'We all suffer from PTSD': 10 years after the Costa Concordia cruise disaster, memories remain

GIGLIO, Italy — Ten years have passed since the Costa Concordia cruise ship slammed into a reef and capsized off the Tuscan island of Giglio. But for the passengers on board and the residents who welcomed them ashore, the memories of that harrowing, freezing night remain vividly etched into their minds.

The dinner plates that flew off the tables when the rocks first gashed the hull. The blackout after the ship's engine room flooded and its generators failed. The final mad scramble to evacuate the listing liner and then the extraordinary generosity of Giglio islanders who offered shoes, sweatshirts and shelter until the sun rose and passengers were ferried to the mainland.

Italy on Thursday is marking the 10th anniversary of the Concordia disaster with a daylong commemoration that will end with a candlelit vigil near the moment the ship hit the reef: 9:45 p.m. on Jan. 13, 2012. The events will honor the 32 people who died that night, the 4,200 survivors, but also the residents of Giglio, who took in passengers and crew and then lived with the Concordia's wrecked carcass off their shore for another two years until it was righted and hauled away for scrap.

► CDC travel guidance: CDC warns 'avoid cruise travel' after more than 5,000 COVID cases in two weeks amid omicron

“For us islanders, when we remember some event, we always refer to whether it was before or after the Concordia,” said Matteo Coppa, who was 23 and fishing on the jetty when the darkened Concordia listed toward shore and then collapsed onto its side in the water.

“I imagine it like a nail stuck to the wall that marks that date, as a before and after,” he said, recounting how he joined the rescue effort that night, helping pull ashore the dazed, injured and freezing passengers from lifeboats.

The sad anniversary comes as the cruise industry, shut down in much of the world for months because of the coronavirus pandemic, is once again in the spotlight because of COVID-19 outbreaks that threaten passenger safety. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control last month  warned people across-the-board not to go on cruises, regardless of their vaccination status, because of the risks of infection.

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'We all suffer from PTSD'

For Concordia survivor Georgia Ananias, the COVID-19 infections are just the latest evidence that passenger safety still isn’t a top priority for the cruise ship industry. Passengers aboard the Concordia were largely left on their own to find life jackets and a functioning lifeboat after the captain steered the ship close too shore in a stunt. He then delayed an evacuation order until it was too late, with lifeboats unable to lower because the ship was listing too heavily.

“I always said this will not define me, but you have no choice," Ananias said in an interview from her home in Los Angeles, Calif. “We all suffer from PTSD. We had a lot of guilt that we survived and 32 other people died.”

Prosecutors blamed the delayed evacuation order and conflicting instructions given by crew for the chaos that ensued as passengers scrambled to get off the ship. The captain, Francesco Schettino, is serving a 16-year prison sentence for manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning a ship before all the passengers and crew had evacuated.

Ananias and her family declined Costa’s initial $14,500 compensation offered to each passenger and sued Costa, a unit of U.S.-based Carnival Corp., to try to cover the cost of their medical bills and therapy for the post-traumatic stress they have suffered. But after eight years in the U.S. and then Italian court system, they lost their case.

“I think people need to be aware that when you go on a cruise, that if there is a problem, you will not have the justice that you may be used to in the country in which you are living,” said Ananias, who went onto become a top official in the International Cruise Victims association, an advocacy group that lobbies to improve safety aboard ships and increase transparency and accountability in the industry.

Costa didn’t respond to emails seeking comment on the anniversary.

► Royal Caribbean cancels sailings: Pushes back restart on several ships over COVID

'We did something incredible'

Cruise Lines International Association, the world’s largest cruise industry trade association, stressed in a statement to The Associated Press that passenger and crew safety was the industry's top priority, and that cruising remains one of the safest vacation experiences available.

“Our thoughts continue to be with the victims of the Concordia tragedy and their families on this sad anniversary," CLIA said. It said it has worked over the past 10 years with the International Maritime Organization and the maritime industry to “drive a safety culture that is based on continuous improvement."

For Giglio Mayor Sergio Ortelli, the memories of that night run the gamut: the horror of seeing the capsized ship, the scramble to coordinate rescue services on shore, the recovery of the first bodies and then the pride that islanders rose to the occasion to tend to the survivors.

