I had the opportunity, on a quiet, beautiful summer evening on the Tisa River, from a distance of about a thousand meters, to witness the collision of the "Princeza Jelena" with a small tugboat named "Banat," owned by the Markus Šulc company from Pančevo.
The five of us scouts from Novi Bečej were camping on the Bačka bank of the Tisa River about 3 kilometers downstream from Novi Bečej.
One evening in early August 1937, we were sitting in front of our tents on a spread-out blanket, playing checkers by the dim light of a lantern hanging from the top of the tent. The night was quiet, with only the chirping of crickets and the lazy flow of the Tisa River, barely moving. The moonlight or the still bright river and its shore had not yet been enveloped by the darkness of the summer night. In that twilight, a small boat passed by our camp, moving downstream toward Belgrade, and we wouldn’t have paid much attention to it if it hadn’t illuminated us with its searchlight, probably trying to see what our light at the river’s edge was.
A few minutes later, absorbed in our game, we heard a dull, powerful crash coming from the direction the boat had gone. We all immediately dropped our cards and rushed to the water to see what had happened. Seeing the light on the river, we assumed the boat had collided with the "Bečej ferry," which was approximately located there. As we argued about whether it had hit the ferry or perhaps been a collision between two boats, we noticed that the red and green side lights and the searchlight from the boat, which was sweeping the water with its light, were disappearing from the surface. We realized it was a boat collision.
We quickly jumped into our two boats and rowed toward the scene. We reached it quite rapidly downstream, even though the distance was greater than we had assumed—about 2 kilometers. By the time we arrived, the "Banat" had already sunk, with only its smokestack sticking out of the water about a meter above the surface. The "Princeza Jelena" was anchored in the middle of the Tisa River, using its searchlights to illuminate the water's surface to assist the survivors from the "Banat."
What happened? The "Banat" was coming from the direction of Novi Bečej toward Belgrade, while the "Princeza Jelena" was on its regular route from Belgrade toward Novi Bečej. Instead of keeping its side, the "Banat" began to cross over to the opposite side, and at that moment, when it was in the middle of the river, it was hit by the "Princeza Jelena" at full speed, nearly slicing it in half. Eleven crew members were rescued from the tugboat, while the only woman aboard, who was working as a cook, drowned. Supposedly, she had her 7-8-year-old son with her on the boat, and she handed her child to the rescuers from the boat into which water was pouring. As she handed him over, the water vacuum created by the sudden filling of the sinking boat pulled her in. The crew of the "Princeza Jelena" hoped that she might resurface and stayed at the scene for another half-hour after the collision. Hoping for the best in the tragedy, the woman was forever lost in the murky waters of the Tisa River.
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