List of Fires - Ship Fires

Ship Fires

This is an incomplete list, which may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by expanding it with reliably sourced entries.

• 1800—British warship Queen Charlotte — 673 deaths
• 1840—Steamship Lexington in Long Island Sound — 139 deaths
• 1865—SS Sultana on the Mississippi River, near Memphis, Tennessee — 1,547 deaths
• 1893—Freighter Cabo Machichaco in Santander, Spain — 500 deaths
• 1904—Steamship General Slocum in New York City — 1,021 deaths
• 1906—SS Hankow fire in Hong Kong — 130+ deaths (14 October)
• 1917—Munitions ship Mont-Blanc burned, drifted and detonated in the Halifax Explosion — roughly 2,000 deaths
• 1934—SS Morro Castle off Asbury Park, New Jersey — 137 deaths, ship gutted and beached
• 1941—Attack on Pearl Harbor, sinking USS Arizona (BB-39) and several other ships; extensive fires generated aboard and around ships
• 1941—SS Normandie in New York City, ship capsized and sank at pier
• 1947—Texas City Disaster— 2 ships' cargoes of ammonium nitrate caught fire and exploded, killing 581, more than 5000 injured.
• 1947—SS Xi'an in Hong Kong — 200 deaths
• 1949—SS Noronic in Toronto — 118 to 139 deaths
• 1963—Lakonia near Madeira burned — 128 deaths
• 1965—SS Yarmouth Castle near Nassau, Bahamas — 90 deaths
• 1965—Orient Trader in Toronto, Ontario, Canada— no deaths or injuries. Was towed from pier into harbour and was totally destroyed by fire. 1960 ORIENT TRADER, Orient Mid-East Great Lakes Services, Piraeus. 21st Jul.1965 Caught fire Toronto harbour, CTL. 1966 Scrapped Valencia.
• 1967—USS Forrestal in the Gulf of Tonkin — 134 deaths.
• 1972—RMS Queen Elizabeth in Hong Kong, ship sank in harbour
• 1987—Doña Paz in the Philippines — an estimated 4,000 deaths
• 1990—MS Scandinavian Star off Norway — 159 deaths
• 1994—Achille Lauro near Somalia
• 2006—Star Princess in the Caribbean — 1 death
• 2007—Cutty Sark, 19th-century clipper in dry dock as a museum ship in Greenwich, London extensively damaged while undergoing restoration on May 21
• 2011—MS Nordlys, Norwegian cruise ship, September 15, 2 deaths