Some of the deadliest and most famous peacetime passenger vessel disasters of the past century:
:: January 13, 2012: The luxury cruise ship Costa Concordia runs aground off the Italian coast, at least three people dead, 4,000 evacuated.
:: July 10, 2011: An overloaded cruise vessel sinks in Russia's Volga River near Kazan, killing 122 people.
:: June 21, 2008: The Princess of the Stars ferry tilts and capsizes off the coast of the Philippines during a powerful typhoon. More than 800 die.
:: February 3, 2006: After a fire breaks out during a Red Sea ferry voyage from Saudi Arabia to the Egyptian port of Safaga, more than 1,000 people drown.
:: September 26, 2002: Senegalese ferry capsizes in a storm off Gambia, killing more than 1,800 people.
:: May 21, 1996: A ferry sinks in Lake Victoria in east Africa, killing more than 800 people.
:: September 28, 1994: The ferry Estonia sinks during a storm in the Baltic Sea, killing 852 people.
:: February 16, 1993: Overcrowded ferry sinks between Jeremie and Port-au-Prince, Haiti, estimated 500-700 dead.
:: April 7, 1990: Fires set by an arsonist break out on the Scandinavian Star ferry in the North Sea en route from Oslo to Fredrikshavn, Denmark, killing 159 people.
:: December 20, 1987: In the world's worst peacetime shipping disaster, 4,340 drown when the ferry Dona Paz collides with the tanker MT Victor in the Philippines.
:: August 31, 1986: Soviet passenger ship Admiral Nakhimov collides with a merchant vessel in the Black Sea, sinking both ships and killing up to 448 people.
:: May 25, 1986: Some 600 people die when a ferry goes down in the River Meghna in Bangladesh.
:: January 27, 1981: 580 killed when Indonesian passenger ship Tamponas II catches fire and sinks in Java sea.
:: July 25, 1956: Two passenger liners, the Andrea Doria and the Stockholm, collide off Massachusetts, sinking the Andrea Doria and killing 46 of its 1,706 passengers and crew.
:: May 29, 1914: A Canadian Pacific steamship, the Empress of Ireland, collides with a Norwegian freighter near Quebec, sinking in 14 minutes and killing 1,012 people.
:: April 12, 1912: The Titanic the world's largest passenger steamship at the time, strikes an iceberg in the Atlantic and sinks on its maiden voyage, killing at least 1,496 people.