SS Steja djal Scipia (1932)

SS Steja djal Scipia

SS Steja djal Scipia underway, 1933
History
Tyreseia
Name:	SS Steja djal Scipia
Namesake:	Star of Scipia
Owner:	League of Neptune
Operator:	Tyreso-Periclean Line
Port of registry:	New Tyria
Route:	New Tyria – Pelias – Leonople
Builder:	Michu Perra Shipyards, Oyat, Tyreseia
Cost:	Ⲇ3.5 million
Yard number:	112
Launched:	February 1932
Completed:	1 July 1932
Maiden voyage:	12 July 1932
Out of service:	17 August 1938
Fate:	Caught fire and beached 17 August 1938, later scrapped in situ.
General characteristics
Type:	Ocean liner
Tonnage:	11,520 GRT
Length:	480 ft (146 m)
Beam:	71 ft (21.6 m)
Depth:	18.4 ft (5.6 m)
Installed power:	14,000 ihp (10,000 kW)
Propulsion:	Twin screw turbo-electric steam
Speed:	20 knots (37 km/h; 23 mph) service speed
Capacity:	520 passengers (listed)
Crew:	230

The SS Steja djal Scipia was a Tyreseian ocean liner that caught fire and ran aground in the late evening hours of August 17th, 1938, en route from Leonople, Perateia to New Tyria, Tyreseia via Pelias, Vardana. Of the 941 passengers and crew aboard, 472 perished, making the fire the worst maritime disaster in Tyreseian history up to that point.

Despite being manufactured as a tourism-based passenger vessel, the Steja djal Scipia was almost immediately pressed into service as an emigrant liner as a result of civil conflict and ethnic tension along her route. The vessel gained a reputation for dedication to reliably transporting ethnic Perateians and other refugees away from Vardana to safety in Perateia or Tyreseia. Along with this reputation came a series of dubiously-safe modifications to increase passenger capacity. Such modifications likely greatly endangered the ship, turning her into a floating matchbox. While on a routine voyage back to New Tyria, the Steja djal Scipia caught alight off the city of Oñulba on the night of August 17, 1938, with the loss of over half of her passengers and crew thanks to mass confusion, poor modifications, years of neglect and faults in her original design.

What started the fire was never determined by authorities; as such, theories abound. Causes from Invictist sabotage to faulty construction and even freak weather conditions have been blamed. Regardless, the disaster was instrumental in forcing Tyreseian maritime safety standards to change in coming years. The high death toll, in spite of the ship's proximity to shore, was blamed on faulty design and crew incompetence. In the wake of the fire, the Tyreso-Periclean Line was investigated by the Tyreseian government and the League of Neptune was forced to reconstruct it under a new name, Tanit Line.

Construction

During the early 20th century, advances in ocean liner technology meant that maritime travel was rapidly becoming quicker and more luxurious than ever before, while commercial air travel was still in its infancy. As such, many nations would invest great sums into their ocean liners, hoping to use their own ships as globetrotting displays of national pride, high culture and prestige. Tyreseia, with its maritime history, was no different. By the 1930s, the nation's overarching maritime trade union body, the League of Neptune, supervised numerous subordinate groups known as Lines operating across the globe. One of the oldest and largest of these was the Tyreso-Periclean Line, which operated most of the League's passenger and freight transport duties in its namesake Periclean Sea. In 1928, the Line employees voted to commission the construction of three new steamships to cover new routes: the Holy Land Route, which would stop in Dervaylik, Yisrael, Ramitha, Sydalon, and Utica, Latium; the Hellenic Route, which would stop in Karpathos, Lihnidos and Alexandropolis, Mesogeia; and the Scipian Coast route, which stopped in Pelias, Vardana and Leonople, Perateia. This latter route would become the mainstay of the Steja djal Scipia.

Construction began at the Michu Perra Shipyards in Oyat on October 28th, 1929 alongside her sister ships, Steja djal Elaza and Steja djal Terra Samfigada. As was standard with Tyreseian liners, each ship was built to a standard of luxury but without a class hierarchy. Conditions for every passenger were between first class and tourist class by international standards. Such a design gave an added benefit of allowing more passenger space on-board than a design incorporating a first class would have. The vessels were also designed with an almost-superannuated layout. The interiors were open, interconnected and airy, and lined with lemon-oil-polished-wood, designed to create a communal, home-like atmosphere for passengers and crew alike. To accentuate their vintage appearance, the vessels were designed with counter sterns, a style falling out of favor with contemporary vessels. Their holds were primarily designed for passengers' luggage and mail, though the ships were capable of carrying other goods. Each of the three ships measured in at 11,520 gross register tons, and was propelled by turbo-electric generators powering twin propeller shafts. Steja djal Scipia was completed ahead of schedule on July 1st, 1932, followed by Elaza on the 23rd and Terra Samfigada on August 4th. Captaining the Steja djal Scipia would be Marju Chivjadoru, a relatively experienced and reportedly-competent officer elected from the ranks of his future crew. Chivjadoru had served on several other Tyreso-Periclean Lines vessels through his career, and had once been commended for good conduct.

