A Finnish passenger ferry with some 1,800 passengers on board was early Friday involved in a near collision in the Baltic Sea with a freighter that unexpectedly lost engine power, news reports said. The ferry Silja Serenade was en route from the Finnish capital Helsinki to Stockholm, Sweden but managed to avoid running into the freighter Baltic Pride that had a 10-strong crew, dpa reported. The freighter had unexpectedly lost power and the engines also stopped, making it drift in the Baltic Sea as the passenger ferry was approaching. The incident occurred in Finnish waters near the Aland islands, located halfway between the Swedish and Finnish mainland. The captain of Silja Serenade, operated by Estonian-based Tallink Silja, managed to avoid the collision by reversing its engines. A spokesman for Tallink Silja told Finnish broadcaster YLE that passengers were unlikely to have noticed the incident. A spokesman for the Finnish Coast Guard said "an accident was very close," Swedish broadcaster TV4 reported.
