[2] It is also considered one of the two worst environmental disasters in Italian history, along with the explosion and loss of the tanker Amoco Milford Haven on the following day in an unrelated accident near Voltri.

[3] MV Moby Prince, a ferry owned by Navigazione Arcipelago Maddalenino (NAVARMA) Lines collided with the oil tanker Agip Abruzzo, sparking an extensive fire that ravaged the ship.

She was built in 1967 by the English shipyard Cammell Laird of Birkenhead as Koningin Juliana for ferry operator Stoomvaart Maatschappij Zeeland of the Netherlands, and was used on the Harwich to Hook of Holland route until 1984.

[6] At 22:03 on 10 April 1991 the Moby Prince left Livorno, heading to Olbia for a regular service, with 75 passengers, manned by a complement of 66 crew.

While taking the usual dedicated route out of the harbor, the ferry's bow struck the Agip Abruzzo, which was standing at anchor, and sliced through its tank number 7.

The ship was left out of control and began circling away from the location of the collision, still engulfed in flames, as was the sea around her, making rescue even harder.

[11] The crew mustered the passengers in the De Luxe hall in the ship's prow, relying on a quick rescue by the port authorities, whose base was just minutes away.

Post mortem examination of the victims revealed that many of them died of carbon monoxide poisoning, having survived (albeit unconscious) for hours after the fire broke out.

However, no orders from Admiral Albanese were reported by any officer involved in the rescue operation and his voice is never heard in the recordings of the VHF channels that night.

Admiral Albanese was quickly exonerated during the trial, raising questions about whether he rushed to the site to cover secret military operations by other unidentified ships.

[citation needed] The first to find the Moby Prince wreck (at 23:35, over an hour after the collision) were two tugboat operators, Mauro Valli and Walter Mattei, who managed to recover the only survivor, Alessio Bertrand, a ship's boy hanging from the stern railing.

Bertrand was put on board the guard ship, which stayed for over half an hour looking for survivors, but then headed back to the port since he needed medical attention.

A Carabinieri helicopter left its base early in the morning to join the rescue operations and filmed a corpse lying on its back near the ship's stern.

While this is one of the officially recognised causes of the disaster, many doubts were advanced as to whether the phenomenon had really occurred, especially after an amateur video found in the De Luxe hall was shown on TG1.

[8] Guardia di Finanza captain Cesare Gentile, commanding a guard ship which joined the first rescue efforts at 22:35, testified that "at the time, the weather was excellent, the sea was calm and visibility was perfect".

[20][31][32] A rumor that the United States and NATO military headquarters had radar reports and satellite photographs of the disaster[33] received widespread attention, but was later denied by the respective commands.

The tanker commander in the early calls for help confirmed many times that the ship struck a small tugboat,[35] grossly mistaking the real nature of the event.

[38] Two bigger ships, probably the Cape Breton and Gallant II, both American, were riding at anchor near the Agip Abruzzo, as shown in a photograph taken from the Leghorn seafront the afternoon before the tragedy.

Based on this initial declaration, the collision can be explained with the Agip Abruzzo being anchored wrongfully in the legitimate path of the Moby Prince.

[46] Arms traffic in the Leghorn harbor was allegedly linked to the disaster, as an explanation of the covert ship movements and of bureaucratic hurdles encountered when seeking official documents from the military commands.

[50] The trial came to an end two years later, on the night of 31 October 1997, in a very tense atmosphere: in a courtroom full of police and carabinieri, jury president Germano Lamberti read out the verdict absolving all the accused.

[53] In addition to the main trial, two separate cases were examined in the district court: Moby Prince first mate Ciro Di Lauro confessed to tampering with the rudder in the engine room of the scorched hull in order to set inquirers on the wrong track; and Pasquale D'Orsi, maintenance technician for NAVARMA, was accused by Lauro.

New images of the disaster were found in the offices of the Leghorn public prosecutor, confirming the presence of satellite reconnaissance of the area on the night of the collision.

[58] On 16 November 2007 Fabio Piselli, a former army paratrooper, told the press of new information about the disaster that he had found while investigating the death of a relative working for the U.S. Embassy in Rome.

He met with attorney Carlo Palermo, but was later allegedly attacked by four people who kidnapped him, shut him in the trunk of a car and set it on fire; however, he managed to escape.