► Cruising during COVID-19: Cancellation, refund policies vary by cruise line

Ortelli was later on hand when, in September 2013, the 115,000-ton, 1,000-foot long cruise ship was righted vertical off its seabed graveyard in an extraordinary feat of engineering. But the night of the disaster, a Friday the 13th, remains seared in his memory.

“It was a night that, in addition to being a tragedy, had a beautiful side because the response of the people was a spontaneous gesture that was appreciated around the world,” Ortelli said.

It seemed the natural thing to do at the time. “But then we realized that on that night, in just a few hours, we did something incredible.”

cruise ship sinks 2014

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The Costa Concordia Disaster: How Human Error Made It Worse

By: Becky Little

Updated: August 10, 2023 | Original: June 23, 2021

Night view on January 16, 2012, of the cruise liner Costa Concordia aground in front of the harbor of Isola del Giglio after hitting underwater rocks on January 13.

Many famous naval disasters happen far out at sea, but on January 13, 2012, the Costa Concordia wrecked just off the coast of an Italian island in relatively shallow water. The avoidable disaster killed 32 people and seriously injured many others, and left investigators wondering: Why was the luxury cruise ship sailing so close to the shore in the first place?

During the ensuing trial, prosecutors came up with a tabloid-ready explanation : The married ship captain had sailed it so close to the island to impress a much younger Moldovan dancer with whom he was having an affair.

Whether or not Captain Francesco Schettino was trying to impress his girlfriend is debatable. (Schettino insisted the ship sailed close to shore to salute other mariners and give passengers a good view.) But whatever the reason for getting too close, the Italian courts found the captain, four crew members and one official from the ship’s company, Costa Crociere (part of Carnival Corporation), to be at fault for causing the disaster and preventing a safe evacuation. The wreck was not the fault of unexpected weather or ship malfunction—it was a disaster caused entirely by a series of human errors.

“At any time when you have an incident similar to Concordia, there is never…a single causal factor,” says Brad Schoenwald, a senior marine inspector at the United States Coast Guard. “It is generally a sequence of events, things that line up in a bad way that ultimately create that incident.”

Wrecking Near the Shore

Technicians pass in a small boat near the stricken cruise liner Costa Concordia lying aground in front of the Isola del Giglio on January 26, 2012 after hitting underwater rocks on January 13.

The Concordia was supposed to take passengers on a seven-day Italian cruise from Civitavecchia to Savona. But when it deviated from its planned path to sail closer to the island of Giglio, the ship struck a reef known as the Scole Rocks. The impact damaged the ship, allowing water to seep in and putting the 4,229 people on board in danger.

Sailing close to shore to give passengers a nice view or salute other sailors is known as a “sail-by,” and it’s unclear how often cruise ships perform these maneuvers. Some consider them to be dangerous deviations from planned routes. In its investigative report on the 2012 disaster, Italy’s Ministry of Infrastructures and Transports found that the Concordia “was sailing too close to the coastline, in a poorly lit shore area…at an unsafe distance at night time and at high speed (15.5 kts).”

In his trial, Captain Schettino blamed the shipwreck on Helmsman Jacob Rusli Bin, who he claimed reacted incorrectly to his order; and argued that if the helmsman had reacted correctly and quickly, the ship wouldn’t have wrecked. However, an Italian naval admiral testified in court that even though the helmsman was late in executing the captain’s orders, “the crash would’ve happened anyway.” (The helmsman was one of the four crew members convicted in court for contributing to the disaster.)

A Questionable Evacuation

Former Captain of the Costa Concordia Francesco Schettino speaks with reporters after being aboard the ship with the team of experts inspecting the wreck on February 27, 2014 in Isola del Giglio, Italy. The Italian captain went back onboard the wreck for the first time since the sinking of the cruise ship on January 13, 2012, as part of his trial for manslaughter and abandoning ship.

Evidence introduced in Schettino’s trial suggests that the safety of his passengers and crew wasn’t his number one priority as he assessed the damage to the Concordia. The impact and water leakage caused an electrical blackout on the ship, and a recorded phone call with Costa Crociere’s crisis coordinator, Roberto Ferrarini, shows he tried to downplay and cover up his actions by saying the blackout was what actually caused the accident.

