MS Prinsendam, was a Holland America Line cruise ship built at Shipyard de Merwede in the Netherlands in 1973. She was 427 feet (130 m) long and typically carried about 350 passengers and 200 crew members.
Sinking
Prinsendam departed Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, on 30 September 1980 for a long cruise that would take her along the Inside Passage of British Columbia and Southeast Alaska and then to East Asia and Southeast Asia. After calling at Ketchikan, Alaska, on 2 October and visiting Glacier Bay on 3 October, she set out into the Gulf of Alaska on the evening of 3 October bound for Japan. She was approximately 120 nmi south of Yakutat, Alaska, at 12:40 a.m. on 4 October 1980 when a fire broke out in her engine room.[1] Her master, Cornelis Dirk Wabeke (13 April 1928 – 16 August 2011), declared the fire out of control one hour later and Prinsendam sent a radio call requesting immediate assistance. The United States Coast Guard at Communications Station Kodiak in Kodiak, Alaska, requested that Prinsendam send out an SOS to alert other vessels in the area, but Wabeke declined.