will be
through the patient efforts of hundreds of people who refuse to let the incident be forgotten.