“I have made a mess and practically the whole ship is flooding,” Schettino told Ferrarini while the ship was sinking. “What should I say to the media?… To the port authorities I have said that we had…a blackout.” (Ferrarini was later convicted for contributing to the disaster by delaying rescue operations.)

Schettino also didn’t immediately alert the Italian Search and Rescue Authority about the accident. The impact on the Scole Rocks occurred at about 9:45 p.m. local time, and the first person to contact rescue officials about the ship was someone on the shore, according to the investigative report. Search and Rescue contacted the ship a few minutes after 10:00 p.m., but Schettino didn’t tell them what had happened for about 20 more minutes.

A little more than an hour after impact, the crew began to evacuate the ship. But the report noted that some passengers testified that they didn’t hear the alarm to proceed to the lifeboats. Evacuation was made even more chaotic by the ship listing so far to starboard, making walking inside very difficult and lowering the lifeboats on one side, near to impossible. Making things worse, the crew had dropped the anchor incorrectly, causing the ship to flop over even more dramatically.

Through the confusion, the captain somehow made it into a lifeboat before everyone else had made it off. A coast guard member angrily told him on the phone to “Get back on board, damn it!” —a recorded sound bite that turned into a T-shirt slogan in Italy.

Schettino argued that he fell into a lifeboat because of how the ship was listing to one side, but this argument proved unconvincing. In 2015, a court found Schettino guilty of manslaughter, causing a shipwreck, abandoning ship before passengers and crew were evacuated and lying to authorities about the disaster. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison. In addition to Schettino, Ferrarini and Rusli Bin, the other people who received convictions for their role in the disaster were Cabin Service Director Manrico Giampedroni, First Officer Ciro Ambrosio and Third Officer Silvia Coronica.

cruise ship sinks 2014

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cruise ship sinks 2014

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The Gustloff Incident – History’s Deadliest (and Mostly Forgotten) Maritime Disaster

The German liner Wilhelm Gustloff was about a third of the size of the Titanic, but was carrying six times as many people when she was torpedoed by a Soviet sub on Jan. 30, 1945.

The RMS Titanic is by far the most famous ill-fated ship of all time. Yet the unlucky luxury liner, which went down with more than 1,600 on board, can’t touch the doomed Nazi cruise ship Wilhelm Gustloff when it comes to lives lost. Destroyed in action while carrying refugees amid the chaotic closing weeks of World War Two, the German vessel sank with several thousand more passengers than legendary British Cunard Liner. But despite the scope of the tragedy, few in the West know much about the event, which remains hands-down the worst maritime disaster in recorded history. Journalist and historian Cathryn J. Prince, author of the award winning 2013 book Death in the Baltic: The World War II Sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff , recently penned this piece about the epic tragedy for MilitaryHistoryNow.com. We’re happy to share it with you. 

By Cathryn J. Prince

On Jan. 30, 1945, history’s deadliest maritime disaster in peace or war occurred in the Baltic Sea. An estimated 10,000 people perished in the little-known incident that saw a Soviet submarine torpedo the German cruise ship  Wilhelm Gustloff off Leba, Poland.

cruise ship sinks 2014

A Ship Named Gustloff

When Adolf Hitler launched the Wilhelm Gustloff from the seaside city of Hamburg on May 5, 1937, hundreds of German workers and Nazi party officials gathered to witness the spectacle.

Flags and swastika banners festooned the quay and arms raised in the notorious Heil Hitler salute as the ship sailed forth showing an uneasy world the full industrial might of Nazi Germany.

The 200-foot long, 25,000-ton vessel was named for Wilhelm Gustloff , the late head of the Swiss Nazi Party who was gunned down a year earlier by a Yugoslavian Jew named David Frankfurter. The Third Reich chose to pay tribute to one of its foremost leaders in the form of the 25-million Reichsmarks flagship for Nazi Germany’s Kraft durch Freude (KdF)  or “Strength Through Joy Fleet”.

The KdF was a subsidiary of the Deutsche Arbeitsfront or German Labor Front. Nazi trade union chief Robert Ley , who also had a liner named for him, helped establish the KdF as a means to provide amenities to the German working class and their families.

The Wilhelm Gustloff, like   the  Robert Ley and other liners in the fleet,   was equipped with 22 lifeboats and featured 12 watertight transverse bulkheads. These measures were supposed to make the ship “absolutely secure.” (After the loss of the Titanic in 1912, no ship builder dared call any vessel, especially a cruise liner, “unsinkable.”)

