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<p>While most cruise lines I’m familiar with have their safety drills right before or right after sailing, international maritime law only requires that they be done withing 24 hours of sailing. Since they had not gone through the safety drill at the time of the incident, I’m not surprised there was chaos on the part of the passengers. The crew, however, may have to answer for their alleged inaction at a time when the passengers needed leadership.</p>
<p>“I’ve always thought the new mega ships look top heavy.”</p>
<p>Yes they do. I would not want to be on such a top heavy ship in a storm. Today they said because of where the hole is, the ship really should have tipped the other way.</p>
<p>The ship is apparently perched on an underwater ledge. If it rocks during the storm they are expecting tonight it could fall off into the 200-feet-deep water behind it, where it becomes unlikely they would be rescuing anyone else. </p>
<p>One would think they would require the center of mass of a ship to be low enough so as to produce an uprighting moment in the event of a tipping.</p>
<p>I am also not a big fan of cruising. Went twice, once with family to Western Caribbean back in 2002 when older d was a junior during February break, dragging her AP Bio textbook with her. We went on Celebrity and then in 2009 did 10 day cruise to Panama Canal on Holland America. My husband has business trip to Vancouver at the end of June so had been looking at Princess cruise to Alaska from Vancouver… now not so sure. With the first cruise I had asked travel agent about safety and she explained all the stepped-up procedures for security since 9/11, but I was thinking more like Titanic scenario. In any case, the muster drill was held before or immediately leaving the port. They do utilize the entertainers for assistance in checking passengers on/off the ship during port visits…not sure about how involved they along with waiters and bartenders might be during ship evacuation, kind of frightening to think about.</p>
<p>The cruise industry is poorly regulated. Other bad stuff happens; people sometimes go overboard and it doesn’t always make headlines. (did anybody see Dateline a few weeks ago about the groom who met with foul play on shipboard?)</p>
<p>It is also very strange that the captain would abandon the ship knowing there is a good chance that the action would come to light and result in life imprisonment. In this case, fiction (Lord Jim) seems more life-like.</p>
<p>[Travel</a> | Coast Guard to Italian captain: Go back aboard! | Seattle Times Newspaper](<a href=“http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2017257923_apeuitalycruiseaground.html]Travel”>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2017257923_apeuitalycruiseaground.html)</p>
<p>I thought Italian men were supposed to be macho.</p>
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<p>So I’ll be one in a party of one to say…I’m waiting for the accident investigation report to make my judgement.</p>
<p>The companies, the press, everyone loves to blame the crew. Particularly if you can pin it on one individual. That way the company can say, hey it’s not the ships design, or the charts, or an error in procedure, or terrorism…it’s just the fault of one person. So if we get rid of that one person it will never happen again. It makes people feel secure that this will not happen to them. But we really can’t know exactly what the truth is until a detailed investigation takes place. By the time that is finished, nobody will remember anything exept that this is all the captains fault, no matter what the resolution is.</p>
<p>It very well could be that this is 100% his error. It certainly looks as if it is, and that he was in complete denial, and hindered the rescue efforts. But do we really know what their procedures were? Maybe they are allowed to steer in different routes if they choose. Were the charts accurate and updated? Was this accident even from running aground? Do we know for sure what caused this? How do we make this decision based upon what self declared “experts” and passengers say? How do you decide that the entire crew was disorganized and did a terrible job evacuating passengers…when almost EVERYONE out of over 4,000 passengers survived a quickly sinking ship in the dark? Maybe some in the crew actually did their jobs to help evacuate.</p>
<p>Passengers saying that the captain was wining and dining women on the cruise. So what? I think that’s part of their job. Certainly he should have waited for every possible person to go onboard the life boats until he got on, and coordinated people getting off before he did. That is obvious. But to attempt to get back onboard the listing, sinking ship in the dark from the lifeboat because the Coast Guard demanded that? How do you possibly do that? It appears to me that the phrase, “The Captain goes down with the ship,” is apparently a literal phrase, according to some.</p>
<p>I’m not defending him. But I think there were many issues at work, and I’ll take my information from the actual investigation, not speculation and gossip. I’m a captain of another sort of vessel, and I am very aware that they always, always jump to the conclusion that it was the crew’s fault. Sometimes it is, but it takes time to determine the truth.</p>
<p>^ these things usually result from a combination of human and sometimes technological factors lining up for a short period of time in just the wrong way.</p>
<p>A few years ago, I read this book about the cruise ship industry. Interesting reading.</p>
<p>Devils on the Deep Blue Sea by Kristoffer A. Garin</p>
<p>“I thought Italian men were supposed to be macho.”</p>
<p>Wow, stereotype much?! I guess it’s okay because after all Italians are…well, Italians. Pfft.</p>
<p>Busdriver - good point. In fairness to the Italian coast guard official, who was livid with the captain, the outrage was fairly expected with the information it had, plus the chance that missing persons could still be found and saved made the element of time critical.</p>
