Yesterday's Amazon consignment order:
Posted on 06/26/2024 6:51:56 AM PDT by dynachrome
The world's largest cruise ship caught fire while docked in Costa Maya, Mexico.
Flames hit the Icon of the Seas on Tuesday afternoon, but Royal Caribbean told Cruise Law News that they were "quickly extinguished."
At one point, "power failed throughout the ship, impacting elevators, air conditioning, service stations, and cabins," according to Cruise Radio.
There were no reported injuries.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
Crew cooking up a little meth?
Freebasing cocaine...................
Original article link (NOT MSN) link: https://www.newsweek.com/cruise-ship-fire-mexico-royal-caribbean-icon-seas-costa-maya-1917482
Goid thing they weren’t approaching a bridge right? Guess wood burning fireplaces in deluxe cabins is asking too much?
When I was on a carrier, fires (small ones) were not wholly uncommon.
On a cruise ship with partying people and gazillions of meals being cooked and people doing crazy, partying things, I cannot imagine this is a an unheard of event.
[Excerpt from my new novel Doomsday Reef.]
We motor-sailed to south-southeast all day. By 1600 we were scanning the forward horizon for the first hint of Little Inagua. We were using a magnetic compass on a steel boat, and even allowing for Hilton Sapelo’s adjustment work, and factoring in magnetic variation and compass deviation, I only hoped that we would see land during daylight hours.
Barry was up in the crow’s nest with the backup binoculars. He called down that he saw something off the starboard bow.
“It’s a sharp dot on the horizon, it’s not just a gray smudge like Mayaguana. It’s only a dot, but it’s there.”
In a few minutes I saw it too, with my Steiners. If I had to guess I’d have guessed it was a ship or a building, something tall with sharp edges. Condominium towers could also appear suddenly over the horizon, but they were usually in rows. A building was impossible on Little Inagua. For one thing, the island and its surrounding reefs had been a wildlife sanctuary, the biggest in the Bahamas. Ordinary people were not allowed to visit, only scientists, but who would want to study a treeless island with zero drinking water? The reefs would be another matter. With no fishing pressure they might be interesting.
So it had to be a ship. I shared the binos with Gino, Curt, and Adam. When Curt held the Steiners he said, “I can make out the top decks. It’s at a forward angle to us, heading bow-on. I’d say it’s a cruise ship, heading northwest.”
Barry called down, “Oh, yeah, it’s a cruise ship. It’s not a container ship, and it’s not a tanker. It’s a cruise ship.”
I took the Steiners again. I could see they were correct as more of it rose above the horizon. Every member of the crew down to the twins came on deck to observe the alien structure breaking the otherwise uninterrupted horizon. Then across the horizon behind the ship a gray line of land emerged. It had to be Little Inagua. Something unusual was happening around the ship that was blurring the sky near it. As we sailed closer this blur changed to the appearance of swarms of insects, and then at last into thousands of birds swooping and diving.
The chart showed a thousand feet of water almost up to Little Inagua, so we could motor-sail parallel to the stranded ship close enough for a good look. Finally we could all see it was a cruise ship with our bare eyes, but the binos continued to reveal more details. The ship’s curved clipper bow and its giant satellite domes and its unique funnel topped by swept-back wings left zero doubt. It was slab-sided to squeeze into a Panama Canal lock, so it was about a thousand feet long. From its bow on up to the bridge the decks ascended in tiers like a wedding cake. Birds had taken up residence on every balcony, turning the cruise ship into a massive rookery.
I told Barry to come down. We could see the island and we knew where we were. With the crew all trying to get a turn on my binos there was no reason to keep the other pair up top.
Putting what I was seeing with my own eyes together with what I saw on the chart, it was clear that the ship had clipped the reef extending over a mile to the east of Little Inagua, and it had not moved an inch from that moment until our arrival.
Adam asked, “How could they not see an entire island?
How could they run aground? How could they do that?”
“They grew up on GPS,” Curt replied. “They never really learned any other way, or not enough to make a difference.”
I said, “They just punched in waypoints and let the ship’s navigational system take them there. They never learned old-school coastal nav. Currents and winds and tides didn’t matter to them because the machines figured it out for them. Punch in where you want to go and you’re all done. But when the GPS goes down and all you have is an autopilot, then you can really screw yourself. If you set an autopilot to steer due north, it’ll steer due north till doomsday. Even if there’s a strong current from the east, the autopilot will keep aiming north, but meanwhile the ship is crabbing to the northwest. If the navigators don’t factor in the current and the wind, then it can happen.”
