A maritime disaster is an event which usually involves a ship or ships and can involve military action. Because of the nature of maritime travel, there is often a substantial loss of life. The term maritime disaster can refer to both commercial ships and military naval ships. A maritime disaster can result in one or more of the following simultaneously; There are countless incidents reported on marine disasters. The sinking of the British ocean liner RMS Titanic in 1912, with more than 1,500 fatalities, is probably the most famous shipwreck, but not the biggest in terms of lives lost. The wartime sinking of the German MV Wilhelm Gustloff in January 1945 in World War II by a Soviet Navy submarine, with an estimated loss of about 9,400 people, remains the deadliest isolated maritime disaster ever, excluding such events as the destruction of entire fleets like the 1274 and 1281 storms that are said to have devastated Kublai Khan's fleets in his invasions of Japan. The 1987 loss of the Philippine ferry MV Doña Paz, with an estimated 4,386 dead, is the largest peacetime loss recorded.

Peacetime

All ships, including those of the military, are vulnerable to problems from weather conditions, faulty design or human error. The disasters listed below were not related directly to military action, though some of them occurred during periods of conflict. The table listings are in decreasing order with respect to the number of casualties. In 1972, the university Seawise University (ex-British liner RMS Queen Elizabeth) caught fire and sank, just a short distance from Kowloon.

Wartime

Disasters with great loss of life can also occur in times of armed conflict. Shown below are some of the known events with major losses.

Russo-Japanese War

World War I

Spanish Civil War

World War II

There are at least eight maritime disasters during WWII, each of which has a greater death toll than any other maritime disaster.

Second Chinese Civil War

Six-Day War

Indo-Pakistani War of 1971

Falklands War

Iran-Iraq War

Vietnam War

In 1967, during the vietnam war, the USS Forrestal was floating on the water not too far from the Vietnamese coast. A Zuni rocket from one aircraft flew from into the fuel tank of another aircraft, starting a big fire. Within minutes, the fire became bigger and damaged other planes. More than a hundred men and women lost their lives. This was known as the 1967 USS Forrestal fire.