A colleague jabbed his finger at a picture of the Costa Concordia cruise ship, surrounded by tugs as it lay helplessly on its side off the Italian coast. "It's Zeebrugge 25 years on," he observed quietly.
While the death tolls were sharply different, there were similarities between the two scenes a quarter of a century apart. Even the salvage vessels clustered around the Concordia were from the Dutch company Smit - the same company that responded to the car ferry Herald of Free Enterprise, which capsized shortly after setting sail from Zeebrugge, Belgium, for Dover, England, on March 6, 1987.
On that fateful day, Marc Stanley, an assistant boatswain, had fallen asleep and, consequently, failed to close the ferry's massive, bow loading doors through which the cars and lorries had boarded the vessel.
Nobody had noticed and, as the ferry set sail, the water poured on to the car deck, eventually causing the ship to topple on its side, killing 193 passengers and crew, all but five of them British. It is the deadliest maritime disaster involving a British ship in peacetime since 1919.
It was a tragedy that was to have a profound effect on the design of car ferries worldwide and on British jurisprudence by establishing the legitimacy of corporate manslaughter charges in the legal system for the first time (even if, in the end, the case against the ferry company executives was dismissed).
Yet for those of us who spent weeks in Belgium covering the disaster at the time, the memories that linger 25 years on are of the individual human tragedies, not the big questions that would come later.
The heart-break of the young mother, for instance, whose infant son's body was never found. The parents of a young man in a wheelchair who could do nothing to save him as the ferry fell on its side. The bravery of the Belgian sailors who saved 346 passengers in the first few hours but were eventually forced back by a rising tide of bitterly cold water.
Most of the victims, in fact, died as a result of hypothermia, rather than drowning, an inquest was later to establish.
One Belgian diver told me of the three faces he had seen pressed against a glass wall in an air pocket in the submerged duty-free shopping area. The people were alive and clawing desperately at the glass but, by the time he had returned with breathing equipment for those trapped, all were dead.
Then there were the UK navy divers brought in to retrieve bodies once the ship had been righted. They were a tough, hardened bunch but one evening I comforted one in tears as he recounted finding the body of a young girl still clutching her teddy bear in the ferry's mud-filled interior earlier that day.
These were the people who were remembered at church services in Dover yesterday and in Zeebrugge on Sunday.
Last night mourners cast flowers on the sea to remember those who had died 25 years ago. They did much the same at the site of the Concordia sinking, in which 32 people died on went missing, a few weeks ago.
And they will do the same next month when they remember all those who died in the most famous seagoing tragedy of them all: the sinking of the Titanic 100 years ago.
Many things in life may change but the sea's ability to take lives - often abetted by human failings - has remained constant for thousands of years.
daspsted@thenational.ae
The biog
Name: Fareed Lafta
Age: 40
From: Baghdad, Iraq
Mission: Promote world peace
Favourite poet: Al Mutanabbi
Role models: His parents
Book%20Details
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Specs
Engine: Electric motor generating 54.2kWh (Cooper SE and Aceman SE), 64.6kW (Countryman All4 SE)
Power: 218hp (Cooper and Aceman), 313hp (Countryman)
Torque: 330Nm (Cooper and Aceman), 494Nm (Countryman)
On sale: Now
Price: From Dh158,000 (Cooper), Dh168,000 (Aceman), Dh190,000 (Countryman)
THE DETAILS
Kaala
Dir: Pa. Ranjith
Starring: Rajinikanth, Huma Qureshi, Easwari Rao, Nana Patekar
Rating: 1.5/5
Specs
Engine: Duel electric motors
Power: 659hp
Torque: 1075Nm
On sale: Available for pre-order now
Price: On request
Honeymoonish
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EDirector%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Elie%20El%20Samaan%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EStarring%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3ENour%20Al%20Ghandour%2C%20Mahmoud%20Boushahri%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3ERating%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%203%2F5%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
Real estate tokenisation project
Dubai launched the pilot phase of its real estate tokenisation project last month.
The initiative focuses on converting real estate assets into digital tokens recorded on blockchain technology and helps in streamlining the process of buying, selling and investing, the Dubai Land Department said.
Dubai’s real estate tokenisation market is projected to reach Dh60 billion ($16.33 billion) by 2033, representing 7 per cent of the emirate’s total property transactions, according to the DLD.
The White Lotus: Season three
Creator: Mike White
Starring: Walton Goggins, Jason Isaacs, Natasha Rothwell
Rating: 4.5/5
UAE cricketers abroad
Sid Jhurani is not the first cricketer from the UAE to go to the UK to try his luck.
Rameez Shahzad Played alongside Ben Stokes and Liam Plunkett in Durham while he was studying there. He also played club cricket as an overseas professional, but his time in the UK stunted his UAE career. The batsman went a decade without playing for the national team.
Yodhin Punja The seam bowler was named in the UAE’s extended World Cup squad in 2015 despite being just 15 at the time. He made his senior UAE debut aged 16, and subsequently took up a scholarship at Claremont High School in the south of England.
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The National's picks
4.35pm: Tilal Al Khalediah
5.10pm: Continous
5.45pm: Raging Torrent
6.20pm: West Acre
7pm: Flood Zone
7.40pm: Straight No Chaser
8.15pm: Romantic Warrior
8.50pm: Calandogan
9.30pm: Forever Young
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Kumulus Water
Started: 2021
Founders: Iheb Triki and Mohamed Ali Abid
Based: Tunisia
Sector: Water technology
Number of staff: 22
Investment raised: $4 million
The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
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More from Neighbourhood Watch:
Living in...
This article is part of a guide on where to live in the UAE. Our reporters will profile some of the country’s most desirable districts, provide an estimate of rental prices and introduce you to some of the residents who call each area home.
