A passenger catamaran carrying 267 people capsized around 7.5 kilometres off the northern coast of Cyprus. At least eight to nine people are dead, 249 were rescued, and the search for the rest continues. The vessel sank to a depth of 514 metres - a depth from which nobody recovers anything quickly.

The vessel, a catamaran named Filo Jet, was travelling from Girne towards Tashucu in Turkey. Survivors describe something that sounds like a nightmare assembled from ordinary details: the boat slamming hard into the waves of a rough sea, and then the front section splitting open.

"The front exploded," says one survivor, after which the side windows shattered and water poured in. Another puts it more brutally: "The seats started floating, the captain kept sailing, and then the front exploded." That is a sentence demanding an answer, not condolences.

The captain and seven crew members - arrested

The captain and seven crew members have been detained. "Every aspect of this incident will be investigated. Even the smallest failure will be uncovered," the prime minister said. The sentence is standard and is spoken after every accident on every coast. The question is whether the investigation gets any further than the captain - to whoever cleared him to sail in that sea, and to whoever last inspected the hull.

A Turkish official source said the vessel "sank in record time" once water began coming in. That is not a fact about speed, but about construction. A vessel with proper bulkheads and working drainage does not sink in record time.

The search and rescue operation ran all night, with coastguard vessels, helicopters, drones and assets of the Turkish armed forces. The number of missing moved between 18 and 23 through the coverage - figures that shift because nobody knew at the outset exactly how many people had boarded.

Anyone who has spent a summer on one of the Balkan routes - from the Adriatic to Ohrid - knows how it looks: the passenger list is a formality, life jackets are decoration, and the marine forecast gets read if somebody has the time. This disaster happened in someone else's sea, but the scenario is familiar on every shore.