Thousands of passengers were left stranded at sea on Monday after MSC World Europa, one of the world’s largest cruise ships, lost propulsion while sailing off the Italian coast.
The massive vessel, weighing 215,863 gross tons and stretching 1,094 feet (333 meters), was carrying 6,496 passengers and 2,089 crew members, 8,585 people in total, when it suffered an electrical failure that cut propulsion.
The incident happened at around 7:25 a.m. local time, about eight nautical miles southwest of the island of Ponza, as the ship was traveling from Genoa to Naples on a Western Mediterranean cruise.
Passengers reported the ship coming to a sudden stop at around 5:30 a.m., before the situation was officially reported to the Italian Coast Guard at 7:30 a.m. In response, the Guardia Costiera dispatched two patrol boats and an AW139 helicopter to assess the scene. Two tugboats, one from Gioia Tauro in southern Italy and another from
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