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1987: How Not to do it 101: The MV Doña Paz was a Philippine-registered passenger ferry, 1/4 the size of HMS Titanic, that sank after colliding with the oil tanker MT Vector on December 20, 1987. It reportedly took eight hours before Philippine maritime authorities learned of the accident, and another eight hours to organize search-and-rescue operations! The Doña Paz sank within two hours of the collision, while the Vector sank in four hours. The sea is about 545 meters deep in the collision site. With an estimated death toll of 4,386 people and only 24 survivors, it was the deadliest peacetime maritime disaster in history. The official passenger manifest of the Doña Paz recorded 1,493 passengers and 59 crew members aboard. According to Sulpicio Lines, the ferry was able to carry 1,424 passengers. A revised manifest released on December 23, 1987, showed 1,583 passengers and 58 crew members on the Doña Paz, with 675 persons boarding the ferry in Tacloban City, and 908 coming on board in Catbalogan City. However, an anonymous official of told UPI that, since it was the Christmas season, tickets were usually purchased illegally aboard the ship at a cheaper rate, and those passengers were not listed on the manifest. The same official added that holders of complimentary tickets and non-paying children below the age of four were likewise not listed on the manifest.(SOP I 'spect)

Many victims were probably incinerated when the vessels exploded and will never be accounted for. Rescuers found only 108 bodies, many of them charred and mutilated beyond recognition. More bodies were later washed ashore to nearby islands where the local people buried them after religious rituals.
All officers on board the Doña Paz were killed in the disaster, and the two from the Vector who survived had both been asleep at the time. It was later found that, at the time of the collision, both ships had been moving slowly: the Doña Paz at 26 km per hour, and Vector at 8 km per hour. They were surrounded by 37 square km of wide open sea – plenty of time and space to avoid crashing into each other!
Experts also wondered why the two ships had not communicated with each other before the crash. It is internationally required that all ships carry VHF radio. The Vector was found to have an expired radio license. The radio license for the Doña Paz was a fake.

In January 1999 a presidential task force report estimated, on the basis of court records and more than 4,100 settlement claims, that there were 4,341 passengers. Subtracting the 24 surviving passengers, and adding 58 crew gives 4,375 on-board fatalities. Adding the 11 dead from the Vector crew, the total becomes 4,386. According to the initial investigation conducted by the Philippine Coast Guard, only one apprentice member of the crew of the Doña Paz was monitoring the bridge when the accident occurred. Other officers were either drinking beer or watching television in the crew's recreation quarters, while the ship's captain was watching a movie on his Betamax in his cabin. Nonetheless, subsequent inquiries revealed that the Vector was operating without a license, lookout or properly qualified master. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/227340138_The_Sinking_of_the_MV_Dona_Paz_-_I_An_analysis_of_the_event