There were "external causes" in the collision between the Moby Prince ferry and the Agip Abruzzo oil tanker off the port of Livorno on the evening of April 10, 1991, but the following day, "after a quarter of an hour of conversation between the port commander Albanese and the Minister of Merchant Marine, Calogero Vizzini, inside Albanese's office, behind closed doors, they came out and dictated the verdict: human error and obscurity, which is why we then continued with this dogma." Shipowner Vincenzo Onorato said this this morning in response to the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry into the Moby Prince disaster, which claimed the lives of 140 people (26 of whom were Sardinians).
Onorato claims that the incident was caused by "media misinformation," and maintains that "the entire trial was influenced and tainted by the fact that Vizzini and Albanese said 'fog and human error.' There was no way out. And we, Onorato, ended up in the dock with our company." Instead, Onorato continued, "I've been repeating the same things for 35 years: it was due to external causes, I said it immediately the morning after the accident. I was 31 years old, sailing on the Moby Prince. Of all the captains, the one on the Moby Prince, Ugo Chessa, with whom I sailed, and his crew," he recalled, "in my life I've never met anyone like Ugo Chessa because he was absolutely scrupulous and rigorous in his command."
The fact that the Moby Prince "left port and simply collided with the tanker at just 2.7 miles" was "technically impossible for someone like Chessa and his crew. There had to be an external cause. That was my explanation."
For Onorato , "whether there was fog or not was an irrelevant detail from a seafaring point of view for a man like Ugo Chessa, accustomed to sailing at full speed and at full power in the English Channel where there is constant fog."
"The fog was not the cause," Onorato stated, "nor could it incredibly have been human error, as Vizzini and Albanese claimed."