Career

From the time of her conception, the Steja djal Scipia was intended to reconnect the ports of Vardana to the Periclean passenger travel network. Maritime trade at Vardani ports like Pelias had all but ended following the Mysian War of Independence (1923-1927) and the concurrent Vardani Civil War (1924-1927). The Tyreso-Periclean Line had misjudged how stable the region was following the end of interstate hostilities; by the time of the steamship's maiden voyage, ethnic conflict, civil strife and genocide were still widespread across northern Vardana. By the time the Steja djal Scipia arrived in Pelias for the first time in July 1932, therefore, she delivered few passengers but onboarded many refugees, mostly ethnic Perateians fleeing certain extermination. The number of tourists aboard were also much lower than projected; those that did brave the journey from New Tyria were almost exclusively had Leonople as a final destination. Almost immediately after the end of her maiden voyage, the Tyreso-Periclean Line made a sudden pivot in the service niche of the Steja djal Scipia. Though she was designed as a passenger liner, she was very quickly pressed into service as a refugee transport ship. Ticket prices and amenities were both lowered, while cabins had bunk beds and extra cots installed into increase the number of passengers allowed aboard. On some more crowded voyages, public spaces like the smoking parlor and the writing room were even fashioned into makeshift sleeping quarters. Meals would often be served on the rear topdeck rather than in the dining room for lack of enough chairs or dining space. Some passengers would be given discounted tickets or free admission in exchange for the offer of performing domestic work on the ship during the voyage. These alterations were done without concurrent upgrades to the ship's evacuation, firefighting, medical, and various other health and safety systems in order to save on costs. Most of the capacity upgrades had gone undeclared to the Tyreseian government; as such, most of the upgrades were anywhere from ill-fitting and haphazard to dangerous.

Despite these changes, many passengers remember feeling both comforted and relieved during their stay aboard the vessel. Despite the crowded atmosphere, a genial atmosphere prevailed on the ship, and passengers often remarked in letters and memoirs how courteous and professional the crew and captain seemed. Many were impressed further by the lack of professional distance; many crew members would invite passengers to dine with them in the galley during meals, and would act as emotional supports for grief-stricken refugees. At times, due to violence and instability in the region, the port of Pelias would be rendered unusable for the Steja djal Scipia. During these times, the wireless operators would often go to great lengths to communicate a change in port-of-call to potential passengers on shore via wireless radio broadcasts and advanced notices in Pelias' public places. During her career, the Steja djal Scipia was forced to divert to the port of Norashen for nearly a third of her voyages via Vardana.

As the Steja djal Scipia was sailing well over capacity during most voyages, her systems were often placed under immense strain. Repairs to plumbing junctures and electrical circuits were frequent, leading to the Tyreseian People's Commissariat of Oceans and Maritime Trade to open a brief investigation in June 1935 into her frequent visits to repair facilities in her home port of Oyat. Owing to the institutional closeness between the shipbuilders' union and the League of Neptune, however, the investigation quickly went cold. Regardless, the crew would thereafter solely visit dockyards in Leonople for repair services. Non-unionized Perateian workers would perform rushed repair jobs on an unfamiliar ship design. Such a scenario often led to repairs that caused more problems than they solved. As a result, in her final years of her short service life, the Steja djal Scipia was consistently deteriorating much faster than expected.

Fire

Steja djal Scipia on fire

On the evening of August 17, 1938, the Steja djal Scipia was sailing off the coast of the eastern Tyreseian city of Oñulba on her scheduled return voyage from Leonople via Pelias. At this time, survivors recount the crew preparing to begin cooking the first round of dinner in the galley while the bridge crew were preparing for final entry into New Tyria that night, with passengers enjoying afternoon promenades or smoke breaks. The vessel carried 941 souls on that voyage, well above the 750-person capacity for which she was officially rated but well below what she had carried at the peak of her refugee transit career. At 4:50 p.m., Steward Izagu Corvu was alerted by a passenger to smoke and heat emanating from a piano locker near the forward writing room. Corvu located the fire, then proceeded to alert his superior, Second Officer Tuca Gadunu. Gadunu elected to fight the fire immediately, rather than summoning help or spending valuable time sounding the general alarm. When the door to the closet was finally opened, the fire appeared to leap out with much greater intensity than expected. The fire hoses, part of a system that had been neglected for years, failed to perform to expectations. As a result, the fire spilled out of the closet onto the wooden handrails and deck, spreading rapidly outwards. Within 30 minutes, the entire vessel was engulfed in flame.