The Skipper

The Wilhelm Gustloff’s maiden voyage took it to the Mediterranean with Captain Lübbe, 58, in command. The vessel had a compliment of 400 to serve an estimated 1,456 passengers. Just one day into the cruise, Lübbe died of a heart attack. A new captain came aboard to take command: Friedrich Peterson. The Wilhelm Gustloff would be his on the fateful night of Jan. 30, 1945.

The Soviet Sub Commander

Born in 1913 to a Romanian sailor and a Ukrainian woman, Alexander I. Marinesko was raised in Odessa, a port on the northwest shore of the Black Sea. He joined the Soviet merchant fleet as a young man and later transferred to the navy where moved up through the ranks of that country’s submarine corps. In 1943 he took command of the S-13 , a Russian-built S-Class sub . Although Marinesko enjoyed a successful career as skipper, in early 1945 he faced a court marshal following a forbidden New Year’s Eve tryst with a Swedish national. Desperate to salvage his career, the 32-year-old captain was determined to sink anything German. When he spied the Gustloff in his periscope on the night of Jan. 30, he ordered an attack without hesitation.

Human Cargo

By January 1945, civilians living in Eastern Prussia were growing increasingly frantic. The Red Army was coming and few expected the invaders to offer any quarter to Germans. Fearing the Russian onslaught, Nazi admiral Karl Dönitz commanded his vessels to evacuated as many civilians and military personnel from the region as possible. It would prove to be one of the Kriegsmarine final major efforts of the war. Virtually every available surface ship in the German navy participated in the mission, dubbed Operation Hannibal . Even the Reich’s merchant fleet joined in the boat lift.

The Wilhelm Gustloff was just one of 800 vessels, from mighty cruise liners down to small fishing boats, assigned to carry passengers from the Gulf of Danzig that January. Eventually, more than two million civilians were taken off the Courland, East and West Prussia, Pomerania and parts of Mecklenburg between Jan. 23 and the end of the war in May. Aside from the large ports – Danzig, Gotenhafen, Königsberg, Pillau – throngs of civilians tried their luck from smaller ports and fishing villages.

On Jan. 30, more than 10,000 refugees had been crammed aboard Wilhelm Gustloff in Gotenhafen. They hoped the ship would take them to safety in Kiel, a German Naval Base across the Baltic Sea. Shortly after midday, the liner put to see.

A 1996 Russian stamp commemorating the S-13. The sub's captain , Alexander Ivanovich Marinesko, was posthumously made a hero of the Soviet Union in 1990 for his role in the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff. Image Courtesy WikiCommons.

Surprise Attack

At around 8 p.m. that same evening, Hitler delivered a speech commemorating the 12th anniversary of the Nazi party’s rise to power. Radio stations throughout the Reich broadcast the event. On board the Wilhelm Gustloff, crewmen transmitted the speech live over the ship-wide PA system.

A short distance away, the commander of the Russian submarine S-13 had spotted the slow-moving liner and moved in for the kill.

At 9 p.m. local time, just as the Fuhrer reached the end of his fevered address, Captain Marinesko ordered the S-13 to fire all four of her tubes at the German vessel. One of the torpedoes became lodged in the launching tube, its primer fully armed. The slightest jolt threatened to detonate the warhead, destroying the submarine. The crew gingerly disarmed the weapon, which had marked with the words “For Stalin”.

Cathryn J. Prince is the author of Death in the Baltic: The World War II Sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff.

The other three torpedoes found their target. The first punched through the bow. The second blasted a hole near the swimming pool where 373 members of the Women’s Naval Auxiliary had taken refuge — most of the young women died instantly. The third torpedo struck the Wilhelm Gustloff amidships, near the engine room. The blast disabled the engines and cut the ship’s power. It also extinguished the lights and silenced the vessel’s communications system.

Over the next 90 minutes, the ship sank.

Today, the Wilhelm Gustloff lies on the sandy bottom of the Baltic Sea. Although the tally of dead and living wouldn’t come until years after the war, it’s now known that fewer than 1,000 survived. Almost six times as many men, women and children perished in the attack than were lost during the April 15, 1912 sinking of the Titanic . And so on Jan. 30, 1945 the Wilhelm Gustloff became the worst maritime disaster in history.

