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Can a cruise ship sink?


Ru5tY

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oh geez. i had to pull this one up, didn't i? this is like asking if a plane can crash or a nuclear bomb can hit. bottom line: ANYTHING can happen. my question is, who thinks of these things?

 

go take a ***** and book a cruise. yeah, mon. don't worry. be happy. :)

 

Or in the case of Northridge, the very ground beneath your feet can jump up and ruin your whole day.

 

For those who are terrified: Stay home. Lock your doors. Close your drapes. You'll be safe. Until the sun explodes.

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  • 5 years later...

Cruise ships can not sink they have so many separate compartments that can be sealed off to prevent water from entering those areas. They also have systems which they can untilize to avoid storm systems and high waves etc.. hope you enjoyed and appreciate my input.

 

Capt. William J. Bones :D:D

HMS Titanic

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Cruise ships can not sink they have so many separate compartments that can be sealed off to prevent water from entering those areas. They also have systems which they can untilize to avoid storm systems and high waves etc.. hope you enjoyed and appreciate my input.

 

Capt. William J. Bones :D:D

HMS Titanic

NICE post to bring a topic back from the dead. This topic been dead for about 5+ years now, let it rest!

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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.

 

There is a website that you can go to and they have mapped where rogue waves occur and how often. They in fact do occur in the Atlantic. I know this because I looked. I have a serious fear of this phenomenon though I love the water and being on the ocean. I plan to do a transatlantic cruise to Europe in the near future. :eek: Go figure

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There have been two excellent TV shows about this on cable over the past year. The captain is filmed saying something like "evacuation orders apply to everyone, so I and the crew left too". The TV shows do not discuss what legal action was ultimately taken against the crew etc.

 

As for rogue waves, just this past winter, there was that "university at sea" ship that got clobbered south of Alaska, and had to limp in to Honolulu.

 

Interestingly, I did not see any stories about the tsunami impacting cruise ships.

 

Tsunami waves and rogue waves are not the same. They are not created by the same animal. Rogue waves occur in the ocean where strong currents coming from different directions converge,where as tsunami waves occur from a shift in the ocean floor. They start as little ripples and grow over distance piling up as they reach to shore. Methinks they also can occur from giant pieces of glacier falling into a narrow harbor or so I've read.:eek::eek:

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Cruise ships can not sink they have so many separate compartments that can be sealed off to prevent water from entering those areas. They also have systems which they can untilize to avoid storm systems and high waves etc.. hope you enjoyed and appreciate my input.

 

Capt. William J. Bones :D:D

HMS Titanic

 

I know you're joking, but . . .

 

5 April 2007. Greek ship: "Sea Diamond" (Louis Cruise Lines) hit a reef off Santorini, Italy, and sank. A Frenchman and his daughter were never found, presumed drowned. Crew were prosecuted.

 

16 February 1986. Russian cruise ship "Mikhail Lermontov" hit rocks off Port Gore in the Marlboro Sounds, New Zealand. She sank. One crewman died. The Picton Harbour Master, who was piloting the ship, made an error of judgment, in trying to take the ship through a passage that was too narrow and shallow for her draft and too close to land. Initially, this ship's Russian crew, trying to avoid negative publicity, refused to call for help. No order was made by the crew to abandon ship. Masters of ships nearby, who had earlier been warned off by the ML's Captain, initiated the evacuation and rescued all the passengers. Most of the crew refused to abandon the ship until the last moment.

 

Forget rogue waves! Rocks are everywhere close to land and they are not your friends.

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I don't think anybody has mentioned the Sea Diamond sinking off Santorini April 6, 2007, and 2 French passengers died.

 

The Grand Princess had a severe 18.5 degree list (they said 24 degrees and the ship would have been in serious trouble). I can't find the site that shows the model of the list.

 

This website has a lot of disasters.

http://shipdetective.com/advice/safety/lists.htm

 

Just be sure you know where the life vests and your muster station are.

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What about the cruise ship Posidum??? Hit by a rogue wave I believe.......

 

Do you mean the Prisendam? Caught fire and sank, all made it off safely.

 

http://www.juneauempire.com/stories/092904/sta_prinsendam.shtml

 

Would seem to re-inforce the concept that ships don't usually sink quickly, but the Sea Diamond in Santorini went down pretty quickly. That location is still marked off by bouys, as of August when we were there.

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Can a cruise ship sink? - A truly stupid question: cruise ships are made of materials which are heavier than water - if enough water gets into the hull, the ship must sink.

 

You do not have to go back to Titanic -in the memories of perhaps a majority of today's cruisers the following passenger ships have sunk:

 

1956 - Andrea Doria

1979 - Prinsendam

1985 - Mikhail Lermontov

2007 -Sea Diamond

 

These were not ferries (many of which have sunkin recent years), they were ocean going ships.

