Can a cruise ship sink?

[Ru5tY]

Out of curiousity, what kind of preventive measures have been engineered into the design of these cruise ships to prevent it from sinking?

 

Like, what's there to prevent another Titanic from happening again? Or some kind of terrorist attack? *knock on wood*

 

BTW I'm an engineer, so this is just my inquisitive mind talking.

[wwinfl91]

Modern cruise ships have many features which would make them very resistant to sinking. They also carry enough lifeboats so that everyone even the crew could be evacuated if the ship was in trouble. They carry very good radio gear that would allow them to contact other ships to help. Even the lifeboats have signaling equipment to let ships know where to find them if they had to be launched. I tried to find some neat article from the web to post on the chances of a modern cruise ship sinking and surprisingly at least to me I'm having a hard time finding one.

 

Have a great cruise anyway.

[K&RCurt]

Of Course a cruise ship can sink. Is it likely...no, but it certainly can happen.

 

Check out his link about the sinking of the HAL Prinsendam in the '80's

http://www.explorenorth.com/library/ships/prinsendam-1980.html.

 

Fire is the biggest concern on cruise ships and was the root cause of the Prinsendam's problems.

[savvyria]

Yikes! I never thought about that!

[wwinfl91]

Here is an article about the Carnival Ecstasy which caught fire near Miami a couple of years ago. it made all the national news broadcasts and was on the local news here for several hours.

 

http://www.sealetter.com/Aug-98/ecstfire.html

 

The poster above is very correct about fire being the biggest danger. Again that is why they have enough lifeboats for everyone.

 

Have a great next cruise.

[Bequia]

Here's a few more links to disasters at sea http://www.geocities.com/freighterman.geo/story.html

another link http://www.disaster-management.net/ship_fire.htm

one more http://www.sunvista.ukf.net/sunvista.htm

[cruzincurt]

Like a rock.

 

With the shallow draft they have, say 25 to 30 feet below the water line, they don't take kindly to listing over very far.

 

Well, you did ask.

[Gingee]

Do stabalizers help the ship from turning on it's size? Does anyone know what a stabalizer looks like or how it works?

[hvsteve1]

If your'e concerned about sinking, cruise Delta Queen. The paddlewheelers draft only a few feet and are never far from shore. Besides,if you're on the Mississippi,if something happens you can walk on the water (a.k.a. the big muddy:D ).

[K&RCurt]

Gingee:

 

The stabilizers only help keep the ship from rolling while in motion. They look like short "wings" that angle out from the side of the ship below the waterline. They can be extended and retracted and are typically controlled by computer linked to a gyroscope which detects "roll" or list and attempts to correct for it.

 

They can't keep a ship from sinking, they just make it more comfortable while under way.

[Bill S]

While modern ships have a host of safety features, they are still ships and they sure can still sink. From what I recalll from reading about the former Prinsendam, that incident was the catalyst for the current SOLAS standards required of modern cruise ships. So there are a lot more preventive and detection measures in place today, then when the Prinsendam caught fire. On ever HAL cruise we have been on, there has been at least one fire drill for the crew.

 

We got to experience this firsthand a few years ago when the MS Statendam had a serious fire in the electrical distribution system that crippled the ship on the first evening of a cruise. The fire alarm was very real, consisting of 6 blasts - we were in the main showroom and the CD was on stage and said something like, "My God, that's a fire alarm!" It was at night and we lost all but emergency generator power and eventually smoke was in our corridor up on the Navigation deck. Crew in fire fighting gear were all over and they literally used every available fire extinguisher on board. It was very tense for a few hours as we drifted about 35 miles NW of Vancouver. No propulsion, AC, plumbing, etc. We had to be towed back into port by 3 tugs-took 9 hours! Our cruise was cancelled due the extent of the damage.

