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About 130 missing after Java Sea ferry overturns
September 13, 2026
Indonesian rescuers are searching for about 130 passengers and crew after a ferry carrying more than 240 people overturned and sank in bad weather in the Java Sea on Sunday.
Indonesia is an archipelago of more than 17,000 islands where ferries are a common method of travel, and the route between Surabaya in East Java and Banjarmasin on Borneo Island is one of them.
Key facts
- According to the ship's paperwork, 243 people were aboard, made up of 213 passengers and 30 crew, though CNN noted that actual passenger counts in Indonesia frequently do not match what the manifest records.
- I Putu Sudayana, who runs the Banjarmasin Search and Rescue Office, said the captain had flagged seas as high as 3 meters (10 feet) before sending a distress call that the vessel was tilting, CNN reported.
- Rescue teams in Indonesia put the number of unaccounted-for passengers and crew at roughly 130 following the sinking of a ferry that had more than 240 aboard, which went down in the Java Sea during rough weather on Sunday, CNN reported.
- Early reports placed the vessel's final known location in the Java Sea, roughly 148 kilometers (92 miles) out from a Banjarmasin pier, CNN reported.
- Banjarmasin's rescue agency said the alert reached it two hours after the Virgo Transport 8 dropped out of contact at roughly 2 a.m. Sunday, CNN reported.
CNN reports that Indonesian rescuers put about 130 passengers and crew as missing after the ferry sank in bad weather in the Java Sea on Sunday, and CBS News and Reuters carry the same count. CNN also reports the vessel's manifest listed 243 people, 213 passengers and 30 crew, while noting that the number aboard an Indonesian ferry commonly differs from the manifest; CBS News, BBC and Reuters carry that figure too. On the rescue, CNN reports at least 107 people rescued and the bodies of six passengers recovered as the search expanded around the vessel's last known position, about 148 kilometers (92 miles) from a pier in Banjarmasin, a position CBS News and BBC also carry. Reuters ties the same search for 130 people to a government toll of six dead.
The sequence is corroborated across the outlets. CNN reports that the captain described rough seas with waves up to 3 meters (10 feet) before sending a distress message saying the ship was listing, attributing the account to I Putu Sudayana, who heads the Banjarmasin Search and Rescue Office, and that the rescue agency received a report two hours after contact was lost with the Virgo Transport 8 at about 2 a.m. Sunday. CBS News carries the same distress sequence and reports that rescuers were concentrating efforts around the overturned ferry. BBC reports that contact was lost as the ship encountered bad weather and that a joint task force drawing on the search and rescue agency, the navy and maritime police is running the operation, with Reuters carrying that arrangement as well.
The accounts split on the count of people aboard, one giving more than 240 and another the manifest total of 243, with the manifest itself flagged in the record as an unreliable guide to who boarded. Everything else holds: the vessel, the route out of Surabaya toward Banjarmasin, the distress message, the six bodies recovered and the roughly 130 people still missing. CNN reports that hundreds of relatives gathered at a command center in Banjarmasin's Trisakti port, checking passenger manifests and rescue lists, and CBS News and Reuters carry that scene.
A relative told BBC Indonesia that the travelers had chosen the sea for the trip home: "They flew there initially, but for the return journey they wanted to try travelling by ship," she said.
Still developing
The record does not close on the number of people aboard the ferry, where the figures do not line up between the accounts.