Episode 49: The sinking of the MV Le Joola

Disaster Area

Truecrime, Explosions, Aviationaccidents, Floods, Fires, Earthquakes, History, Shipwrecks, Volcanoes, Disaster, Hurricanes, Planecrashes, Disasters, Tornadoes, Massshootings, Society & Culture

4.2 • 839 Ratings

🗓️ 28 September 2017

⏱️ 63 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Fifteen years ago this week, one of the deadliest shipwrecks ever happened just off the coast of western Africa. The MV Le Joola was an integral part of life in Senegal. The ferry regularly traveled along the coastline between the capital of Dakar and the city of Ziguinchor in the southern Casamance region, an area nearly cut off from the rest of Senegal by an ongoing civil war, a lack of riches, and the obstruction that was the long thin strip of the Gambia. When it sank, it took over eighteen hundred people down with it.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, everybody. This is Jennifer Matarise. And before I get started today, a little housekeeping.
0:06.2	If you'd like to help support the podcast, you can do so with a one-time donation through PayPal at
0:11.4	Disasterarea at Mail.com or on a per-episode basis through Patreon at patreon.com slash disaster area podcast. This is a great week to do it too, because my
0:24.6	birthday is on Friday. Woo-hoo! And I'm also going to be doing the 50th episode of the podcast this week,
0:31.8	hopefully before Saturday. You can also follow the podcast on Facebook at Disaster Area Podcast and on Twitter and Instagram at Disaster Area Pod.
0:42.7	And please think about rating and reviewing the podcast on iTunes.
0:46.3	I know it can be a little difficult to find the place to rate and review, but it really helps out.
0:51.9	And as always, the sources for each new episode can be found at
0:56.3	Disasterareapodcast.wordpress.com. Also, I'd just like to preemptively apologize for any
1:03.8	names I might mispronounce in this episode. I looked up as many as I thought I needed to,
1:09.7	but it's certainly possible I may have missed
1:11.7	one or two.
1:12.9	With that in mind, thank you very much for listening, and welcome to disaster area.
1:24.6	Episode 49, the sinking of the M.V. Lejula. September 26, 2002. 1,863 deceased, 64 injured.
1:38.7	So let's say I ask you to name the worst shipwreck that comes to mind. Most of you will probably say the sinking
1:46.0	of the Titanic right off the top of your head. At 1140 p.m. on April 14th, 1912, the Titanic struck an
1:53.4	iceberg in the North Atlantic and would go down a few hours later at 2.20 a.m., killing approximately
1:58.7	1,500 people. Just to give you some idea of how ingrained a lot of
2:04.8	that information about the sinking is to a lot of us, I didn't have to look any of that up.
2:10.1	Although, to be fair, this is me we're talking about. But there have been more deadly sinkings,
2:15.3	one of which happened 15 years ago this week and took the lives of over 1,800 people, the sinking of the M.V. Lejula.
2:23.6	Now, to understand the sinking of the Lejula, you have to understand the country of Senegal, both its history and its geography.
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