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FERRY

Grounded ferry passengers head home

Passengers who were aboard the Viking Line ferry Amorella, which ran aground near the Baltic Sea island of Åland on Saturday, arrived safely in Stockholm on Sunday morning.

Grounded ferry passengers head home
Photo: AP
The ferry suffered a power failure and ran aground off Föglö near the Finnish island at 12.30pm on Saturday. The passengers were stuck on the vessel for several hours before the ship could reach Mariehamn port.
 
The Amorella was en route from Turku to Stockholm with 1945 passengers and about 150 personnel on board when it lost power, dropped speed and ran aground.
 
"It was completely black at first, about half a minute, it was black. Then I thought immediately that this is not normal, it felt all wrong," said one of the passengers, Irina Widberg. 
 
Turku sea rescue services managed to extricate the ship and divers were deployed to examine for damages. The Amorella was freed at around 6pm and arrived in Mariehamn on Åland a few hours later.
 
The passengers were moved to the Viking Line vessel Rosella and were able to continue their journey to Stockholm overnight. Reports indicate that passengers were obliged to camp out on the floor as there were insufficient cabins to go around.
 
"It was like a refugee centre," one passenger joked.
 
The Amorella was built in 1988 and had a serious grounding in 1993. But Mikael Backman at Viking Line argued that Saturday's incident had  "absolutely nothing"  to do with the age of the ship.
 
"It's probably something electrical that made us lose power and the engines just at a location where it narrowed," he said.
 
The cause of the power failure will be investigated.
 
No injuries were reported in the incident.

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