african history paper edit

Paper 1

Latoria Johnson

Florida International University

September 9, 2020

Joola Thesis Statement

The Joola was a Senegalese government-owned ship that capsized off the coast of Gambia in 2002. This incident led to the death of people totaling to 1863 while around 64 people survived (Barton, 2019). This incident has happened to be the second world biggest disaster in marine history after the Titanic tragedy. In this paper, we will focus on the thesis statement concerning this tragedy that happened at Gambian cost. The ship was coming from Ziguinchor city in Casamance to Dakar the capital city of Senegal. Some believe that the ship met a huge storm and the harsh weather around the Gambian coast hence capsized. This worst day for the Senegalese was the 26th day of September the year 2002.

According to my argument and what I think concerning the sinking of the joola ship, this tragedy was caused by so many reasons but the main one was planned. First and foremost, on the day of the sinking, there was very harsh weather off the coast of Gambia and this made the ship sink. Secondly, the sources say that the ship was only built to sail in the coastal waters however this was not the case when the ship was seen off the coastal waters. This might also be a driving factor since the coastal waters might be too heavy for the ship hence capsizing. On the other hand, it could have been intentional since the technical team for the ship was already aware that the ship was only built for coastal waters but went ahead and led the ship off the coast leading to the tragedy.

The other cause that I think might have driven the sinking of the ship was overcrowding and overloading of the ship. According to the article by Karen, the ship was made only for 536 passengers other than the goods and the crew team. However, the crew was supposed to be around 44 people and maybe the ship was to have around 40 cars inside. This was not the case as it is confirmed that more than 1863 people were on board. It is also believed that most people were sleeping at the upper decker in the ship and this cause imbalance of the ship leading to the tragedy. It also believed that the officials in the ferry were poorly paid and this led them to be allowing the ship to get overcrowded so that they can get some extra money to picket.

Lastly, I think that the sinking of the ship was due to negligence and might be a stage-managed tragedy of doing away with people from the south at Casamance. The ship was indeed only 12years old when it sank; however it had so many services that had been done to it, however; it was built to be serviced after 30 years. This means that the ship was serviced but resumed work prematurely. This means that it resumed service maybe because of some pressure and on the other hand, it had not finished its service. I believed that the sinking of the ship was also stage-managed because, why did the negligence of the service occur. According to my opinion, this happened because people from the south were benefiting from the Senegalese in Dakar however this might have not been received well by the government. Also, most people who died were women and university students and this tells that there was no higher intuition in Casamance causing overcrowding at Senegal schools.

Reference

Barton, K. S. (2019). An Africa Teaching Module: Using a Shipwreck Story to Refine Students' Geographic Knowledge of Place. The Geography Teacher, 16(2), 48-56.