Cruise ship accident

[Kapitan]

Crown princess a brand new cruise ship left port canaveral florida on her routine cruise when she listed heavily, causing tables chairs to break and for many people injuries and 2 severly injured.

They state "a stearing gear problem" was the cause.

If the list was more than about 15 degrees there is no way this is just a steering gear issue, even running at full speed with a hard right turn you couldnt roll that ship any more that 11 or 12 degrees (heck QM2 made 29 knot hard over and hit only 8 degrees).

Theres something missing here, perhapse a ballast tank flooded inadvertantly?

Crown princess is only 108,000 tonnes and can reach only around 22 knots (no where near the size of QM2) so i cant see how stearing gear alone can cause that and also there are stabilisers on the ship.

There is something seriously wrong here what you guys think?

[StdDev]

Originally Posted by Kapitan

Crown princess a brand new cruise ship left port canaveral florida on her routine cruise when she listed heavily, causing tables chairs to break and for many people injuries and 2 severly injured.

They state "a stearing gear problem" was the cause.

If the list was more than about 15 degrees there is no way this is just a steering gear issue, even running at full speed with a hard right turn you couldnt roll that ship any more that 11 or 12 degrees (heck QM2 made 29 knot hard over and hit only 8 degrees).

Theres something missing here, perhapse a ballast tank flooded inadvertantly?

Crown princess is only 108,000 tonnes and can reach only around 22 knots (no where near the size of QM2) so i cant see how stearing gear alone can cause that and also there are stabilisers on the ship.

There is something seriously wrong here what you guys think?

Have you ever seen the drive system on those huge cruise ships?
They are electric omni-directional thrusters...
If all of the thrusters were pointed 90 degrees to the longitudinal axis of the ship....?
who knows? .. why would they try to hide WHAT went wrong?

[Kapitan]

And yes i have seen the azimuth pods they have my old ship dart 8 had exactly the same ones as crown princess does, and you could put them at 90 degrees full ahead and you still would not list any more than 10 to 12 degrees no way even hitting 30 knots. (by the time you got to about 20 your starting to over stress the pods).

Why would they hide it simple embarrasment to the company, it could make things alot worse, they dont want to highlight the flaw because no doubt the other ships may have it, to save on the insurance, to avoid the ship being impounded.

Alot of reasons

[lesrae]

/Off Topic

Talking of the QM2, her Captain (Ron Warwick) lives across the road from me in our village. He retires soon - big big party coming up I'd imagine :O)

/On topic.

I think it found an over-friendly whale

[tycho102]

Originally Posted by Kapitan

Theres something missing here, perhapse a ballast tank flooded inadvertantly?

That's what I'm lead to believe, and it could be a bunch of different things. The turn may have just been the "tipping point", so to speak. Static ballasting is a primary suspect. A below deck leak is another. It could be a fuel tank pump, it could have hit some kind of obstruction.

And I haven't ruled out sabotage just yet. Cruise ships have been having a hell of a lot of problems, lately. Between outbreaks of e-coli, fires, drunks, and people making bomb "jokes", it hasn't been a good two years for Carnival...not to even begin with other cruise lines.

I would seriously re-consider a cruise any time in the near future. Those companies have got some Quality Assurance issues to work out, and the market needs to help them right along with regards to it.