 

While not an alarmist, I always carry a small flashlight in my pocket while onb-ard and make a point nowadays to locate the fire extinguishers near our cabin and we are religious about the lifeboat muster drill and reading the emergency placard on the backside of the cabin door--- we learned: it can happen! We were never in danger of sinking, IMO, but, everyone was directed to stay in their cabins. We had a verandah and I used my GPS receiver and we were drifting at about 2 knots and were 8 miles from the nearest island/land and were still within cell phone range of Vancouver, so I was not really too worried about sinking, but nonetheless glad we had gone to the lifeboat muster just a few hours earlier! The crew did a great job under difficult circumstances!

 

As far as stabilizers go, they are like wings that extend from the ship below the waterline to counteract/minimize roll. I am not an engineer, but even if they were extended, and the ship was flooding, I would not think they would be of any significant value to prevent a capsizing. A HAL officer told me that during normal conditions the stablizers extend and retract automatically when the rolling motion reaches a pre-set level. I imagine that the auto-system can be overridden from the bridge if necessary but I don't know if they can be extended when the ship is not moving.

[jgmpuma]

There is a phenomenon called rogue waves. Under certain conditions they can reach heights of 75 to more than 100 feet, high enough to capsize a cruise ship if the ship were to be hit broadside. They only occur, though, in areas such as the North Sea and parts of the Pacific near South Africa, not places visited by cruise ships.

[Gingee]

Yes we don't want to hear about rough waves or huge waves. Not a good word on a cruise.

[traveller99]

Hi,jgmpuma. Unfortunately, they do occur in the Atlantic, too. Here is the link to this article http://www.maritimematters.com/shipnews2004b.html . Just do a search on the page for "rogues". Where's Shelley Winters when you need her?:D

Rogues Not So Rare

July 21: The European Space Agency has put out an article based on recent study proving that rogue waves, once dismissed as a nautical myth, are in fact relatively frequent occurrences. The results from satellites studies has helped establish the widespread existence of these huge waves. Severe weather has sunk over 200 supertankers and container ships exceeding 200 meters in length during the last 20 years and "rogue" waves are believed to have been the major factor. In February 1995 QUEEN ELIZABETH 2 met a 29-meter high rogue wave during a hurricane in the North Atlantic, In February and March 2001 two cruise ships the BREMEN and the CALEDONIA STAR both had their bridge windows smashed by 30-meter rogue waves in the South Atlantic, the former was left drifting without navigation or propulsion. Radar data from the North Sea's Goma oil-field measured 466 "rogue" waves in 12 years, previously these were thought to be very rare events. In 2000 the European Union initiated a scientific project called MaxWave to confirm the occurrence of rogue waves, explain how they occur and consider their implications for ship and offshore structure design. Using two spacecraft, ERS-1 and 2, the MaxWave team identified more than ten individual giant waves around the globe above 25 meters in height in only a three week period. WaveAtlas, a new research project will use two years worth of ERS data to create a worldwide atlas of rogue waves. Two danger spots, one the Agulhas current off the east coast of South Africa, and in the Gulf Stream in the North Atlantic, where current interacts with waves coming down from the Labrador Sea have been identified. The project is scheduled to continue until the 2005.

[01 Cobra]

Out of curiousity, what kind of preventive measures have been engineered into the design of these cruise ships to prevent it from sinking?

 

Like, what's there to prevent another Titanic from happening again? Or some kind of terrorist attack? *knock on wood*

 

BTW I'm an engineer, so this is just my inquisitive mind talking.

 

There is a DoD Agency that has a Maritime Safety Office and alerts ships all over the world about glacier cracks, shifts and breaks that cause large formations of iceburgs, storms, terrorist attacks and any dangers looming at upcoming ports. There is also a Maritime news letter that is distributed to all the ships. Not sure how often, but I do know it goes out in paper and electronic. I don't work in the Maritime Safety Office, but they also do stuff like map the bottom of the ocean. I took a tour of it once and it was very interesting...it's manned 24 hours a day. (I feel like I should say I slept in a Holiday Inn Express last night...Ha Ha Ha...)

 

Please keep in mind that the Titanic hit an iceburg. If you are concerned about that kind of an incident occuring consider choosing cruises in warm climates. And remember ships are built to float!!!