As the wheelhouse of the Steja djal Scipia was above the writing room, it was quickly filled with smoke, alerting the captain to the issue at hand. By the time the smoke reached the wheelhouse, however, the fire had reached the boat deck. Accelerated by the open floorplan and polished-wood exteriors, the flames moved rapidly throughout the ship. Captain Chivjadoru ordered at 5:15 pm that the ship be abandoned and that an SOS signal be sent out via wireless. Only two signals could be dispatched before fire engulfed the main electrical wires and the wireless room shortly after, trapping the operators inside. By this point, most lifeboats on the port side were inaccessible due to flames. Groups of passengers belowdecks were stranded, and those topside faced extreme difficulty in reaching even the accessible lifeboats. As most of the crew had ended up either trapped at the forecastle or in the galley, it took until what remained of the engine room crew reached the topside at 5:27 p.m. for there to be enough crew members to effectively launch the lifeboats. By this stage, passengers had begun throwing themselves into the water; several reportedly drowned due to a lack of life-preserving equipment, though the equipment that remained was later found to be neglected and filled with rotting cork. The loss of power meant that belowdecks was without light and filling with toxic smoke. Many were likely trapped and died of smoke inhalation before the flames even reached their parts of the ship.

At 5:12 p.m. the nearby freighter SS Comedi and the coastal patrol vessel TNS Gajexa had departed the vicinity of nearby Oñulba harbor to begin rescue efforts. After the ship was spotted, more vessels from shore were roped into the rescue effort, including the ore carrier SS Frodadori and a Tyreseian Workers' Naval Air Service floatplane. The latter proved extremely helpful in locating drifting survivors near the burnt Steja djal Scipia. By 6:11 p.m., all survivors had left the ship and were being picked up from the water. Dead bodies were reported as washing up on shore across the Oñulba shoreline throughout the night and well into the next morning, with some corpses reportedly washing ashore as far afield as Leptis in the coming days.

After power had been lost aboard the ship, witnesses ashore reported seeing the stricken liner slow down dramatically in the water. One of the final acts of the crew on the vessel was to order the engines to stop. The fire had destroyed the hydraulic connections from the wheelhouse to the rudder, making the ship impossible to control effectively. As such, the Steja djal Scipia drifted powerlessly in the current for hours, finally coming to rest in western Oñulba at 8:04 a.m. on August 18th. Almost immediately, curious onlookers began swarming the area of the wreck, with many wading through the low tide to touch the hull of the stricken hulk. By the late afternoon, the local constabulary had closed off the area to allow newly-arrived agents of the People's Commissariat of Oceans and Maritime Trade to begin investigating the wreck. After around a year of investigation followed by several months of salvage disputes, the Tyreso-Periclean Line declared the Steja djal Scipia a total loss, and she was scrapped on site, having deteriorated in the surf and no longer being seaworthy. Her anchors and bell, the latter warped from the heat, were kept as historical relics. One anchor resides on a beachside promenade in Oñulba, while the other sits near the vessel's old pier in Pelias, Vardana. The bell was donated to a local maritime museum shortly after acquisition from the wreck, where it remains to this day.

Aftermath and investigation

The hulk of the ship, resting near Oñulba, 1938

Immediately after news of the disaster broke, the People's Commissariat for the Oceans and Maritime Trade opened an inquest into the nature of the crash. Given the severity of the tragedy, the inquiry focused both on the causes of the fire's rapid spread and the competence and actions of the crew that might have led to such a high death toll. The investigation uncovered numerous factors that exacerbated fire hazards aboard the Steja djal Scipia. The initial layout of oil-polished wood paneling combined with an open floorplan gave any potential fire easy access to both fuel and wind to spread itself. The makeshift modifications to increase passenger capacity were often done without skilled dockworkers or proper ex post facto inspection, meaning that almost all of them in were in some way violating fire regulations. So as not to attract attention from the authorities, the increase in passenger capacity was performed without a matching increase in crew hires, leaving departments like passenger safety and comfort staff stretched thin and with divided attention.

The crew had also engaged in acts of severe negligence in both the days leading up to the disaster and the disaster itself. The crew's frequent and busy sailing schedule left little time for the frequently-needed repairs, which left no room for proper maintenance of the fire suppression systems. It was also a collective policy to perform fire drills as infrequently as possible to save on valuable sailing time. Firefighting equipment was often not properly maintained, and some crew were not even familiar with how they operated. During the fire, crew by and large failed to adopt proper fire stations; any action taken to save lives or prevent the spread of fire was done on an individual or small-group basis, rather than under an organized group effort. Numerous crew members made efforts to launch lifeboats and rescue stuck passengers, but these crew were more often than not working well after the fire began, and as such were limited in the amount of rescue work they could do on their own. Despite numerous individual acts of heroism, the general state of the Steja djal Scipia and the culture of work aboard was damning enough for the Commissariat inspectors.