SOURCES Death in the Baltic: The WWII Sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff (Palgrave Macmillan).

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12 thoughts on “ The Gustloff Incident – History’s Deadliest (and Mostly Forgotten) Maritime Disaster ”

It seems rather callous for the Russians to recognize the event with a postage stamp. Killing 10,000 civilians is hardly an accomplishment worthy of celebration 50 years after the end of the war.

I agree. That’s why I added the image to the article. But to be fair to the Russians, the US issued a stamp in 1995 to commemorate the Enola Gay, much to the unhappiness of Japan.

Those “civilians” consisted mostly of the members of the Nazi auxilary military services. For example, mentioned in this article “children” was Kriegsmarine cadets.

There is always cause and effect (Newton). May be, just may be, the Germans should not have invaded the Soviet Union, not starved 1.2 million civilians at the siege of Leningrad, not starved to death 3 million Russian POWs, not ruined the Ukrainian countryside by burning down farm, carrying off animals, carrying off people turned forced labourers in Germany, not being quite so beastly to Jews, Gypsies, Jehovas Witnesses, etc. They robbed everybody of everything, did they really expect to be treated with kid gloves?

As well as civilians the ship was carrying nearly 1,000 members of the German U-boat training arm, and she was also fitted with light anti-aircraft weapons

At 1945 Gustloff had not been a civilian ship – she was requisitioned by Kriegsmarine in 1939 and was carrying Kriegsmarine colors since 1940.

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Regardless of a person’s opinions and loyalties – it is always the civilians who suffer from the endless wars waged across the world. In an interview at Nuremberg with Hermann Goring he spoke of how a country’s people were enlisted to support a war, and that it was always the same method throughout history. Tell your people that “our” way of life is in jeopardy because of a perceived enemy.

I would like to politely point out that the Titanic was built and operated and by the White Star Line, not the Cunard Line. May your nights and days be auspicious – thank you.

I would like to politely point out that the Titanic was built, owned and operated by the White Star Line, not the Cunard Line. You were incorrect in the article’s introduction but correct later in the latter part of the article proper. May your nights and days be auspicious. Thank you.

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The Golden Ray, a 656-foot vehicle carrier capsized in St Simons Sound, near Brunswick, Georgia

What happens when a huge ship sinks? A step-by-step guide to averting disaster

From the Ever Given blocking the Suez, to the Costa Concordia cruise ship hitting a reef, what exactly do you do when a vessel comes to grief – and how do you prevent catastrophic pollution?

A t 3:24am in the Atlantic Ocean, a catastrophe unfolds across the moonlit waters. The MS Seascape – a 200-metre, six-storey cargo vessel carrying 4,000 new electric vehicles – is pushed by swells into a coral reef. The ship grinds to a sickening halt, begins listing violently to the side and capsizes on to the reef a few kilometres from port.

The coastguard receives the distress call. Helicopters lift the flailing crew members to safety, while support boats unload any cargo that hasn’t already tumbled into the sea. It’s urgent – lithium ion batteries in electric cars risk exploding and most of the vehicles are stored in the hold. If fire breaks out, the vessel will become a giant pressure cooker.

Although our MS Seascape is a hypothetical ship, its situation is far from uncommon. In 2021, 54 large vessels either sank, ran aground or went up in flames and these behemoths are more likely to cause catastrophe when things go wrong.

What is the Shipwrecked series?

There are 3m lost vessels under the waves, and with new technology finally enabling us to explore them, Guardian Seascape is dedicating a series to what is being found: the secret histories, hidden treasures and the lessons they teach. From glimpses into storied wrecks such as the Titanic and Ernest Shackleton’s doomed Endurance, to slave vessels such as the Clotilda or Spanish galleons lined with plundered South American gold that confront us with our troubled history, shipwrecks are time capsules, holding clues to who we are.

But they are also ocean actors in their own right, home to huge colonies of marine life. They are victims, too, of the same threats faced by the ocean: invasive species eating away at their hulls, acidification slowly causing them to disintegrate. Shipwrecks are mirrors showing us not just who we’ve been, but what our future holds on a fast-heating globe.

