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A passenger ferry in the Baltic Sea with nearly 300 people on board ran aground on Sunday in the Aland Islands archipelago between Finland and Sweden with no injuries reported. Rescuers brought the boat’s passengers to shore, Finnish authorities reported.
The Finnish coast guard tweeted that the M / S Amorella vessel, operated by the Viking Line ferry company between the western Finnish city of Turku and the Swedish capital Stockholm, hit land south of Langnas port in the Aland Islands.
“No human casualties were reported,” Viking Line reported in a statement, adding that the vessel’s situation was “stable.” The ferry had about 200 passengers and 80 crew on board, he added.
The coast guard received an alert for the incident shortly before 1 p.m. local time, and rescue boats brought the people on board ashore. Authorities are investigating why the ferry ran aground.
Viking Line CEO Jan Hanses told Finnish public broadcaster YLE that the accident may have been caused by technical failure or human error.
“There was a fault with the ship’s steering,” Hanses told YLE, adding that water had leaked into one of the ship’s sections, but he did not specify how severe the leak was.
The coast guard said it had not observed any oil spill in the area as a result of the grounding.
The number of passengers on board the vessel, which can accommodate up to 2,500 people, was unusually low due to the travel restrictions imposed by the coronavirus in the Nordic region, which have severely affected the Baltic Sea ferry companies.
The Aland Islands, an autonomous Finnish territory, are halfway between the two port cities and the M / S Amorella was scheduled to make a stopover there on its way to Stockholm.
The archipelago is made up of thousands of named and unnamed islands, and its shallow waters and narrow passages are particularly difficult for large vessels to navigate.
The Finnish press reported that the M / S Amorella ran aground at the same location in 2013.
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