The 'Hand' monument in Chania - 25th February 2007
The 'Hand' monument in Chania
The "Hand" monument at the bottom of Theotokopoulou Street
in Chania commemorates the ferry disaster of 1966 when the
ferryboat 'Heraklion', an 8900-ton auto and passenger ferry
sunk in a storm midway during the crossing from Souda to Piraeus
in the night of the 7th to 8th of December.
Only
a few of the passengers and crew had life jackets. Others
clung to debris or quickly drowned in the cold December sea.
Intensive searches by many ships managed to
rescue 47 passengers but 234 (the exact number was never known)
drowned. They were mainly Cretans.