The pull of these wrecks has been a boon for science, shedding light on a part of the planet that has been shrouded in mystery. “If shipwrecks are the sirens that lure us into the depths, they encourage exploration into what truly is the last frontier of the planet,” says James Delgado of shipwreck company Search Inc. “A frontier that we don’t really know much about.” Chris Michael and Laura Paddison, Seascape editors

Abandoning the ships is rarely an option. The risks of oil and fuel leaks mean it is now standard practice to try to salvage them and fix any environmental damage. But the costs are astronomical: the Costa Concordia, which ran aground off Genoa, Italy in 2012, became the most expensive wreck removal in history, costing more than $1bn , and taking 350 salvage workers almost three years.

There’s no cookie-cutter approach to salvage: each operation will vary depending on location, water depth, weather, equipment and sensitivity of the surrounding environment.

So what to do with our hypothetical MS Seascape? Let’s get started.

Step 1: Contain spills and remove fuel

The risk posed by MS Seascape, loaded with potentially explosive car batteries, is not dissimilar to that of the 200-metre Felicity Ace, which caught fire in the mid-Atlantic before sinking to an unsalvageable 10,000ft: it is suspected that the 281 EVs onboard may have sparked, or at least accelerated, the blaze.

To avoid this fate, a local salvage company gets involved, one of a few dozen operators around the world poised to rush to the scene of a maritime disaster. Its first objective is to save the vessel and return it to service.

The ship, Felicity Ace

A vessel’s location has a huge bearing on how quickly the operation unfolds. The Rena, a container ship that grounded off the coast of New Zealand, had to wait several weeks for equipment to arrive from Singapore – during which time the hull broke apart.

At this stage it is too early to tell how much impact the MS Seascape hull has sustained. In the morning, in calmer conditions, the salvage crew traces a skirted boom around the vessel to capture any fuel and hazardous wastes.

In the meantime, a specialist team begins bleeding its 20-plus tanks of more than 300,000 gallons of fuel, as well as potential pollutants such as lubricants, gases and oily water and sludge .

They drill through the ship’s exposed double-walled steel exterior into the fuel bunkers below, inserting pipes to pump out waste to a waiting vessel. Divers are dispatched to enter the ships’ interior to drain the remaining submerged tanks. This is a delicate task: removing fuel can destabilise the already precarious ship, so this process can take days, possibly weeks.

Suddenly, a crisis: after days of being strained against the reef by the current, stress fractures appear along the hull. They could break the ship apart. This dashes hopes of returning the MS Seascape to service – the cost of recouping would now be more than the value of the ship itself.

The mission transitions from salvage operation to wreck removal and the real work begins.

Step 2: Slice the ship apart

After 10 days, the ship’s fractures threaten to split the wreck. The team of hundreds of engineers, crane operators, firefighters, labourers, divers and architects, must move quickly.

They cut away the accommodation block to declutter the deck and simplify the process. One option to break the ship is to use explosives, such as those applied to the MSC Napoli, a giant container vessel grounded off England’s south coast in 2007 and blasted into two sections. But this would be catastrophic for the fragile coral ecosystem beneath the wreck.

Explosives are detonated in an attempt to break the cargo ship MSC Napoli near Branscombe, England, July 2007.

Instead, the removal team opts for a thick cable of diamond-encrusted wire that can slice through inches-thick steel. The saw is fitted into a custom-built frame lifted by cranes and ferried to the wreck site. Over two days, its two legs are rigged into the seafloor on either side of the wreck. Within the frame, the wire is cycled at high speed through a system of pulleys and lowered, guillotine-like, into the metal hulk, shearing through it with an ear-splitting roar.

It can take up to 12 hours to cut a single cross-section, but the saw’s surgical precision means it only grazes the reef below. It can also slice between parked cars in the lower decks so that fewer tumble out into the sea, and around the fuel tank.

Fuel isn’t the only environmental threat: ships contain an extraordinary load of hazardous material , such as antifouling chemicals and lead embedded in paint, asbestos in the walls, and mercury and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) wound into the electrics of older ships. These pollutants will gradually ooze out of hulks left to rot in the ocean. One sunken German warship is still leaching chemicals into the North Sea after more than 80 years.

