Qualla: MS Express Samina

MS Express Samina: Introduction

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bgabel, CC BY-SA 3.0. On the evening of 26 September 2000, 533 people were aboard the Express Samina — passengers travelling between the Greek islands, heading home or toward a holiday, making an ordinary journey on a familiar route. The ferry was well known in the Aegean. The Portes rocks off Paros were well charted. The sea was calm, with only light winds at force 3 on the Beaufort scale. There was no reason for what happened next. At 22:12, the ship struck the rocks. By 23:02, she was gone. Eighty-one people did not survive.

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Image: Bgabel | CC BY-SA 3.0

MS Express Samina: The People on Board

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Geraki, CC BY-SA 3.0 gr. The 81 people who died on the night of 26 September 2000 were passengers and crew on a routine Greek island ferry crossing. They were travelling in late September, as the summer season wound down — the kind of crossing that hundreds of thousands of people made every year in the A...

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Image: Geraki | CC BY-SA 3.0 gr

MS Express Samina: What the Investigation Found

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Holger Pfiffi, Public domain. The cause of the sinking, as established by investigators and confirmed in criminal proceedings, was negligence by the ship's officers. The Express Samina was on a charted route past well-known rocks when she struck them. According to witnesses, First Officer Tassos Psychoyios ha...

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Image: Holger Pfiffi | Public domain

MS Express Samina: The Sinking, Minute by Minute

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Targaryen, CC BY-SA 3.0. At 22:12, the Express Samina struck the Portes islets. Three minutes later, at 22:15 local time, she was listing five degrees to starboard. The sea was entering through a six-metre gash in her hull. By 22:25 the list had reached fourteen degrees; by 22:29, twenty-three degrees. A...

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Image: Targaryen | CC BY-SA 3.0

MS Express Samina: The Trial and Its Findings

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dimorsitanos; cropped by Beyond My Ken (talk) 02:05, 20 September 2010 (UTC), CC BY-SA 3.0. The criminal trial began in late July 2005, five years after the sinking. The verdicts, handed down in early 2006, reflected the gravity of what investigators had found. First Officer Tassos Psychoyios was sentenced to 19 years in prison. Captain Vassilis Giannakis received a 16-...

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Image: Dimorsitanos; cropped by Beyond My Ken (talk) 02:05, 20 September 2010 (UTC) | CC BY-SA 3.0

MS Express Samina: The Ship and Its History

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Vengeresse32, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Express Samina was built in 1966 at the Chantiers de l'Atlantique shipyard in Saint-Nazaire, France, under the name MS Corse. She was a RoPax ferry — roll-on, roll-off passenger vessel — designed for the routes of the French Mediterranean. Over 34 years she passed through mul...

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Image: Vengeresse32 | CC BY-SA 4.0