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<p>Captain Drunky McJoyride takes the ship two miles offcourse, hits a rock, pilots around for an hour denying that there’s a problem and finally beaches the ship half a boatlength from the shore. And then he gets, oh, excuse me, accidentally falls, into a lifeboat while many passengers are on the ship, then he ignores the orders of the Coast Guard to get back on the ship.</p>
<p>And after all that, people say it’s his fault? The nerve.</p>
<p>CF – You missed the part where the boat he “fell into” also magically happens to be the very same boat two of his other senior officers are on. (Or “fell into” – not sure of the order.) </p>
<p>This all reminds me of my daughter’s insistence that she had NO idea who’d snipped the whiskers off one side of the cat. Hmmm… I did it and forgot, H did it and forgot…or I got it – it was an elf! At least she didn’t try to insist that the snippage was for the cat’s benefit.</p>
<p>I would guess the Coast Guard guy was so incensed and telling him he’d make him pay because it must have been immediately obvious to the Coast Guard that the ship had no business being where it was in the first place. That , on top of the Captain abandoning the ship would make anybody livid.</p>
<p>Very probably none of those senior officers should have been in the boats until everyone was evacuated.</p>
<p>The problem with concentrating on blaming just one person completely for a disaster, even if they were the one who instigated the problem in the first place…doesn’t stop it from happening again. Everything needs to be looked at. Should a boat that size be built so it can sink so quickly? What kind of culture does the cruise boat industry have, does the captain have the leeway to go off course any time he chooses?</p>
<p>Many years ago in the aviation industry, we had a culture where the captain was God, and nobody questioned him. Many copilots and flight engineers watched quietly as the captain flew the airplane into the ground. Everyone raged at the foolish captain who made the error or bad decision that killed the crew and passengers. Finally the industry decided to do something different.</p>
<p>The installed more safety systems in the airplanes. They ripped apart the concept that the Captain is King, and emphasized that people must speak up and take responsibility. They lectured us about red flags, adherance to procedures and safety, safety, safety. Every accident is picked apart from every possible detail, with training procedures changed, maintenance and design scrutinized, and every last minute detail of crew performance scoured over.</p>
<p>If cruise captains do this kind of manuever with regularity, and it’s just fine with the cruise lines, and all they do is heap scorn and blame upon this captain without changing procedures…then it will happen again. Hopefully not when I’m onboard, because I love cruising! I’m not trying to stop you guys from heaping scorn on this guy, but I hope the industry takes a good hard look at this instead of just assigning blame to one guy. This captain may not be doing anything differently than any other captain, for all we know.</p>
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<p>Funny how they do that, huh? My 3 year old daughter was singing to her newborn sister, who was strapped into an infant seat on the floor of my master bedroom. I left the room for literally 60 seconds to use the bathroom, giving instructions for big sis to sit tight and keep baby company. Exiting the bathroom, I heard my baby shrieking. She was now out of the infant seat, lying on the floor about three feet away. I said “how did this happen?!” Big sis looked at me with a totally straight face and said “I don’t know.” The fact that we were alone in the house and she was the only possible culprit seemed to escape her. :)</p>
<p>Yes, there is much to learn about what happened, but it is pretty clear that the captain played a role in the tragedy.</p>
<p>In the link I posted, the woman wrote about the problems with the life boats. That’s an issue that scares me. Besides people pushing and fighting to get on, there were technical difficulties. Because the boat was listing, the life boats got stuck to the side of the ship. When finally lowered, it sounds like the sides were so high that no one could see where to steer the boats. She said something about a crew member finally climbed on top of another crew memeber’s shoulders to see where they were going. Apparently all the life boats were crashing into each other. What a nightmare!</p>
<p>busdriver, I agree that the whole situation needs to be looked at. Why was McJoyride in charge of a ship with thousands of people on it, when he was so demonstrably incompetent? Why didn’t a junior officer take over when he was flailing about incompetently? Why were the crew so poorly trained in emergency evacuation? </p>
<p>But blame is not zero-sum, nor is responsibility. McJoyride can be 100% at fault-- and I think he probably is-- yet that leaves plenty of blame to go around to his bosses and his underlings.</p>
<p>I just discovered on FaceBook that an acquaintance and her husband were on board the ship during the disaster. Her account of the event is absolutely chilling. </p>
<p>One paragraph from her update:</p>
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<p>I cannot imagine…</p>
<p>I have a few cruises under my belt and just booked one for Alaska in June… So far the biggest danger has been taxi cab drivers on arrival and departure days on the way to/from the airport, or trying heroics on excursions (motorcycles, ATVs).</p>
<p>Could the ships be designed better? sure… Trained better? sure. But, just like with our other gadgets, as we say in human factors, “design an idiot-proof gadget and Mother Nature will design a better idiot”…</p>
<p>I somehow find bear warnings by the national park service more disturbing :-)</p>