It was a quiet Sunday morning in Venice along the Guiadecca Canal. Passengers on the second day of their cruise from Verona were having breakfast in the outdoor restaurant atop Uniworld's River Countess which docked at the San Basilio dock along the canal. About 8:30am (local time) MSC Opera rounded the bend and the River Countess passengers had a nice view of the large (65,591 gross tons) MSC heading up the canal to the Venice Cruise terminal.
That was until something went wrong aboard MSC Opera and it went out of control directly toward the smaller river boat. MSC says the captain applied all the established required procedures (including the long warning blast of the ship's whistle), but the cruise ship grazed the San Basilio dock and collided with River Countess.
The complete story appeared in the June 3 issue of Cruise News Daily.
