A pre-dawn fire has destroyed one of Göcek's charter gulets. On 20 July 2026, the 29-metre Princess Alize caught fire at anchor in Hamam Bay, burned for about two hours and sank. No one was hurt. The boat was a total loss.
What happened
The Princess Alize — a traditional Turkish gulet, wooden, five cabins, built by the Bozburun Shipyard — was anchored in Hamam Bay, a cove among the islands off Göcek on Turkey's southwest coast. The fire broke out at around 05.30 local time. The crew got off safely, and there were no guests aboard.
Local units answered quickly. The Turkish Coast Guard lifeboat Kıyem 5 and port-authority boats reached the cove, and the fire was out roughly two hours later. By then the gulet had taken too much damage to save, and she went down in the bay. Municipal environmental teams moved in afterwards to clear fuel and debris from the water.
The suspected cause
What started it is not yet settled. A representative of the local outlet Gocek Rehberi told BOAT International the fire followed an explosion thought to have originated in the yacht's batteries. An official investigation is under way.
That account is worth reading precisely. The cause is reported, not confirmed; the source is a local report relayed through the trade press; and "batteries" is as far as it goes — no authority has named a chemistry or a component. Until the investigation says otherwise, the battery link is a plausible lead, not a finding.
Why batteries keep coming up
The detail lands in a nervous moment for the industry. Fires traced — or suspected to trace — to onboard energy storage have become a recurring worry on modern yachts, and charter gulets are not exempt. A boat like this one carries large battery banks to run lights, air-conditioning and hotel loads through a quiet night at anchor, exactly the silent comfort guests pay for.
The caution cuts both ways. It would be wrong to brand every marine fire a lithium fire, and the Princess Alize reports do not go that far. But a pre-dawn blaze that local sources are already pointing toward the batteries is the kind of event that keeps the question open.
A busy bay in high season
Göcek is one of the hubs of Turkey's "Blue Voyage" — the gulet-charter cruising that fills these coves every summer. A peak-season fire on a charter boat, in a bay full of other charter boats, is the scenario the whole fleet dreads. This time it ended with the crew ashore and no injuries. The next detail everyone in Göcek is waiting for is what the investigation finds in what is left of the Princess Alize.
A 29-metre gulet is gone and no one was hurt — the outcome that matters most. What the coast now wants to know is whether the fire really began in the batteries, because that answer travels well beyond one boat in one bay.
