High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! MS Herald of Free Enterprise was a roll-on roll-off (RORO) car and passenger ferry owned by Townsend Thoresen. She was one of three ships commissioned by the company to operate on the Dover Calais route across the English Channel. The ferry capsized on the night of 6 March 1987, moments after leaving the Belgian port of Zeebrugge, killing 193 passengers and crew. This was the worst maritime disaster involving a British registered ship in peacetime since the sinking of the Iolaire in 1919.