This was a real-life navigation lesson for my young crew, so I continued. “They probably thought they’d clear the island by five or ten miles, but they got the current wrong. It’s thirty miles of deep water over to West Caicos, so they wouldn’t be worried. They’d probably made the run plenty of times before, but this time maybe it was at night, and in bad visibility, like hard rain. Hard rain can blind a ship’s radar, especially with a low island like Little Inagua. There’s not even a lighthouse on it. A ship like that has about a twenty-five-foot draft. If they plow into a reef at twenty knots, well, they’re done.
“It even happened when they had GPS. A cruise ship ran aground in Italy in broad daylight, the Concordia-something. It had to be cut up in pieces and taken away on barges. There’s no getting off when a ship drives onto a reef. It’s over. Ships were the biggest moveable manmade structures ever built, and when a hundred thousand tons is going twenty knots, that’s a lot of inertia. When they hit a reef, they became a part of it.”
We passed close enough to study it with binoculars. The white hull was bleeding rust at its plate seams but we could read the name across the top of the flaring bow: Serenity of the Seas. A lifeboat near the stern hung vertically from one davit, evidence of a botched evacuation. The back of the ship was blackened by fire. There were a few lifeboats on the shore of Little Inagua, but no signs of recent human activity on the ship or over on the land. We were in its plain sight, but nobody was launching a flare, lighting a smoky fire or even waving a flag. Our VHF radio was turned on, but it remained silent.
We passed it starboard-to-starboard a half mile off. Our depth sounder was reading 500 and the chart indicated far more water below. Serenity had been heading northwest, and we were sailing southeast, but we were in deep water and she was a permanent reef fixture. As we passed her stern the extent of the fire damage became more evident. The steel was charred black and rusting to red-orange without its paint. Burnt ochre.
Will said, “I wonder if the fire happened when they hit the reef? Or maybe it was already on fire, and they steered for the reef so they wouldn’t sink? It doesn’t make any sense.”
“The fire happened after they struck the reef,” Curt said. “I went on cruises with wife number two. A ship like that could carry three thousand passengers and a thousand crew. That life boat by the stern was already hanging down when the fire broke out. Fires were always a big risk. Cruise ships ran entirely on electricity. Diesel generators made it, but they were all electric after that. Their electrical generating capabilities were impressive, like a small city packed into a metal box.
“Their engines weren’t mechanically connected to their propellers. Instead, they had rotating azipods that could direct their thrust in any direction, so they didn’t need tugboats going into harbors. Their propellers were powered by electric motors down in the azipods. As long as that ship had fuel they could keep moving and keep their systems running, but all their eggs were in the electric basket. But when the fuel ran out after they went aground, well, that’s all she wrote. Lights out.”
“What do you think caused the fire?” asked Will.
“Hmm . . . they probably had some safety issues that they ignored and they overrode. Once they were hard aground, they wouldn’t have been able to shut down any of their systems for the routine required maintenance. I started out on offshore oil rigs, and I know all about complex systems. They need a lot of preventive maintenance. Something probably overheated and they kept it running, and there’s your initiation point.
“Do you see the small portholes on the lowest level near the water? That’s the crew quarters. The crew can move from there to the engineering spaces, but the passengers can’t, not easily. The crew can lock and unlock anything. Turn the water on, or turn it off. The crew would have been able to keep the power on in one area and turn it off in another. They would have had to make a lot of difficult choices, like keeping all the freezers cold, or letting the food spoil. This would be balanced against trying to extend the operating time of the lights and the water, and who is in charge of deciding? Would they try to run everything as normal for one week until the fuel runs out, or try to stretch out the critical life-support systems?”
Our tall and now clean-shaved newcomer had a demeanor that commanded attention when he spoke on technical matters.
“And again, who decides? The sanitation systems would fail and there’d be no cabin toilets. Just imagine that one thing. And when the lights go out inside those ships you’re in a black tomb. Their emergency lights run on batteries, but they’d only last about a day. The crew could have even become like prison guards, if you think of it that way. It would have been terrible after the water taps ran dry and the lights went out. Especially if the power and water distribution were being controlled by the crew, and the passengers knew it. They could have fought for control, but even if the passengers took over, that wouldn’t bring the ship more fuel, and they wouldn’t know how to run the systems. But maybe they were rescued. I sure hope so.”
