Sibuyan Sea has long been a dangerous maritime route

MANILA, Philippines – The Sibuyan Sea has been a dangerous maritime route, including being the site of one of the greatest naval battles, a former Romblon town mayor said yesterday.

Dindo Rios, former town mayor of San Fernando, Romblon, told The STAR during the Weekly Kapihan sa Sulo Hotel in Quezon City that the sinking of the ill-fated ferry M/V Princess of the Stars forms part of the cycle of both man-made and natural sea disasters that occur in the Sibuyan Sea.

“Sibuyan Sea has been the graveyard of thousands of lost victims of natural and man-made disasters,” Rios said.

Rios said that during the Battle of the Sibuyan Sea on Oct. 24, 1944 at the end of World War II, the second biggest Japanese battleship Musashi sank with its more than 1,000 crew to the bottom of the sea.

He added that guerrillas killed survivors who made it to the shores of Sibuyan Island.

Rios, a professional diver, said the battleship, after it sank, was carried by strong undersea current and plunged into the same location where the Princess of the Stars is now lying with its belly up.

Rios also shared that several kilometers from the Princess of the Stars are the wreckage of Spanish galleon Ciriaca, which sank while en route to Mexico in the early days of the galleon trade in the 16th century.

The sea tragedy reportedly left hundreds of people dead as well.

Rios said other ships of Sulpicio Lines, including the Doña Paz, which collided with an oil tanker, also sank near the vicinity of the deadly area.

To appease the restless souls of the victims whose bodies have not been retrieved, Rios proposed that offerings or Masses for the dead be held particularly in the areas near San Fernando where most bodies of the latest sea tragedy remain underwater.

Rios said the Sibuyan Sea is dangerous with an unpredictable and very strong underwater current.