Virgo Transport 8 capsizes in the Java Sea with at least six dead and more than 100 missing

The Virgo Transport 8 left Surabaya in East Java at 10:33 on Saturday, 12 September, bound for Banjarmasin in South Kalimantan. The roll-on roll-off ferry displaced 8,540 gross tons and carried 243 people: 213 passengers and 30 crew, among them drivers travelling with 89 vehicles. It was due in Banjarmasin at 14:00 on Sunday. Contact was lost around 02:00 local time, about 150 kilometres south of the destination.

Basarnas, Indonesia's search and rescue agency, said the captain told the owner that the ship was tilting before the radio went dead. Deputy operations chief Edy Prakoso said the captain later described waves striking the starboard side. Transport minister Dudy Purwagandhi told a press conference that a passing helicopter reported the vessel capsized. Waves in the search box reached 2.5 to 3 metres.

Numbers from the agencies moved through Sunday. An early Basarnas note counted six dead, 97 rescued and 140 missing. Reuters, later in the day, quoted the agency as saying six dead, 108 rescued and 129 missing. Tempo, citing Edy Prakoso at 15:30 local time, had about 113 people pulled from the water, 98 of them alive. The spread is what a live rescue produces. The fixed facts are the passenger list of 243 and a confirmed death count of at least six.

Passing ships did most of the first lifts. Tug TB Mauhaw IX took 16 people, one of them dead, toward Tuban. Tug TB TCP took a larger group that included several bodies. Cargo ship MV Haida took dozens, all alive on one official tally. Fishing boats Cahaya Bahari and Sri Asih transferred survivors to other hulls. A joint task force of Basarnas, the navy, maritime police and the company put ships and two helicopters on the scene and asked every vessel in that part of the Java Sea to report wreckage or people.

Survivor Rinto Arahap, 33, told AFP that passengers panicked, climbed on tables and pushed for life jackets. He said he held a railing after the ship flipped, then climbed higher as the hull rolled in the swell. Families waited at Trisakti Port in Banjarmasin. One woman, Putri, said she had been on the phone with her husband Herman until the call dropped.

Indonesia's inter-island fleet moves people and trucks on routes that have no road alternative. The Surabaya-Banjarmasin crossing is one of those working lines. Ro-ro ships load vehicles on the vehicle deck and passengers above. A list that tilts in short, steep Java Sea waves can flood that deck quickly. Investigators have not issued a cause. Weather, loading and stability will be the first three files.

By the morning of 14 September the search was still open. The missing count remained in three figures on some official sheets. Bodies and survivors were being landed at Trisakti and Tuban. The company, PT Virgo, had made the first distress call at 04:10 on Sunday. The ship's last known position sat in open water, not in a port approach channel. That geography is why helicopters and passing merchant ships, not harbour tugs, did the first work.

The passenger mix explains the vehicle count. One hundred and twenty-six drivers and assistants were on the list with 89 vehicles. A ro-ro on the Surabaya-Banjarmasin run is a floating truck park with bunks above. When the deck floods, the trucks become weight that cannot be pushed off in a few minutes. That is why a tilt reported by the captain at 2 a.m. can become a capsize before the first helicopter arrives.

Basarnas will now reconcile three ledgers: the sailing list of 243, the names landed at Trisakti and Tuban, and the bodies already tagged. Families at the port have only the second and third ledgers. The Java Sea does not give up the rest on a timetable. Other merchant ships have been asked to keep watch. That request will stay in force until the missing number falls or the search is stood down.