I said, “They were always impressive to watch at night. You’d see their loom before they even broke the horizon. Lit up like Christmas displays. Serenity is a big one, but not the biggest. She’s about average. If you count the lower portholes, she has ten decks above the waterline, and she’s a thousand feet long. That’s as big as an aircraft carrier. Like you said, it’s a floating city inside a metal box. Or it was.”
Curt studied the chart. “Maybe they were sailing from Puerto Plata, here on the top of the Dominican Republic, and heading back to the USA. Or maybe from Puerto Rico, who knows? Any of the islands. I can’t imagine many people were going on holiday cruises after GPS failed, but maybe the ship was just ferrying passengers, and not taking them on vacation. It would make sense if they were carrying people back to the states. After the tourism model ended they would have still been useful for moving people, a lot of people. Even refugees. I know how bad it was on the islands when the food imports stopped coming and they couldn’t make fresh water. It takes fuel to run the de-sal plants, so no fuel means no fresh water—and people become desperate when there’s no drinking water.”
“Barry had it right,” I said. “It’s like pulling the plug on an aquarium. It had to be hell on that ship if nobody came to take them off. The stronger ones might have made it across the reef to Little Inagua, maybe in the lifeboats. But then what? There’s no fresh water. There are a couple life boats on the island, but they might have just washed up there. And I saw a life raft up on Mayaguana that might have come from here. The ship had spots for a dozen covered life boats on each side, but that’s not enough, and the one that’s hanging down didn’t even make it into the water. The life boats don’t have much range; everything was based on waiting for rescue, but what if it doesn’t come? The passengers could have gotten into the inflatable life rafts, but then what? What if nobody’s coming? I think most of them would have stayed on the ship until the end. Fire and all.”
Barry said, “How is that ship different from Charleston, or just about any city? Maybe the city people had a little more elbow room, but they still didn’t have food or drinking water. And if nobody was coming to save them, well, then the people in the cities were doomed, just like the ones who were trapped there on doomsday reef. You fight over the last crumb of food, and then it gets even uglier. And I mean, a lot uglier.”
Nobody said anything after that. I wondered if Barry had shared his story with anybody besides me and Will. His night watch testimony was etched in my memory, and I knew what he meant by “a lot uglier.” He meant murder and cannibalism.
Then Gino said. “And now it’s all just a bird farm. How did so many birds find it? There are five decks of balconies on each side and all the upper decks. That’s one big bird farm.”
It sure was. And the aft section of the ship had burned, so the rest had probably been filled with thick toxic smoke during the fire. Had the passengers and crew been rescued before the blaze? And if they had not been rescued, then what happened to them in that labyrinth of passageways, elevators and ladders when the lights went out? Before, during, or after the fire?
The sea birds in all their thousands were not saying.
See #6.
My grandmother was killed on a cruise ship fire. The “Yarmouth Castle”, just out of Port from Miami. A cruise ship is a very bad place to be in an emergency situation.
At least, it wasn't anywhere near a Baltimore bridge...
Looks like it’s out of stock on Amazon. Any other purchase options?
Gee... that would blow very much.
My wife and I took a 7 day cruise on the Icon back in Feb. It was her 2nd paid voyage, 1st to the Western Caribbean. It was, by far, the best ship we’ve ever been on. And we’ve sailed in every other Royal class and one Carnival.
It’s just a gorgeous ship. Very well designed. Lots of views of the water, from everywhere. We’d definitely go again… if we get a chance at reduced rates.
Yesterday's Amazon consignment order:
It sure would. They are 100% electric, and have only about 10 day’s fuel on board. No fuel, they are dead in the water. In normal times, no problem, rescue would be arranged.
See #6.
I’ll never get on one of these floating apartment buildings. What a tempting terrorist target.
Likewise the analogy to civilization writ large.
Hence the title of the novel.
Maybe rename it “Tesla of the Seas.”
“When I was on a carrier, fires (small ones) were not wholly uncommon.”
I suspect that it was rare to have ANYONE on a carrier that wasn’t trained in fire response - still scary to have a fire at sea, though!
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