“Islanders call the British ship the ‘ship of shame.’ A ship where you do whatever you want. A floating boarding house for hippies, where there are gatherings of stoners and where bare-breasted girls wander the deck. Now the people of the island are asking the authorities to take action against the owner”. This is how Diario de Ibiza translated in its edition of May 20, 1973 part of a report that appeared in the British tabloid Sunday Mirror about the motor sailboat ‘Fenicio’, moored at the pier of Santa Eulària Avenue in the port of Vila, where the ferries from Formentera do today.
A story that ended in tragedy when, on board the ‘Fenicio’, a young Italian assaulted a British man with a broken bottle over a matter of jealousy, causing his deathonly a month after the publication of the article. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison in March 1975, 50 years ago.
But what was life like on that so-called ‘ship of shame’? As always there are contradictory versions. The ‘Phoenician’, which had served as a cargo ship for half a century, was bought in early 1973 by the young British Mark Linvard with the intention, according to his own assurances, of rehabilitating it and taking it to England.
In its report, the Sunday Mirror said that the ship had a crew of seven Britons recruited among the waiters of the bars in the port and that only Linvard had a sailing license. The yellow paper attributed these statements to the owner: “I don’t know why the locals call us pirates and the ‘Phoenician’ the ship of shame. I admit that sometimes there have been up to 30 people on board, even though we only have six cabins. The gatherings sometimes get a bit wild and there is a lot of dope smoking. There are a lot of girls on board. I never ask where they come from or who they are. If they want a place to sleep, I provide it, that’s how I make money. I wouldn’t say we organize orgies, but we have a good time with the girls. Some of the crew have a different girl every night.”
He added a quote allegedly from 16-year-old Danish Astrid: “I’ve been on board for three weeks and I’ve had a lot of fun. It’s better than any hotel. Now I’m waiting for my parents to send me money. If they knew what I was doing they would go crazy.”
Before any of this was rectified the ‘Phoenician’ was in the news again and this time for the bloody crime committed on board. The Italian Vicenzo Zoppi, 21 years old, had been admitted a few days earlier to the Provincial Hospital of Ibiza for surgery on an injured and infected knee. A scandal broke out there when he asked the nuns attending him to let his girlfriend Gee Frances Gillian, a 22-year-old British national, sleep with him. The couple had a heated argument days later, after which the girl left the hospital with several friends.
Attempt to hide
That night the Italian left “surreptitiously the hospital”, according to Diario de Ibiza on June 6, a day after the events. He went to the ‘Fenicio’ and found his girlfriend with another man. Then he broke a bottle, or found it broken, and attacked with it his rival, Keith Newton, an English student living in Canada, as it was later learned.
Newton came down badly wounded from the boat and began to walk along the pier of Santa Eulària Avenue, where he collapsed drenched in blood 150 meters later. Two girls tried to assist him and alerted the Civil Guard, whose agents transferred the injured man to the Nuestra Señora del Rosario Clinic. But nothing could be done to save his life. The victim had serious wounds in his liver and stomach and his iliac artery was almost severed. He bled to death.
Zoppi was arrested the next day despite his efforts to hide. After the deadly attack he hurriedly gathered his belongings on the ship, shaved off his long beard, bought tobacco in a nearby bar and hid in a cave in the des Soto area, where he was found. The then Commander of the Navy, José Bermejo, was in charge of the first interrogation, and, after passing through the court, he was confined in the municipal deposit of Ibiza, at the disposal of the Navy Jurisdiction.
After the crime came the different versions of life on board the ‘Fenicio’. A week later, the commander of the Navy sent a letter to es Diari, in which he branded as “sensationalist” and “false” most of the information published by the Sunday Mirror and picked up by Diario de Ibiza, and assured that the authorities had not received any complaints about the activities on the ship at any time. “As I consider that this sensationalism and false information harms the interests of Ibiza and Formentera, since serious tourism flees from the environment that is intended to create these islands, I ask you to publish these lines for the tranquility of good people, who should know that decency, morality and good customs are watched over, to the best of our ability,” Bermejo ended his letter.
He also said that when the report was published, two of the crew members mentioned were no longer on the ship, since they had been imprisoned for assaulting the sailors of one of the Talamanca’s golondrinas, and that the person in charge was forbidden to allow anyone outside the “Fenicio” to spend the night inside.
Report with the Bee Gees
The owner of the boat, Mark Linvard, claimed through his lawyers a rectification to the Sunday Mirror that was also reproduced by Diario de Ibiza. In it, he branded the report as a “fictitious article” that could “seriously damage” his reputation. He assured that the journalist of the British weekly had come to Eivissa to do a report on the Bee Gees, but that “he failed” and then decided to dedicate it to the ‘Phoenician’. He said that he made up his statements in which he admitted the “wild parties with drugs” on board or the “girls with their breasts in the air” on deck, and that, in fact, the girls who appeared in the photos had been taken by the reporter himself, and, in addition, that the seven crew members were actually the professionals working on the rehabilitation of the ship, among them an engineer.
Whether Linvard’s version was true or not, what was a terrible and undeniable reality was the crime that had been committed on boardwhich was tried almost two years later, in March 1975. At the hearing they referred to the ‘Phoenician’ as “home to a group of young alleged hippies”.
The trial was held in Cartagena, at the Mediterranean Maritime Zone Court, and Zoppi was sentenced to twelve years of imprisonment and to compensate Newton’s family with half a million pesetas, a fortune at the time.
For the full article, please visit Diario de Ibiza website here.