Shortly after midnight on September 14, 1994, foot passengers at the then-busy ferry port at Ramsgate were patiently awaiting instruction to board their vessel. Within the hour, a number would be dead or seriously injured.

Some 400 people were travelling on the early hours service from the Thanet port to Ostend in Belgium - a regular and popular route during the heyday of the ferry industry in the county.

While cars, coaches and lorries were loaded onto the Prins Filip - operated by Sally Line but under the insignia of Belgium firm Oostende Lines - foot passengers boarded by traversing a narrow, enclosed elevated walkway to reach the ship’s deck.

The sea was calm, the weather fine and the ferry had performed what was described as a “textbook berthing”.

The Prins Filip was a relatively new vessel - built in 1991 and having previously served on the Dover to Calais route before switching to serve Ramsgate to Ostend. One of the largest ferries serving the Channel, at the time, a new walkway and access points for vehicles had to be constructed at Ramsgate to accommodate it less than a year earlier.

At shortly before 1am, as the final passengers crossed the walkway, one noticed a gap emerging between two of its sections.

“As I went over the gangway, I could see a six-inch gap between the two sections,” passenger Michael Hedges said at the time. “I jumped over it, which was difficult because I was wearing a backpack.

“I didn’t think anything of it at the time until I reached the foyer and heard people crying and panicking.”

A subsequent report by the Health and Safety Executive (H&SE) described the scene: “At around 12.45am, the last remaining foot passengers had walked to the top of the ramp in the passenger ramp building and were about to enter the walkway and board the Prins Filip. Several hundred had already boarded.

“Sea conditions were calm. It was then slack water with low tide due in less than one hour. There was no appreciable wind. A Japanese tourist described walking along the first section of walkway, hearing a noise, being showered with water - rain-water released from the top of the fabric bellows which linked the sections as this was torn - and then running on to the ship knowing that the walkway had fallen behind him. He was the last foot passenger to reach the ship.”

As the walkway collapsed, it arrowed down more than 30ft to the floating steel pontoon below. Anyone on it at the time tumbled downwards.

Tony Dixon had just stepped on to the walkway when disaster struck. He said: “The power went off. We all started to shake and rattle from the bumping around and we had to hang on to the side of the rail. The other end had fallen down, someone was hanging on in the middle. He was not unconscious, he was hanging on because if he had let go, he would have slipped into the water.”

“There was,” said another passenger, “a fearful metallic screeching noise and a horrendous crash. We turned the corner just as the other end landed and the bodies went flying.”

As the disaster unfolded, emergency crews were summoned. Ambulance teams from Thanet, Deal, Canterbury and Herne Bay rushed to the scene - the first of which arriving just seven minutes after the alarm was raised. They were swiftly joined by fire and police teams.

What they found was a nightmarish scene.

Divisonal Fire Officer Neil Fowler, overseeing teams from across east Kent, said: “When our men got there it was a horrific scene with the bodies piled on top of each other.

“The covered walkway was like a tube and when it collapsed they simply fell down its length into a pile. We had difficulties with lighting when we got there and we had to make the walkway safe before we could evacuate the injured.

“The people who were trapped were fairly accessible once we got onto the floating pontoon. But lighting conditions meant we had to be careful and didn’t make the situation worse by moving the structure any further.”

Around 80 emergency personnel were involved in the immediate aftermath.

A swift checking of the vessel’s manifest revealed 20 passengers were likely involved. There were fears some could have fallen off the pontoon and into the sea - but this fear proved unfounded.

Adds the H&SE report: “Of the estimated 20 passengers who were on the walkway as it fell, approximately one-third walked away with minor injuries or uninjured, one-third [seven in number] were hospitalised with serious back and leg injuries and one-third suffered fatal injuries.”

Five were pronounced dead at the scene - one further person died after being rushed to the Kent & Canterbury Hospital.

A little after an hour after the walkway’s collapse, all the injured and the dead had been recovered from the pontoon.

The victims were later named as Brits Steven Jones, 33, and Jason Dudley, 28; Belgians Juliaan Keersmackers, 42, Trinidad Cerere, 24 and Stephane Rozet, 25; and Frenchman Peter Vervoort, 26.

Among those injured were British, Japanese, American and French tourists.

It was Thanet’s worst peace-time disaster.

An investigation was launched immediately, with the H&SE on the scene by daybreak. A criminal prosecution was also launched.

It discovered the walkway was held in position by a single steel pin which was dislodged. Designers had not allowed for the impact wind, tides and traffic would have. The walkway rocked at one end causing the entire weight to shift to just two of its four feet.

The prosecutor in the criminal case said: ''The design was inherently unsafe and it has to be said that this was a design that was both inept and incompetent.

''It was an accident waiting to happen and it happened earlier rather than later because of poor welding.''

The port operators were found guilty of failing to ensure the safety of passengers along with two Swedish companies which manufactured and installed the gangway. It had only been installed in the March of 1994 - six months before the tragedy.

The Swedish firm which built the walkway was fined £750,000, Lloyd's Register of Shipping, which certified it, was fined £500,000, the designers were fined £250,000 and the Port of Ramsgate had to pay £200,000.

"It was an accident waiting to happen..."

They were fined a total of £1.7 million - the largest fine, at the time, in the UK for breaching health and safety laws.

The Prins Filip remains in operation. It has undergone various name changes and company branding - being used in the Channel for the likes of P&O Stena, LD Lines, TransEuropa Ferries, DFDS and Irish Ferries.

It remains in the ownership of Irish Ferries, is today known as the Isle of Innisfree and operates between Pembroke in Wales and Rosslare in the Republic of Ireland.

The Port of Ramsgate - which back in the early 1990s was trying to brace itself ahead of the anticipated competition from the Channel Tunnel - last saw ferries operate from it in 2013 when the predominantly freight operator, TransEuropa ferries sailed for the final time.