Ferry Virgo Transport 8 Sinks in the Java Sea With 243 People on Board
Six dead and 130 missing after the 1987-built ro-ro lost contact while listing in heavy seas
The Indonesian-flagged ro-ro ferry Virgo Transport 8 sank in the Java Sea on 13 September while running from Surabaya to Banjarmasin with 243 people and 89 vehicles on board. Six people have died, 107 have been rescued and 130 remain missing.
The ship left Surabaya at 10:13 on 12 September on the return leg of a scheduled service, due at Trisakti Port in Banjarmasin at 07:00 the following morning. Around midnight the master reported rough weather and high waves to the ship's agent. The last transmission came at about 02:00 on 13 September, when he reported that the vessel was listing. Contact was then lost.
The missing-vessel report reached the Banjarmasin search and rescue office at 04:10, filed by Yoel Rihi, general manager of the operator PT Virgo. A team left the Basirih pier at 05:30 aboard KN SAR Laksmana 241 for the ship's last estimated position, roughly 80 nautical miles out, a passage put at five hours. A helicopter was deployed from Juanda naval air base to search from the air.
Most of those taken from the water were picked up by ships that were already close to the reported position. The tug TB TCP rescued 38 people, the cargo ship MV Haida 49 and the tug TB Mauhau 9 fifteen, the last of these also recovering one person who had died.
Conditions have worked against the search, with waves of up to 2.5 metres reported in the area.
The ferry was built in 1987 at the Shin Kurushima Onishi yard in Japan as Ferry Kurushima. She is 119 metres long with a gross tonnage of 4,277, and was bought by PT Virgo Karya Shipping in 2025.
It is the second heavy loss of life on a Southeast Asian domestic passenger service in a week. The death toll from a ferry fire on a Philippine inter-island run climbed to 76 over the same days, with the Philippine Coast Guard recovering most of the bodies from the sleeping area and preliminary interviews with survivors pointing to a fire that started in the cargo hold.
This story is part of the Maritime Briefing of 15 September 2026.
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