I was on one of those Carnival Cruise ships a couple of years ago and watched the same operation in Freeport. I presumed they use vectored thrust to turn that big ship around?
“Doin’ a Donut” in the harbor. Pretty cool!
The particular ship I was on used “azipods” for propulsion at the rear of the boat. Versus shafts > props. It was also powered by two DC-9 jet engines, not giant diesels. The jet engines took their air intakes thru pipes that ran all the way up the stacks, 13 stories & 50 feet of stack above. Pretty wild if you like engineering stuff. If you’re not familiar, azipods look a lot like upside down table-fans. They can swivel, so, like the bow thrusters that all ships of that size now have, they can scoot the rear end of the ship dead sideways. That has to be phenomenally handy when docking.
Yeah, the Bahamas turnaround maneuver blew my mind!