MV Matui sinks between Santo and Ambae; one dead and more than 30 missing

At least one person is dead and more than 30 remain missing after the inter-island ferry MV Matui sank on Friday between Espiritu Santo and Ambae, Prime Minister Jotham Napat's office said on Sunday. Fifteen people have been accounted for alive. One body has been recovered. Search teams have shifted from open water toward the south-east coast, where currents may have carried survivors.

The vessel, operated by Tui's Shipping, left Santo at about 06:00 local time with 45 people on board, according to Luganville MP Matai Seremaiah. He said it capsized around 09:30. It never arrived on Ambae. New Zealand's RNZ reported that a local pilot later spotted people in the water and passed coordinates to boats that went out on their own. Seremaiah said a formal boat search did not begin for more than 30 hours. "We could have saved more," he said. He and others launched private sorties because, in his account, no instructions arrived in time.

Napat's office described the cause in a Facebook statement before any inquiry had reported. The loss "appears to be the result of strong winds and marine warnings not being heeded, and possibly of negligence including overloading of the vessel." A full investigation was promised. Police, the Maritime Safety Authority and the operator had not answered questions by Sunday afternoon.

The Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre in New Caledonia joined the search. A French Armed Forces aircraft flew on Sunday morning. The centre said 12 people were located that morning, a figure that sits inside the government's count of 15 alive. Vanuatu lies about 1,750 kilometres east of Australia. Inter-island ferries are how most people move between Santo, Ambae and the rest of the northern group. Weather windows are short. Overloading is a recurring finding in Pacific ferry inquiries, and the prime minister's office put that word in the first public statement.

Numbers from the first two days do not all agree. Some early reports said 12 rescued. The Guardian, citing the New Caledonia centre, used that figure for Sunday morning. The prime minister's office used 15 alive and one dead. Wikipedia's current-events page, citing the Guardian, recorded one dead, 12 rescued and more than 30 missing. The safe way to write the count on Sunday evening is the government's own: 15 alive, one body, more than 30 unaccounted for, out of a passenger-and-crew list of about 45.

The search box is now coastal rather than oceanic. That is a recognition that anyone still alive is more likely to be on a beach or in a reef line than in the open passage. It is also a recognition that time in the water has already done its work. Vanuatu will have to decide, after the last sorties, whether the Matui was a weather accident or a boat that should not have left the wharf. The prime minister's first statement has already chosen a direction for that inquiry.