Step 3: Remove sections and take them ashore

The MS Seascape is now encircled with vessels and equipment ready to intervene as pieces of the wreck are shorn off. With the ship’s bow resting on the reef, but its stern threatening to fall to the ocean floor when cut loose, the team has a two-pronged plan.

First, the floating sheerleg: a huge crane on a buoyant platform, capable of lifting 7,000 tons. It is a mechanical island with an accommodation block for the dozens of workers who will be at sea for weeks dismantling the wreck.

The crew will slice the ship into eight pieces. Starting with the bow, each slice is drilled with holes through which cables are threaded, then hoisted up by crane. Piece by piece, the ship is carefully loaded on to waiting barges and ferried away.

The wreck of the Costa Concordia cruise ship off Giglio Island is towed after it was refloated using air tanks attached to its sides, July 2014.

The stern requires a different approach. Before the rear segment is cut free, support vessels weld enormous air-filled metal boxes called caissons to its exposed starboard side. These are partly filled with water, adding weight that rotates the stern upright when it is cut free. As the stern is righted, caissons are attached to its port side, too. On both sides these are filled and emptied of water, to reach the perfect level of buoyancy to keep the stern afloat. Once free and released on to the water, the stern is then tugged to port.

Not all wrecks would need the same approach. Some with relatively minimal damage, such as the Costa Concordia , can be patched up, fully refloated with caissons, then towed away. Others have to be dredged up from the seafloor, such as the X-Press Pearl , whose nitric acid load caught fire off Sri Lanka in 2019 and caused the ship to sink to 68ft – along with its cargo of 50bn plastic “nurdles” , which swamped Sri Lankan beaches.

The X-Press Pearl needed dozens of cables to winch it up from the seafloor, but the monsoon season stalled the mission, dragging out a process already costing the vessel owners $40m in environmental compensation claims from the Sri Lankan government.

Even with a well managed wreck such as the MS Seascape, some spillage is unavoidable. Divers, aided by remotely operated underwater vehicles, locate lost cars and other metal debris, feeding this information to a barge fitted with underwater magnets and mechanical grabbers.

Two months after the ship ran aground, no trace remains of the MS Seascape in the ocean – but the work continues.

Step 4: Strip down the ship

Back on land, the pieces of the MS Seascape wait to be broken down. The vessel was flagged to the EU, meaning it must be dismantled in one of 46 regulated yards spread across Europe, Turkey and the US.

This means it will be dealt with under stricter requirements than vessels in south Asian shipbreaking beaches, where 70% of global ships end their seagoing lives. Looser regulations in these locations result in dozens of labourer deaths annually, and untold environmental impacts as pollutants leach on to beaches and into the sea .

The MSC Napoli cargo ship is dismantled for steel recycling in a dry dock in Belfast, Northern Ireland, April 2008.

However, at the dry dock in Italy where most of the MS Seascape ends up, waste is supposed to be contained. Over several months, the ship is stripped back to basics: sheets of asbestos, wiring, equipment and furniture are removed until only the steel husk remains.

This is where most of the ship’s value now lies. Efficient smelting operations can recycle almost all a ship’s steel: about 90% of the material in the Costa Concordia was recycled.

How megaships cause mega problems

Back on the reef, rehabilitation has begun. The water is monitored for residual pollutants, and teams begin planting nursery-grown coral into the shattered reef. This will take years: a decade after the Costa Concordia capsized, damaged seagrass meadows are still being restored.

Now reduced to molten steel, some of the MS Seascape might be forged into yet another ocean-going colossus. As shipbuilding ingenuity grows, so will the effort, costs – and the innovation – required to salvage these leviathans at sea.

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How the Wreck of a Cruise Liner Changed an Italian Island

Ten years ago the Costa Concordia ran aground off the Tuscan island of Giglio, killing 32 people and entwining the lives of others forever.

cruise ship sinks 2014

By Gaia Pianigiani

GIGLIO PORTO, Italy — The curvy granite rocks of the Tuscan island of Giglio lay bare in the winter sun, no longer hidden by the ominous, stricken cruise liner that ran aground in the turquoise waters of this marine sanctuary ten years ago.

Few of the 500-odd residents of the fishermen’s village will ever forget the freezing night of Jan. 13, 2012, when the Costa Concordia shipwrecked, killing 32 people and upending life on the island for years.

