Maritime Disasters

Some of the deadliest and most famous civilian maritime disasters:

Feb. 3, 2006: Egyptian passenger ship "Al-Salaam Boccaccio 98" sinks in the Red Sea.

Sept. 26, 2002 - Senegalese ferry capsizes in a storm off Gambia in West Africa, killing more than 1,800 people.

May 21, 1996 - A ferry sinks in Lake Victoria in east Africa, killing at least 500 people. One estimate puts the number of dead at 800.

Sept. 28, 1994 - The ferry "Estonia" sinks during a storm in the Baltic Sea, killing 852 people.

Feb. 16, 1993 - Overcrowded ferry sinks between Jeremie and Port-au-Prince, Haiti, estimated 500-700 dead.

Dec. 20, 1987 - In the world's worst peacetime shipping disaster, 4,340 drown, when the ferry "Dona Paz" collides with the tanker "MT Victor" in the Philippines.

Aug. 31, 1986 - Soviet passenger ship Admiral Nakhimov collides with a merchant vessel in the Black Sea, sinking both ships and killing up to 448 people.

May 25, 1986 - Some 600 people die when a ferry goes down in the River Meghna in Bangladesh.

Jan. 27, 1981 - 580 killed when Indonesian passenger ship "Tamponas II" catches fire and sinks in the Java Sea.

July 25, 1956 - Two passenger liners, the "Andrea Doria" and the "Stockholm," collide off Massachusetts, sinking the "Andrea Doria" and killing 46 of its 1,706 passengers and crew.

May 7, 1915 - The British ocean liner "Lusitania" is torpedoed and sunk by a German U-Boat while crossing the Atlantic Ocean, killing 1,195 people.

May 29, 1914 - A Canadian Pacific steamship, the "Empress of Ireland," collides with a Norwegian freighter near Quebec, sinking in 14 minutes and killing 1,012 people.

April 12, 1912 - The "Titanic" - the world's largest passenger steamship at the time- strikes an iceberg in the Atlantic and sinks on its maiden voyage, killing at least 1,496 people.

June 15, 1904 - The steamship "General Slocum" catches fire in New York's East River, killing more than 1,000 people.

April 27, 1865 - The steamboat "Sultana" sinks after its steam drum explodes on the Mississippi River, killing at least 1,700 people.