The design of most of the these sea going floating hotel barges would indicate that if they get into distress they will begin to list quite badly and quite rapidly. It might be better to do a little research into the list angle before they capsize (could rotate fully and capsize within seconds to minutes i.e. going..going...gone) and consequently getting to the lifeboat muster station in time could prove problematic. Also the list angle will dictate whether the main lifeboats could even be deployed. A compass with a clinometer might be useful to take with you.
Please note the number of Cruise Liners from European and American Ports that have capsized over the last decade or so. That one took several hours and probably some poor seamanship to turn over. Capsize is at the bottom of the list of probable difficulties in a relatively safe technology. The biggest problems are discomfort and, way on top, poor sanitation. These are the problems you should be worrying about.
I believe Jerry has it right. See the article
"Taking a hard look at cruise-ship problems" for a discussion of how likely various emergency scenarios are.
Less bag and more planning. Look at your ships registry, captain and recent inspections. Some cruise lines have good safety records...others not so much
The problem is that it is hard to get reliable information. From the article linked above:
"Is what happened to the Triumph normal? Obtaining answers is not easy.
“No one is systemically collecting data of collisions, fires, evacuations, groundings, sinkings,” said Jim Walker, a maritime lawyer in Miami who has attended more than half a dozen congressional hearings about cruise ship crime and passenger safety. The reason for the lack of data is that cruise lines, while based in the United States, typically incorporate and register their ships overseas. Industry experts say the only place cruise lines are obligated to report anything is to the state under whose laws the ship operates. “The whole industry is essentially outsourced abroad,” Walker said. Or, as Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a statement after the Triumph debacle: “Cruise ships, in large part operating outside the bounds of United States enforcement, have become the wild west of the travel industry.”
--------------snip--------------
Yet for the industry overall, there remains no comprehensive public database of events at sea like fires, power failures and evacuations. Neither the International Maritime Organization nor the U.S. Coast Guard track everything. But there is one unlikely man who does.
“It’s a Canadian professor of sociology,” Walker said, “who testifies in front of the senate.”
Ross A. Klein, an American with dual citizenship who is a professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland in Canada, was a longtime cruise enthusiast, spending more than 300 days at sea between 1992 and 2002. During that time, he saw that there were differences between what the cruise industry was saying about environmental and labor issues, and what he was observing.
Today, Klein is an authority on the cruise industry, having testified at hearings before the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate about onboard crimes, disappearances and industry oversights. His website, www.cruisejunkie.com, is a record of fires, sunken ships, collisions and other events at sea over the last few decades that have been culled from news reports and sources like crew members and passengers."Mr Klein's webpage (
www.cruisejunkie.com) seems to be the go to source for info on cruise ship safety issues.
Previous Topic
Index
