Glossary

The April 2015 Shipwrecks

@ FORENSIC OCEANOGRAPHY - DEATH BY RESCUE

In the week of 12–18 April 2015, more than 1,200 people died in two successive shipwrecks in the central Mediterranean. Forensic Oceanography, in their report Death by Rescue, calls it "April's Black Week" and documents it as the direct consequence of a political decision.

On 13 April, a vessel carrying migrants and refugees from Libya capsized, leaving an estimated 400 people dead. Just six days later, on the night of 18–19 April, an overloaded fishing boat carrying up to 1,000 people sank north of Libya after colliding with a merchant ship responding to its distress call. Only 28 people survived, making it the deadliest known shipwreck in the history of Mediterranean migration. The shipwrecks became emblematic of the lethal consequences of policies that restrict safe and legal routes to protection, forcing people onto increasingly dangerous journeys across the sea.

The disasters occurred only months after Italy's large-scale search-and-rescue operation Mare Nostrum had been replaced by the more limited Frontex operation Triton. For many civil society actors, the April 2015 shipwrecks demonstrated the urgent need for proactive search-and-rescue operations in the Central Mediterranean. In the months that followed, a number of civilian rescue initiatives were founded, including the project that would later operate the Iuventa.

Barca Nostra

The wreck of the 18 April vessel was recovered from the seabed by the Italian Navy in 2016 and brought to a NATO base in Sicily, where forensic investigators worked to identify the victims. Several proposals for a permanent memorial came to nothing. In 2019, Swiss-Icelandic artist Christoph Büchel transported the rusting hull to the Venice Biennale — displayed without explanatory text, which Büchel insisted on removing. For some, a powerful monument; for others, a spectacularisation of mass death in the context of an art fair. The debate about who has the right to speak for the dead became part of the work itself. The boat eventually returned to Augusta, Sicily, where it is intended to serve as a permanent memorial.

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Glossary