Can a cruise ship sink?

[Taxguy77]

Dont worry..Most cruises are in the Caribbean, if your ship goes down. It wont be long before your picked up anyhow. Go out on deck after dark, you will see at least 2 or 3 other ships on the horizon.

 

Most cruises In the winter, leaving and returnig from/to Florida are.

[Vampire Parrot]

In it's day, Titanic was a well-designed and built ship, she was a 2-compartment ship and yet still sank.

 

A lot of research has taken place as to why she sank - as is often the case, it's a long chain of improbable events. And, alas, a lack of knowledge that only incidents, accidents and disasters produce.

 

It's thought that if Titanic had gone full astern when the iceberg was sighted, and the wheel held midships, she'd have hit the iceberg with her bow, she'd have definitely lost the first and maybe second compartments, but would have stayed afloat. Given the weather conditions, she could have then carried on to New York and been repaired.

 

If she'd have gone hard-a-port or hard-a-starboard without going full astern, the prop. wash over her rudders would have been enough for her to turn clear of the iceberg.

 

Alas, she went hard-a-port and full astern, so the rudders were not very effective and so she brushed past the iceberg. Examination of Titanic's hull doesn't show that the iceberg ripped her hull; instead what may well have happened is that the iceberg pushed against her hull plates with a lot of force, popping the rivets that held them together. The leakage between the hull plates in multiple compartments was the fatal damage. Water then flowed into the undamaged compartments, and down she went.

 

Questions have been recently asked as to the strength of the rivets holding the plates together. They aren't as strong as the best modern rivets, but they were several times stronger than required at the time. Her shipbuilders did a fine job.... her eldest sister ship, RMS Olympic, went on to be a very successful ship. She was scrapped in 1937, which was a mistake; due to her speed and size she'd have been very useful during the battle of the Atlantic.

 

VP

[bepsf]

In it's day, Titanic was a well-designed and built ship, she was a 2-compartment ship and yet still sank.

 

Questions have been recently asked as to the strength of the rivets holding the plates together. They aren't as strong as the best modern rivets...

 

Olympic and Titanic had 16 compartments. 5 were breached - 4 was the limit.

 

Modern ships aren't riveted - They're welded.

 

As to the OP's question - Modern ships are unlikely to sink from hitting something such as another ship (Andrea Doria) or an iceberg...

...although the sinking of Sea Diamond was from hitting an underwater rock.

 

....the threats are more from fire as has been stated before, or an attack of some sort - One only has to look at what happened to Lusitania.

[Bonnie J.]

Yes they can! The Seabreeze was a Dolphin ship bought by Premier. (Neither line exists anymore.) It was in I think Nova Scotia when the captain announced everyone would be getting off in the morning in the middle of their cruise! This was in August, a few years ago, and the ship was being repossessed!

Never heard what happened to the passengers.

Anyway, in November is was being brought to Miami and started taking on water off the VA-NC coast. The Coast Guard pulled 35 crew members up by helicopter by the pool I had been swimming in the year before!

This was a local news story for us here on the coast so I watched as the whole ship sank, the bow disappeared under the water. The water where it sank is too deep to see the reason she was taking on water. Now LOTS of fish and coral call her home............

[Cuizer2]

A lot of research has taken place as to why she sank

 

VP

 

The Titanic sank because after taking on water the ship was heaver than the amount of water it displaced.

[skjtrav]

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

 

A ship at sea is one of the safer places to be during a tsunami.

[stowaway2k]

The MS Achille Lauro burned for three days before finally sinking. This is video filmed by a crew member.

 

http://www.youtube.com/user/lilfoot54#p/a/u/0/xikoGbMWUws

 

Passengers were rescued by the Panamanian tanker Hawaiian King.

 

Some of you will remember the Achille Lauro from her tragic 1985 hijacking.

[Arzeena]

The Oceanos. It sank off the coast of Durban, South Africa. The "Captain" and "crew" abandoned the ship, and the Entertainment crew helped the passengers until they were rescued by helicopter.

 

I do hope this particular runaway captain and crew have been banned from sailing any cruiseship in the future and are behind bars!

[Cuizer2]

I do hope this particular runaway captain and crew have been banned from sailing any cruiseship in the future and are behind bars!

 

So what did happened to Captain Yiannis Avranas, well in the last chapter of the book, the author tells us what happened directly after the sinking and how the Captain was given another boat to command.

 

http://oceanossinking.blogspot.com/2010/05/what-happened-to-captain-yiannis.html

 

 

Here is another Cruise Critic thread on the subject ...

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=582808

[Hlitner]

Can a cruise ship sink? Sure although these days there is seldom loss of life. One example is a large European operated cruise ship (Sea Diamond) that sank off the Greek Island of Santorini in April 2007 when the modern ship hit a reef. There was later some controversy as to whether this was the fault of the Captain or whether the reef was inproperly marked on the sea charts. Regarding that sinking, approximately 1600 were rescued but a Frenchman and his daughter disappeared and were presumed dead.

 

Hank