the Salem Express desaster

It was a stormy night on December 14, 1991, when the ferry hit the reef after about 35 hours of rough seas, only about 10 km from the destination port in Safaga. the Salem Express had already left Jeddah an hour late. Perhaps Captain Hassan Chalil Moro wanted to take a shortcut because of this, or because of the bad weather conditions, which must surely have affected his passengers as well. In any case, the ship left the normal route and took the more dangerous, direct course to Safaga, a route between reefs. However, the storm probably caused the ferry to drift off course unnoticed and hit the Sha’ab Jean-Francois reef. The captain was not on the bridge at the time of the accident.