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Can a cruise ship sink? - A truly stupid question: cruise ships are made of materials which are heavier than water - if enough water gets into the hull, the ship must sink.

 

You do not have to go back to Titanic -in the memories of perhaps a majority of today's cruisers the following passenger ships have sunk:

 

1956 - Andrea Doria

1979 - Prinsendam

1985 - Mikhail Lermontov

2007 -Sea Diamond

 

These were not ferries (many of which have sunkin recent years), they were ocean going ships.

 

Whew! I was wondering if there was some new knowledge. I mean, gosh!, an engineer asked if a ship could sink. I was trying to figure out what I missed when I had mumps in elementary school.

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Whew! I was wondering if there was some new knowledge. I mean, gosh!, an engineer asked if a ship could sink. I was trying to figure out what I missed when I had mumps in elementary school.

 

You miss a lot when you take a sick day --- but not as much as some of the posters who made the bad choice and cut school on the day that they taught everything.

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I know you're joking, but . . .

 

5 April 2007. Greek ship: "Sea Diamond" (Louis Cruise Lines) hit a reef off Santorini, Italy, and sank. A Frenchman and his daughter were never found, presumed drowned. Crew were prosecuted.

 

16 February 1986. Russian cruise ship "Mikhail Lermontov" hit rocks off Port Gore in the Marlboro Sounds, New Zealand. She sank. One crewman died. The Picton Harbour Master, who was piloting the ship, made an error of judgment, in trying to take the ship through a passage that was too narrow and shallow for her draft and too close to land. Initially, this ship's Russian crew, trying to avoid negative publicity, refused to call for help. No order was made by the crew to abandon ship. Masters of ships nearby, who had earlier been warned off by the ML's Captain, initiated the evacuation and rescued all the passengers. Most of the crew refused to abandon the ship until the last moment.

 

Forget rogue waves! Rocks are everywhere close to land and they are not your friends.

 

We must have been posting at the same time. I didn't see the Russian cruise ship, think that was long before I joined this board and really started cruising.

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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.

 

Ships are designed so that water entering the ship through a hole in the hull will be contained to a small section of the ship. I believe the ships are designed so that they will float even if two sections are flooded.

 

However, can a cruise ship sink? Yes. Nobody can design a cruise ship that is sink proof - unless it is made out of balsa wood. If a ship receives enough damage, it will sink.

 

There is security and screening done to prevent terrorist attacks. Are the ships 100% safe - no.

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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.

 

Have a great cruise anyway.

 

The lifeboats are for the passengers. The crew gets life rafts. Thus, there are enough lifeboats for all the passengers and there are enough lifeboats and life rafts for all the passengers and all the crew.

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We must have been posting at the same time. I didn't see the Russian cruise ship, think that was long before I joined this board and really started cruising.

 

The Mikhail Lermontov sinking is still well remembered here in New Zealand, as is the sinking of the Wahine ferry, in 1985.

 

People still find it hard to believe that a harbor master, supposedly familiar with local conditions, could have made such a gross error of judgment.

 

The wreck of the Mikhail Lermontov is now a much-used diving site.

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In a word 'Yes', any vessel can sink. Modern vessels, particularly those built in the last 10 years have moved ahead rapidly with new safety features to withstand collisions and fire to a higher extent.

The Water Tight Doors compartment the vessel below the waterline, closed whilst at sea preventing progressive flooding. Strengthened Hulls. Collision Bulkheads. Double Bottoms. Compartmented Fire Zones. Emergency ballast systems to hold a vessel upright long enough to launch lifeboats and evacuate everyone, should extensive damage occur. Continous tracking of the vessel, satellite alert systems.

Engines seperated vertically and horizontally, so that if flooding occured after a collision in one part of the engine room, you have redundancy with the other engines unaffected.

Fire monitoring and control systems, where you can monitor the temperature, smoke density (and steam from hot showers!), in every cabin, compartment and room. The same system can be used to isolate an area with fire screen doors and close the ventilation in an instant. The list goes on and on and on.

 

The main and most important part to it all, is employing the highest and best qualified officers and engineers to prevent the vessel ever needing to use that safety equipment. But this doesn't come cheaply, particularly if you want Brit, America, Canadian, Australian etc officers to look after things.

 

All of the safety systems don't make it impossible to sink a ship, but they do reduce the risks a lot, and overall make the newer ships better and safer to sail on. Slowly the older and non-compliant vessels will be phased out, which is a shame because we'd all love to keep sailing on an old 1950's classic, but we have to advance in this world, and you wouldn't want to still be flying across the atlantic on DC3's would you?

 

Sorry for the rambling, but I hope this answers a few questions.

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