There are also better communication devices available today than those that existed back then.

 

Happy Cruising.

[cruzincurt]

We we on the Norway when the boiler blew up. Fortunately we were tied to the dock in Miami. Wasn't there a case recently when one of the RCCL ships made a sudden veer to port and the deck tipped quite a bit? Probably the computer mouse used to steer the ship fell off the counter?

 

If you look closely up at the bridge wings you can usually see the EPURB gizmo sitting in a rack. Should the ship go down the EPURB is supposed to float free and send a distress signal.

 

"A distress signal is sent out by a device called an EPURB, which sends a signal to a satellite and the satellite sends the signal back down to the Coast Guard so they can pinpoint exactly where the stranded ship is."

 

I'm not worried, the car trip to the dock is more dangerous.

[cruizin bobby T]

Did you ever hear about the Titanic?

[cruzincurt]

Sure, but the odds of dying in a car accident going the the ship are far higher.

 

The Titanic hit an iceberg and had inferior steel and rivets.

[laura2161]

Hi,jgmpuma. Unfortunately, they do occur in the Atlantic, too. Here is the link to this article http://www.maritimematters.com/shipnews2004b.html . Just do a search on the page for "rogues". Where's Shelley Winters when you need her?:D

Rogues Not So Rare

July 21: The European Space Agency has put out an article based on recent study proving that rogue waves, once dismissed as a nautical myth, are in fact relatively frequent occurrences. The results from satellites studies has helped establish the widespread existence of these huge waves. Severe weather has sunk over 200 supertankers and container ships exceeding 200 meters in length during the last 20 years and "rogue" waves are believed to have been the major factor. In February 1995 QUEEN ELIZABETH 2 met a 29-meter high rogue wave during a hurricane in the North Atlantic, In February and March 2001 two cruise ships the BREMEN and the CALEDONIA STAR both had their bridge windows smashed by 30-meter rogue waves in the South Atlantic, the former was left drifting without navigation or propulsion. Radar data from the North Sea's Goma oil-field measured 466 "rogue" waves in 12 years, previously these were thought to be very rare events. In 2000 the European Union initiated a scientific project called MaxWave to confirm the occurrence of rogue waves, explain how they occur and consider their implications for ship and offshore structure design. Using two spacecraft, ERS-1 and 2, the MaxWave team identified more than ten individual giant waves around the globe above 25 meters in height in only a three week period. WaveAtlas, a new research project will use two years worth of ERS data to create a worldwide atlas of rogue waves. Two danger spots, one the Agulhas current off the east coast of South Africa, and in the Gulf Stream in the North Atlantic, where current interacts with waves coming down from the Labrador Sea have been identified. The project is scheduled to continue until the 2005.

 

I SO wish I did not just read this....Not gonna happen...Not gonna happen...Not gonna happen...*knocks on wood*

[mamax4]

I can't read anymore. I don't watch Jaws before a swim in the ocean. I believe in being prepared but this is too much for me. If the ship is going down nothing I read here will help me to survive.LOL

[SoCalCruiseguy]

The big issue with HMS Titanic was not the material or rivets although they were issues, it was the fact that the watertight bulkheads only went so high are were... not watertight.

 

Sure modern cruise ships can sink, but for sure, highly unlikely for A LOT of reasons. We have a much better chance of dying from all of the mass quantities of fat, cholesteral and alcohol consumed onboard! I guess the biggest defense is to make sure the guy in the bottom back of the ship doesn't ever pull the stopper out :)

[Gingee]

It does give you the willies doesn't it?

[Bequia]

It does give you the willies doesn't it?

 

Which part, the chance of dying from all of the mass quantities of fat, cholesteral and alcohol consumed onboard or the guy in the bottom back of the ship pulling the stopper out? :p

[Gingee]

Um both are creepy. They mention the gulf stream area is where the waves are. I looked it up on the map and it is the direction that the Legend takes. Yikes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[BruceMuzz]

Question: How many people have died on sinking cruise ships in the past 50 years?

 

 

Answer: None.