Italian Liner Sinks - lights go out

If the ship had been farther from land, it wouldn't have hit the rock.

Sorry. I couldn't resist that.

GPS is useful, but there's a reason none of my hiking guides ever uses one. Map, compass, and altimeter are more reliable.

But back to the ship: Don't they carry sonar equipment??? Sonar could tell the crew the depth of the water, and show obstacles.

Clearly, "look out the window" is good advice. My Garmin Nuvi is a really wonderful gadget, but every now and then it tells me I've gone off the road, when the view through the windshield tells me I haven't.

 

And if it was sinking without being grounded, it probably wouldn't have been listing too far to launch the lifeboats.

 

Yes. Ships carry Fathometers as well as a many other redundant navigation indicators as well. Your original point is the correct point. Good equipment cannot overcome bad operators, no matter how good the equipment.

 

Report from a passenger on the ill-fated cruise: Costa Concordia - I survived - Cruise Critic Message Boards.

 

I have doubts about sonar being able to see far enough ahead to do a ship that size traveling at high speed much good. Particularly in coastal waters with a lot of reefs and other rock formations and rapidly changing depths. Any sonar experts here?

 

Looks like the ship removed a hunk of the reef

Picture linked from
http://www.cruisecritic.com/slideshows/?ID=319&photo=7&StartRow=1

 

Echo sounders are standard. All they do is bounce sound waves off of the bottom to determine depth. They work pretty well, assuming no weeds or other echo producing stuff in the water. Unfortunately all they tell you is the depth under the hull, which is useful but won't keep you from hitting a rock.

There are also look-ahead sonars and side-scan sonars. These are more common on military vessels. Side scan sonar is similar to synthetic aperture radar. It can used to produce remarkably detailed images of the bottom, like those you see on wreck hunting shows. Side scanning sonar, however, shows you what is to the side, not in front.

Recently there have been some good improvements in look ahead sonar. Some units are even cheap enough to use on recreational vessels. When used properly it will give the operator some indication of depth and obstructions in front of the vessel, but range is very limited. Consequently, it is mostly useful for slowly picking your way through a tricky channel, or feeling your way into an anchorage. It isn't much good for a vessel blasting along at speed. In fact not much is good for a vessel moving at speed, other than staying away from shallow water and obstructions.

Tom

 

The captain is also the director of safety for the cruise line... I think he may have lost that job.


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iPad ?

 

...Thanks. I also heard a long interview on CNN.com from one of the American passengers on a lifeboat that was not able to get off the ship. These ~300 passengers were basically abandoned and left clinging on the ship for ~4 hours. They did not know if anyone was going to come back for them. These stranded folks apparently took various actions, some waited, some jumped into the water, some went back to their rooms or other places. By this time there were other boats around observing/shining lights but none offered assist. One coast guard cutter took one or two peolple off.

This is probably why the captain is in trouble for abandoning ship.

Here it is...what a honeymoon experience...
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2012/01/14/bpr-smith-cruise-disaster.cnn

 

Wow! What an account! A crew that clearly had no emergency training and a captain who preferred to save his own nice person.

There's a joke I must have heard 30 or 40 years ago: On the French lines, the food is exquisite. On the English lines, the waiters are impeccable. On the German lines everything runs like clockwork. But on the Italian lines, when the ship sinks, there's none of this "women and children first" crap.

Sadly, it looks like that's still true.

But then, cruising has never interested me. I'd rather be hiking or diving or something else where I'm active all day long. Sitting in a deck chair, playing shuffleboard, and eating in a restaurant with a thousand other people strikes me as just one or two steps up from jail. At least jails don't usually sink. And they're only a little more boring than a cruise ship. Now, the Lord Nelson was different: I paid to be a member of the crew and spent about 6 or 8 hours a day working.

 

It's actually a pretty popular thing to pay to crew a tall ship. The Lord Nelson and its sister ship, Tenacious. are square-riggers. There are both square-riggers and schooners, and there tend to be very strong preferences among sailors of the two types, regarding which is better. A schooner can sail closer to the wind, while a square-rigger gives the sailing master more flexibility in the choice of sails for different conditions.

Sitting around doing nothing is boring. Working the ship is fun. Since your house chores are probably not fun, the answer to your question is no. Working on the Lord nelson was one of the most fun things I've ever done, and were it not for the seasickness I'd have made it one of my regular vacation activities.

The Lord Nelson is the first tall sailing ship in the world to be 100% handicapped accessible (Tenacious is the second) and half the voyage crew is handicapped, while the other half is able-bodied. The ship can take up to eight wheel-chair users. "Voyage crew" refers to the people who pay to be crew. There are also professional crew, including the captain, the mates, and the engineer.

 

Imagine if there were a vacation ship where EVERY crew station, including Captain, were filled by paying customers! Serving as Captain would be the most expensive, naturally, and the other officer slots would command tall premiums too.

I expect there'd be difficulties if the command positions were occupied by the wealthy who could afford it rather than people actually qualified for the position, but no more so than the types of difficulties we deal with in our political system.

 

With ship names like The Lord Nelson and Tenacious I thought the Royal Navy had brought press ganging back, but then I realized that when you got press ganged you didn't have to pay the Navy in addition to working. In fact the press ganged sailors got paid.

 

Is Costa already doing that?

 

But not very much. And they got flogged for any infraction. The Jubilee Sailing Trust does not flog crew members. We signed ship's articles, and the captain was the law. But I think the only punishment for refusing to work would have been being barred from shipping with them again. After all, who's going to pay to be crew and then fail to do their best?

Anyway, it was an amazing experience, and highly recommended if you like sailing ships and the sea and you don't get seasick.

 

Now that's just silly. Who'd be stupid enough to run a ship the way we run our country?

 

It does sound like a great experience:rockon:

(What you did, not the press ganging)

 

:focus: they are reporting that the captain sailed a few hundred yards closer to shore than authorized so the head waiter could wave to his father.

 

Costa passenger speaks - Yahoo! News has an account is similar to many of the others I've read. It's bad that the crew downplayed things and told people to return to their room or whatever. I wonder if any of the dead and still unaccounted for died because of the bad instructions.

I'd imagine that the crew were in the dark too about the situation too and not given good info.

Hahaha! I've been on a cruise once so far. It was an overall nice experience and nothing wrong w/the dining experience.

Many retired folks like going on cruises...