Andreas Oikonomou had a bad feeling even before boarding the Norman Atlantic. “Are we getting on?” he asked his wife, Elena, as the 2009-built ro-pax prepared to pick up passengers from the port of Igoumenitsa in western Greece.

“I don’t know, Andreas,” she replied. Putting their unease aside, the couple embarked with their nine-year-old daughter, Alina, but once on board, Andreas, a 55-year-old physics teacher from Athens, changed his mind and tried to get the family off the ship.