Virgo Transport 8 capsizes in the Java Sea with more than 100 still missing

Six people are confirmed dead and more than 100 remain missing after the passenger ferry Virgo Transport 8 overturned in the Java Sea in the early hours of Sunday, 13 September. Indonesia's national search and rescue agency, Basarnas, has been revising the missing tally through the day as tugboats, a cargo ship and fishing boats delivered survivors to Banjarmasin and Tuban. The working figure that officials used at dusk was six dead, about 97 to 113 people taken off the water, and between 129 and 140 still unaccounted for from a manifest of 243.

The 8,540-gross-ton roll-on, roll-off ferry left Surabaya, East Java, on Saturday morning bound for Banjarmasin in South Kalimantan. Maritime tracking sites put the departure at 10:33 local time, with an expected arrival of 14:00 on Sunday. Contact was lost around 02:00 on Sunday, about 148 to 150 kilometres south of Banjarmasin near the Masalembo waters. The operator, PT Virgo Karya Shipping, reported the distress to authorities at 04:10. A passing helicopter later confirmed that the hull had turned over.

Transport Minister Dudy Purwagandhi told a press conference that the aerial report showed the ship capsized. Basarnas Deputy for Operations and Readiness Edy Prakoso said the captain, named in operational records as Arief Yunianto, told rescuers the vessel tilted after waves struck the starboard side. Survivors described a faster sequence. Passenger Ahmad Saudi said the ship listed hard to port around 01:20 WITA with no alarm and no announcement. He held a window frame as the deck went over, climbed onto the upturned hull, then left in a rubber boat with 14 other men once the ferry began to sink.

Another passenger, Rinto Arahab, said he clung to railings after the vessel flipped and worked his way to a higher point while the hull rolled in the swell. Families waiting at Trisakti Port in Banjarmasin described last calls that cut out. A woman who gave her name as Putri said she was speaking to her husband Herman when the line died.

Who was on board

Officials have used more than one breakdown of the 243 people on the manifest. One Basarnas account listed 213 passengers and 30 crew. A KSOP Banjarmasin briefing listed 30 crew, 27 associated personnel, 59 adult passengers, one child, and 126 drivers and assistants travelling with 89 vehicles. Head of the Class I KSOP office in Banjarmasin, Heri Purwanto, said a crisis post was opened at the Bandarmasih Trisakti passenger terminal as soon as the listing report arrived.

The ferry itself is 119 metres long. It was built in Japan in 1987 and worked there until last year, when it was sold to the current Indonesian operator. That age and the vehicle load are already part of the questions that will follow the rescue. Indonesia's inter-island fleet has a long record of overloading and of weather departures that later prove costly. Officials have not yet issued a formal finding on cargo distribution or on whether the ship should have sailed.

How the first survivors came off

Passing commercial boats did the first work. Basarnas mission coordinator I Putu Sudayana said tug TB Mauhaw IX took 16 people, 15 alive and one dead. Tug TB TCP took a larger group that included five fatalities in one briefing and a different split in another. Cargo ship MV Haida took 49 people in one account and 69 in another, all reported alive. Fishing boats Cahaya Bahari and Sri Asih also transferred survivors. Some of the dead and injured were directed to Tuban. The rest were landed at Trisakti.

By Sunday afternoon the search group included navy ships, maritime police, a helicopter and later additional aircraft. Sudayana said 15 sea and air units were in the Masalembo box: 11 ships, one helicopter and three aircraft. All vessels in that part of the Java Sea were told to watch for people in the water or on wreckage.

The numbers will keep moving. Early agency statements spoke of 97 rescued and 140 missing. Reuters, working from a later Basarnas update, reported 108 rescued and 129 missing. Tempo, quoting Prakoso at 15:30 local time, reported about 113 people evacuated, of whom 98 survived and six had died. Those discrepancies are normal in the first day of a ferry sinking. They are also a warning against treating any single afternoon total as final.

What happens next

The immediate task is still the search. Night on the Java Sea in September is short, but the water is not calm, and the overturned hull is a moving mark rather than a fixed camp. Once the missing list stabilises, the transport ministry and the National Transportation Safety Committee will have to account for the listing, the absent alarm, the vehicle load and the decision to sail.

For families at Trisakti the clock is simpler. They want names. They want to know whether the next boat coming in is carrying the living or the dead. Until that list is closed, Virgo Transport 8 is not yet a completed accident report. It is a search that is still short by more than 100 people.