Mermaid on the Danube Before the Collision

The New York Times is reporting that well before Hungary’s worst boating accident in at least six decades, Hungarian officials had been warned that traffic on the Danube had soared to dangerous levels around Budapest, but the government did not curb the number of vessels plying the river. 

On the night of May 29, in a driving rain, an international cruise ship, the Viking Sigyn struck and sank a smaller sightseeing boat, the Mermaid, killing 28 people. The cause is still under investigation, but the accident has raised concerns that at the municipal and national levels, where tourism has become a major source of revenue, political calculations and the drive for profit outweighed safety concerns.

In related news, the captain of the Viking Sigyn, identified only as C. Yuriy, 64, of Odessa, was previously involved in another Viking collision in the Netherlands in April. He is reported to have served as the first officer of the Viking Idun which collided with the tanker, Chemical Marketer, in the Netherlands’ Western Scheldt, near Antwerp, on April 1. Five people reported minor injuries as a result of the collision.

Captain Yuriy was arrested by Hungarian shortly after the Viking Sigyn ran down the sightseeing boat Mermaid, which was carrying a South Korean tour group. The accident was among the deadliest involving South Koreans since the Sewol ferry disaster in 2014.

According to Ferenc Rab, a spokesman for the Prosecution Service of Budapest, the captain was found to have deleted data from his phone between the time of the Budapest collision and the authorities’ seizure of his phone. 

The sightseeing boat Mermaid was lifted from the Danube on Tuesday. Four bodies were recovered. Nineteen South Koreans and a Hungarian crewman have been confirmed dead, with eight people still listed as missing.

Thanks to Miro for contributing to this post.