Three small towns fell silent on January 31 as they pay respect to the 133 victims of the UK’s worst peacetime shipping disaster – dubbed the forgotten Titanic.
Unlike the 1912 sinking, which has spawned numerous books and movies, the loss of the MV Princess Victoria ferry in the Irish Sea on January 31, 1953, during the Great Storm has largely been lost to memory. That is outside of the communities of Larne and Donaghadee in Northern Ireland and Stranraer in South West Scotland where many of the dead, including all women and children on board, lived and worked.
However, the tale of the Princess Victoria, a new 'modern' roll-on, roll-off ferry making daily return crossings across the 21 mile stretch between Stranraer and Larne, has many eerie echoes of the Titanic tragedy.
