MV Vipya

MV Vipya, also spelled Viphya, was a motor passenger-cargo vessel that served on Lake Malawi, then Lake Nyasa in the British protectorate of Nyasaland, from 1944 to 1946. Ordered by the Nyasaland Railways Company in 1942, she was built in Scotland by A. and J. Inglis of Glasgow, shipped in sections to Beira in Mozambique and carried by rail for reassembly on the lake, where an extra top deck was added. She was about 43 metres long, built for 315 passengers and 100 tons of cargo, and could reach 12 knots. She was launched on 14 June 1944. On 30 July 1946, on her fourth voyage, she capsized in a storm near Chitimba with 194 people aboard; about 145 drowned. It remains the worst shipwreck in Malawi history, and the inquiry findings were later annulled on appeal.