Whoa. Cruise ship goes down.

[East Coast Hustle]

Well yeah....I mean I'm just the cook and even I know this shit.

There's also a larger theme at work here. You wouldn't get me on a cruise ship anyway, but you sure as HELL wouldn't get me on one operated by Carnival. They've had a pretty dismal track record over the last several years. I wonder what it will take to make them actually start paying attention to little things like "properly training the crew" and "keeping up on maintenance of vital ship systems".

[East Coast Hustle]

Now they're reporting that the ship was 5 or 6 nautical miles closer to shore than it should have been on that route, with eyewitnesses on Giglio corroborating. They've recovered the black box, so I imagine we'll know alot more in the next week or so. I'm already of the opinion that the captain should have the book thrown at him for abandoning ship before all the passengers were safely off, if it turns out that the accident itself WAS caused by human error/bad judgment rather than a system failure, well, there will be a very special place reserved in sailor hell for that Captain.

Now I feel bad for my earlier statement about him being "hazelwooded". Sounds like this guy is gonna deserve whatever happens to him.

[navkat]

I've been on Carnival. It's a floating YMCA for fat families with no taste buds, sub par cleanliness standards and no savvy whatsoever when it comes to judging quality vs. cost.

Just because they charge you $15 a drink in international waters, and they present you a bacon-wrapped piece of "faux mignon" with balsamic swirled around the plate and call it the "Captain's Dinner" doesn't mean you're getting "the best." Dickhead

You're better off treating your wife to that $105 facial stateside, paying for a sitter and drinking Redstripe in a rowboat for $8 for FOUR instead of ONE.

The internet will get you all the cheap mexican blankets you need for half price and they'll smell better.

[East Coast Hustle]

[P3nT4gR4m]

Are ships this size fitted with some kind of - if a huge gaping hole gets torn in the hull - contingency features? Complex system of moving bulkheads and pumps or something? When they hit the reef was there any other possible outcome other than capsize and sink? Maybe the crew didn't realise how bad the damage was?  I'm trying to think of any possible excuses for not evacuating immediately. Crashing into the shore would stop the boat sinking I guess, maybe the captain thought it'd be part salvageable? Maybe the wreckage is more valuable to the company than the lives of the passengers and crew?

[navkat]

Yes. But there's standard operating procedures and "knowin when to fold em." That's why cruise shp el capitans get dinero mucho.

[East Coast Hustle]

Are ships this size fitted with some kind of - if a huge gaping hole gets torn in the hull - contingency features? Complex system of moving bulkheads and pumps or something? When they hit the reef was there any other possible outcome other than capsize and sink? Maybe the crew didn't realise how bad the damage was?  I'm trying to think of any possible excuses for not evacuating immediately. Crashing into the shore would stop the boat sinking I guess, maybe the captain thought it'd be part salvageable? Maybe the wreckage is more valuable to the company than the lives of the passengers and crew?

Nah, small holes can be patched/pumped/sealed off from the rest of the ship with watertight doors (depending on where exactly the hole is) but something that size is pretty much unrecoverable.

I hadn't even considered that his attempt to reach shallower waters might have been dictated by his employers' desire to lower the cost of the salvage operation. It's certainly within the realm of possibility, but as the captain he should have disregarded any orders given to that effect.

ETA: With what I know of Carnival, I'd say they're more likely to pull some shit like that than any of the other major cruise lines.

[P3nT4gR4m]

Divide the salvageable value of the wreck by probable fatality rate, multiplied by the cost of out of court settlement. I'd imagine if that number is much more than 2 or 3 then the loss of life would become pretty much irrelevant in the eyes of the accountants. Negative publicity would obviously factor in somewhere.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

If that is indeed the captain's motivation for steering aground... wow. That's evil.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

First thought that hit my head:  The bastard was more interested in saving his ship than in saving the passengers & crew.

Contrast this with the Antarctic sinking, where they piled everyone into lifeboats as soon as they realized they'd struck, before even doing an assessment...3 hours later, the ship goes down, with everyone watching from the lifeboats, a hour after that, the Argentinian navy shows up and takes everyone home.  If they'd delayed, well, best not to think of things like being in Antarctic water for whatever fraction of an hour you can survive for.

[East Coast Hustle]

That's one reason I'm VERY glad that my captain and chief engineer are also the co-owners of the company. There's literally no way for there to be a conflict of interest between saving the ship and saving the crew.