The Commissariat's findings were ultimately brought before the Federal District Committee of the East in Leptis. In August 12th, 1941, almost three years to the day after the initial disaster, the Committee ordered the Tyreso-Periclean Line to pay damages to the families of the victims aboard the ship. Given the fact that many aboard were refugees with little documentation, such payments were often limited to the few surviving passengers directly, or the families of deceased tourist passengers. Several high-ranking members of the crew were sentenced to long prison terms for gross negligence, manslaughter, employing illegal non-union labor, and other crimes; others received shorter stays or were sentenced to community labor. In the eyes of the Committee, the crew's dedication to carrying refugees was motivated by a desire for quick cash at the expense of vulnerable populations rather than an altruistic desire to rescue victims of ethnic cleansing. The Line itself was forcibly reorganized by the Oceans Commissariat into the Tanit Line, with the League of Neptune parent organization providing extensive crew-retraining and refitting of remaining vessels.

Maritime regulations were enhanced dramatically by the Supreme Workers' Assembly following the Steja djal Scipia fire. Many safety regulations at sea had been left to the League of Neptune or its subsidiary lines to self-enforce, with the Oceans Commissariat left with little it could do beyond inspections following ship launches and nearly-toothless inquiries. In the wake of the fire, the Assembly voted in a series of laws that both created new, government-enforced regulations and gave both the League and the Commissariat powers to enforce them. The Commissariat was given substantially more power to investigate issues aboard vessels and at maritime facilities, while the League was given the power to lend expertise and personnel to the Commissariat and its power to perform internal investigations were strengthened. In addition, fire safety measures were written up and updated at breakneck pace following the Steja djal Scipia fire. The allowed uses of flammable materials were dramatically lowered, while wiring guides were altered and requirements for fire drills and safety training were changed to annual requirements.

Legacy

Despite the thorough nature of the Oceans Commissariat's report, an official direct cause of the Steja djal Scipia fire was never established. For this reason, theories abound even today as to the true cause of the fire. At the time, two main sets of theories emerged: a structural failure of some kind, or arson. Supporting the first were the numerous deficiencies present on the ship both from her initial construction and from her extensive modifications. Funnel uptakes, channeling high-temperature exhaust from furnaces to the outside, were known on some ships of the era to easily overheat if not maintained properly. The Steja djal Scipia had her uptakes clad in flammable insulation materials as they ran past the passenger quarters; the most commonly-accepted theory states that this uptake sparked a fire which began behind cabin walls and first made an appearance at the piano locker. This theory also helps explain the rapid spread of the fire by suggesting that the blaze had already begun in earnest across some of the ship by the time it was noticed, rather than being confined to the locker. Another theory suggests that the ship's electric wiring was damaged or rendered unsafe during modifications, and that a simple electrical short was the ultimate cause.

Though the structural defect theories hold the most expert support, the various theories of human origin and arson often capture the public imagination. In the time just after the disaster, many Tyreseians pointed blame at a potential Invictist terror attack. The radical statist ideology had been the motivation for numerous acts of violence during the late 1930s. The most spectacular of these attacks was the League of Neptune Credit Union siege, which occurred mere months after the Steja djal Scipia disaster and targeted the parent organization of the ship's operators. No evidence, however, has been conclusively found to support this line of speculation. Other variations on the arson theory suggest either an attempt at insurance fraud or a failed cover-up as a pre-emptive act against an impending government investigation. Both theories, though perennially suggested by works of media examining the disaster, still lack concrete evidence to support many of their claims and thus remain nearly unprovable.

The sheer loss of life, within sight of Tyreseia's shore and with no clear cause, has kept the disaster aboard the Steja djal Scipia alive in Tyreseian public consciousness. In 1978, singer-songwriter XEX published the song Steja, which recounted the disaster through the eyes of a fictional observer on the shore. XEX used the disaster as a metaphor for the helplessness he had felt at watching his brother pass away as a result of complications due to alcoholism. The song reached #4 on the year's top pop charts in Tyreseia, and gained moderate recognition in the region. The disaster's looming presence over Tyreseia's maritime-centric culture featured heavily in movies and other media of the period, with dozens of either direct or indirect references made in the decade following the blaze. These references ranged from subtle nods to exploitative depictions of the disaster, with one film (1945's Seaborne) utilizing a wooden scale mockup in a swimming pool to depict the blaze as it had happened. Such depictions drew considerable criticism from survivors, victims' families and offended viewers, but the popularity of making topical references meant the Steja djal Scipia continued to appear frequently in screen and print media until Tyreseia's participation in the Social War overtook the national zeitgeist in the late 1940s.