Italian Liner Sinks - lights go out

Wow that is just nuts...I did hear the CEO say the capt intentionally buzzed the island, so that would be consistent.

Now, qbee42, do you need to ammend your theory on cause? Or is it still good generally good?

 

Having sailed on three Cruises now, all I can say is I am glad I was not on that ship. I just saw the video on FOX of the wreck, and the phone videos. What disorganization! So much for chain of command and help the passengers!
There will be lawsuits for years, the sharks already smell the scent of bloody money!

 

Italian Ship, Italian Company, wreck occurred in Italy. How difficult is it to get a decent settlement in Italian courts?

Edit: It is also registered in Italy instead of some third world country like most cruise ships.

I've sailed on 5 ocean cruises and as many river cruises. I won't let this stop me from taking more.

 

This is consistent with my theory. Modern navigational aids produce a false sense of confidence, which encourages people to pull stunts like this. With more uncertainty one tends to stay the hell away from big rocks.

Tom

 

Or the little ones at low tide...

:nod:

 

Yeah, I know. I once advertised for a travel companion (hoping to find a girlfriend). All the women who replied said they, too, wanted a companion... for cruising and ballroom dancing!

This wouldn't prevent me from going on a cruise. Utter lack of interest in cruising is what prevents me from going on a cruise. But if I was going to go on a cruise, I'd think twice before selecting an Italian line.

I do go out on boats, though, for diving and snorkeling. Cruise ships overall are probably safer than the little boats I go out on. But as I've said with regard to sharks in the sea and bears in the woods, the most dangerous part of any trip is driving to the airport.

A headline on Yahoo as I was checking email said the Italian coast guard ordered the captain back on board to direct the rescue, but he kept stalling, and is now charged with multiple manslaughter, causing a shipwreck, and abandoning ship.

 

i've been on a few cruises. they all seemed fine when everything was well. but in an emergency, who knows? i heard an interview with a maritime lawyer. one thing he mentioned is the many different languages spoken by passengers and crew members. training for crew comes with interpreters. when the s#!t hits the fan, it's a problem.

 

There are two groups of crew members on a cruise ship: the sailors who operate the vessel, and the rest who are essentially hotel staff. Most passengers have little contact with the professional sailors, who spend their time behind the scenes operating the vessel.

The hotel staff is often a motley group gathered from countries around the world, underpaid, and poorly trained. This is where things often go bad in an emergency, where passengers are forced to rely on hotel staff to do a sailor's work. They don't have the training or experience, and often have language barriers. It's not a happy situation.

Tom

 

You're missing out the whole point of a cruise! Sure, some people go with the intention of relaxing on deck the entire time. But there's so much more you can do if you plan it right. On a cruise to Alaska I got to hike a glacier, go rafting through the Bald Eagle Preserve, and take a small boat out to watch a bunch of whales feeding. Other cruises I've gone snorkeling, scuba diving, ocean kayaking, zip-lining, seen a bunch of old Mayan ruins, and met one of the guys largely responsible for Yoda in the original Star Wars. You can make cruises as active or as lazy as you want, which might be part of their appeal for families. You can split up for your "shore excursions" so the lazy can be lazy, and the adventurous can be active, and get back together on the boat to talk about them, have dinner, and attend various evening entertainments.

 

I'm not dissing cruising. I'm just saying it's not for me. It's kind of like those "If it's Tuesday it must be Belgium" deals. It's great if you want to see a lot of different stuff in a short period of time, or when different family members want to do different stuff. But I don't like crowds (hence my comment earlier about dining halls with a thousand people). And I prefer in-depth experiences to surveys. A cruise ship takes you to a lot of places, in each of which you have a limited amount of time to do one thing.

I like to go to a place and explore it thoroughly. I go to a wilderness lodge for a week or three and hike all the trails. Or I go some place where I can dive for a week and a half and get a real sense of the area.

It sounds like Rene and her DH plan stuff at the stops apart from what the ship offers, but I think of cruises where 4,000 people pile into 80 busses where they get 30 minutes at the city cathedral and an hour at the souvenir shop and a running monologue about the city, which for all they know is fiction, and then it's time to get back on the ship. I know small ships are a little better.

The fewer people around, the more I like it, and cruise ships, especially the big ones, give me the creeps for the number of people crowded onto them. I'm not saying I'd never go on a cruise. But I'd need a mighty strong incentive. Like a promise of sex with an awfully nice women. Otherwise give me a wilderness hiking lodge with ten or 15 people in it, hiking in groups of five, or diving with one or two buddies from a boat carrying eight or ten divers.

It's just a matter of personal preference. And of course that nagging matter of seasickness.

 

Here's the translated transcript of the conversation between the Coast Guard and Schettino. Some of the profanity might have been lost in translation though...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mobil...captain-coast-guard-transcript_n_1211009.html

 

From http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/0...-on-hold-after-wrecked-ship-shifts-in-water/:

You'll need to click the + sign to view it properly or go to the original article.

 

leave it there and remodel the insides into a floating, err... grounded hotel/casino. in rememberence of the captain's gamble.

 

For those who hadn't seen it, this is what the inside of the Costa Concordia looked like before the accident: Video: Inside the luxury Costa Concordia cruise ship - Telegraph.

The layout of the facilities has a slight similarity to a Royal Caribbean cruise ship I'd been on before.

 

It will be interesting to see how they do it. To get the water out they will need to displace the water. Maybe all Gen II owners can donate their fuel bladders in exchange for good fuel tanks from Toyota?

 

The entire video tour was of restaurants, bars, the casino, the theater & what looked like a jewelry store - nothing that I couldn't enjoy downtown where I live. Nothing about the ship & voyage as a ship & voyage: activities and experiences you could only enjoy aboard a vessel.

Except as a means of meeting people, I don't see any point to taking a cruise - and even then I could meet people in venues downtown. But I don't think these cruises are intended as "transportaton" to their nominal ports of call which, as Daniel pointed out, are accessible only as part of some fleeting group activity that visits "canned" attractions ashore, none of which are free. The ships don't even have any aesthetic appeal; they're city highrises tipped horizontal and perched gracelessly onto the sea, blighting the view rather than adding to it.

Windjammer cruises, where you're part of the sailing crew - now that'd be a trip worth taking. But on these diesel behemoths we've really lost touch with the romance of travel, and turned the experience into just another trip to the mall.

 

Pretty much, although you need to protect the hull during the refloat, or it will get more punctures.

The diagram in the post above yours does a decent job showing how it's done.

Tom

 

This guy is getting more disgusting every day. I would like to see the hull turned into a prison and then welded shut with only one prisoner inside, and left in place where it is for about 60 more years.

 

Allegedly attributed to Winston Churchill: