NEW YORK — Cruise ships keep getting bigger, and more popular, but the expansion in ship size is worrying safety experts, lawmakers, and regulators, who say the supersize craze is fraught with peril.
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The perils were visible last year when the Costa Concordia, owned by Carnival Corp., of Miami, capsized off Italy. The accident killed 32 people....
Related: Sunday Globe Special: Costa Concordia Case in Court
In February, a fire crippled the Carnival Triumph, stranding thousands without power for four days in the Gulf of Mexico.
Sit right back and you'll read a tale:
"A cruise ship disabled for five nightmarish days in the Gulf finally docked with some 4,200 people aboard late Thursday, passengers raucously cheering the end to an ocean odyssey they say was marked by overflowing toilets, food shortages and foul odors. Kalin Hill, of Houston, who boarded the Triumph as part of a bachelorette party, said, ‘‘there’s poop and urine all along the floor. The floor is flooded with sewer water ... and we had to poop in bags.’’
Time to clean up.
Another blaze forced Royal Caribbean’s Grandeur of the Seas to a Bahamas port in May. Pictures showed the stern blackened by fire.
The accidents and fires have heightened concern about the ability of megaships to handle emergencies or large-scale evacuations at sea. Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, Democrat of West Virginia, introduced legislation this summer that would strengthen federal oversight of cruise lines’ safety procedures and consumer protections.
Cruise operators point out that bigger ships have more fire safety equipment, and contend they are safer.
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Some experts doubt that ships can grow much larger. Today’s biggest ship, Royal Caribbean’s Allure of the Seas, has 2,706 rooms, 16 decks, 22 restaurants, 20 bars, and 10 hot tubs, as well as a shopping mall, a casino, a water park, a half-mile track, a zip line, mini golf, and Broadway-style live shows. It can accommodate nearly 6,300 passengers and 2,394 crew. It’s 1,188 feet long. Its sister ship, Oasis of the Seas, is 2 inches shorter.
Larger ships have fewer options in an emergency, said Michael Bruno, engineering school dean at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J. “Given the size of today’s ships, any problem immediately becomes a very big problem,” he said.
Rear Admiral Joseph Servidio, a Coast Guard assistant commandant, said in July that the three fires “highlight serious questions about the design, maintenance, and operation of fire safety equipment on board these vessels.”
The head of the International Maritime Organization, the United Nations agency in charge of marine regulations, warned in 2000 of the growing hazards of building larger ships. William O’Neil, the group’s secretary general at the time, said the industry could not “rely on luck holding indefinitely.” One result was new global regulations in 2010 that require new ships to have redundant systems to allow them to return to port even in the worst emergency. About 10 ships built since then comply.
Bud Darr, senior vice president at the cruise lines association, said ships operate under layers of oversight — from the Coast Guard, auditors hired by cruise operators, and countries like the Bahamas and Panama.
“The simple problem is they are building them too big and putting too many people aboard,” said Captain William H. Doherty, a former safety manager for Norwegian Cruise Lines. “The magnitude of the problem is much bigger than the cruise industry wants to acknowledge.”
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The next Titanic in waiting?
Freud's ideas about the male preoccupation with size might be of particular interest to the Globe -- as if that's all you had to worry about aboard ship:
"Cruise lines make crime data public" by Curt Anderson | Associated Press, August 02, 2013
MIAMI — For the first time, the three largest US-based cruise lines began posting on their websites Thursday more comprehensive data about allegations of serious crimes committed aboard ships. The disclosures were made voluntarily but come amid growing pressure from Congress and victims for more accuracy about crime at sea.
Related: Cruising Along
The postings by Carnival Corp., Royal Caribbean, and Norwegian Cruise Line show many more crimes were reported to security personnel than had previously been made public, but it was still a minuscule number compared with the nearly 17 million people who embark on cruises in North America every year....
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Time to dock this post in port.
UPDATE:
"A 6-year-old boy drowned in one of the pools aboard a Carnival Cruise Lines ship while at sea, the company said in a statement Monday. The Carnival Victory was on the last leg of a four-day Caribbean cruise Sunday when the boy drowned in the midship pool."
