Stena Scandica ferry accidents and incidents

29 August 2022Fire Accident

On August 29, 2022, at 0:29 pm (10:29 UTC), while en route from homeport Nynashamn's Stockholm Norvik Hamn (Sweden) to Ventspils (Latvia), the ferry suffered a car deck fire accident. The ship was navigating north of Gotland Island and was carrying a total of 299 people (241 passengers plus 58 crew).

The Car Deck fire started in a cooling container loaded on a refrigerated truck and was swiftly put out by the ship's automatic fire extinguishing and suppression system. No injuries were reported.

However, the accident affected Stena Scandica's propulsion and resulted in power loss. The emergency power genset (diesel generator) was activated and the vessel remained safe in the area, without the need for evacuation.

The Swedish maritime authorities were duly informed about the accident. A tugboat was deployed to tow the ship back to homeport (arriving in Stockholm Norvik Port on Aug 30th). The Swedish authorities dispatched to the scene a total of 11x vessels (3x rescue helicopters, 7x ships, 1x tugboat). The ferry will now be towed to port, they added. Navigating close to Stena Scandica cruiseferry MS Visborg (Destination Gotland) was also put on standby and ready to support STENA LINE's ship.

Late in the evening (Aug 29th), the Swedish and Finnish rescue teams started the evacuatiion of elderly people and families from the cruise ship.

October 2020Structural and Technical Issues

In October 2020, the ship charterer Stena Line announced the expanding of its Baltic Sea fleet with the deployment in 2021 of two RoPax ships on the Sweden-Latvia route Nynashamn-Ventspils. The deployment increased Stena's cargo capacity by 30%.

The two vessels (Stena Mersey and Stena Lagan) are sisterships, both 2005-built (at Cantiere Navale Visentini Shipyard) and were operating Stena Line’s Irish Sea route Belfast-Liverpool. Before starting the new Baltic Sea service, both cruiseferries were drydocked (for lengthening and modernization) by Stena RoRo and subsequently renamed - Stena Mersey to "Stena Baltica", and Stena Lagan to "Stena Scandica".

The lengthening of both ferries was done at Turkon Holding's Sedef Shipyard (in Tuzla/İstanbul, Turkey). The project included adding a 36-m (118-ft) long pre-assembled midship section, to a new LOA length 222 m (728 ft). Fun fact is that the STENA ships Scandica-LAGAN and Baltica-MERSEY (like all Cantiere Navale Visentini-built ferries) were originally constructed as two separate sections. These huge hull+superstructure sections were prefabricated, assembled, launched and later joined together in the shipbuilder's drydock hall in Porto Viro (~45 km / 28 mi south of Venice Italy).

Note: The 2007-built Stena Baltica (IMO 9364978) in 2020 was renamed to "Cotentin" and chartered to Brittany Ferries for the UK-France route Portsmouth-Le Havre. The vessel was chartered to Stena Line (by the shipowner SOMANOR) for the period 2013-2020 to serve the Sweden-Poland route Karlskrona-Gdynia.