August 20, 1989
The Marchioness
A birthday party on the Thames, twenty to two in the morning
3,611
held · 61 days
51
died
0
named here
A pleasure boat carrying a twenty-sixth birthday party was run down from behind by a dredger near Cannon Street railway bridge. Neither vessel had a proper lookout.
The Marchioness was pushed under and rolled. She sank in under thirty seconds. Fifty-one of the hundred and thirty-one aboard were killed, most of them young people who had been below decks.
The hands of twenty-five of the dead were removed for identification without the families' knowledge, which was not discovered for eleven years and caused a second grief of its own.