“Every one of us here has a tragic memory from then,” said Mario Pellegrini, 59, who was deputy mayor in 2012 and was the first civilian to climb onto the cruise ship after it struck the rocks near the lighthouses at the port entrance.

The hospitality of the tight-knit community of islanders kicked in, at first to give basic assistance to the 4,229 passengers and crew members who had to be evacuated from a listing vessel as high as a skyscraper. In no time, Giglio residents hosted thousands of journalists, law enforcement officers and rescue experts who descended on the port. In the months to come, salvage teams set up camp in the picturesque harbor to work on safely removing the ship, an operation that took more than two years to complete.

cruise ship sinks 2014

The people of Giglio felt like a family for those who spent long days at its port, waiting to receive word of their loved ones whose bodies remained trapped on the ship. On Thursday, 10 years to the day of the tragedy, the victims’ families, some passengers and Italian authorities attended a remembrance Mass and threw a crown of flowers onto the waters where the Costa Concordia had rested. At 9:45 p.m., the time when the ship ran aground, a candlelit procession illuminated the port’s quay while church bells rang and ship sirens blared.

What stands out now for many is how the wreck forever changed the lives of some of those whose paths crossed as a result. Friendships were made, business relations took shape and new families were even formed.

“It feels as if, since that tragic night, the lives of all the people involved were forever connected by an invisible thread,” Luana Gervasi, the niece of one of the shipwreck victims, said at the Mass on Thursday, her voice breaking.

Francesco Dietrich, 48, from the eastern city of Ancona, arrived on the island in February 2013 to work with the wreck divers, “a dream job,” he said, adding: “It was like offering someone who plays soccer for the parish team to join the Champions League with all the top teams in the business.”

For his work, Mr. Dietrich had to buy a lot of boat-repair supplies from the only hardware store in town. It was owned by a local family, and Mr. Dietrich now has a 6-year-old son, Pietro, with the family’s daughter.

“It was such a shock for us,” said Bruna Danei, 42, who until 2018 worked as a secretary for the consortium that salvaged the wreck. “The work on the Costa Concordia was a life-changing experience for me in many ways.”

A rendering of the Costa Concordia used by salvage teams to plan its recovery hung on the wall of the living room where her 22-month-old daughter, Arianna, played.

“She wouldn’t be here if Davide hadn’t come to work on the site,” Ms. Danei said, referring to Davide Cedioli, 52, an experienced diver from Turin who came to the island in May 2012 to help right the Costa Concordia — and who is also Arianna’s father.

From a barge, Mr. Cedioli monitored the unprecedented salvage operation that, in less than a day, was able to rotate the 951-foot vessel, partly smashed against the rocks, from the sea bottom to an upright position without further endangering the underwater ecosystem that it damaged when it ran aground.

“We jumped up and down in happiness when the parbuckling was completed,” Mr. Cedioli remembered. “We felt we were bringing some justice to this story. And I loved this small community and living on the island.”

The local council voted to make Jan. 13 a day of remembrance on Giglio, but after this year it will stop the public commemorations and “make it a more intimate moment, without the media,” Mr. Ortelli said during the mass.

“Being here ten years later brings back a lot of emotions,” said Kevin Rebello, 47, whose older brother, Russell, was a waiter on the Costa Concordia.

Russell Rebello’s remains were finally retrieved three years after the shipwreck, from under the furniture in a cabin, once the vessel was upright and being taken apart in Genoa.

“First, I feel close to my brother here,” Kevin Rebello said. “But it is also some sort of family reunion for me — I couldn’t wait to see the Giglio people.”

Mr. Rebello hugged and greeted residents on the streets of the port area, and recalled how the people there had shown affection for him at the time, buying him coffee and simply showing respect for his grief.

“Other victims’ families feel differently, but I am a Catholic and I have forgiven,” Mr. Rebello explained.

The Costa Concordia accident caused national shame when it became clear that the liner’s commander, Francesco Schettino, failed to immediately sound the general alarm and coordinate the evacuation, and instead abandoned the sinking vessel.

“Get back on board!” a Coast Guard officer shouted at Mr. Schettino when he understood that the captain was in a lifeboat watching people scramble to escape, audio recordings of their exchange later revealed. “Go up on the bow of the ship on a rope ladder, and tell me what you can do, how many people are there and what they need. Now!”

The officer has since pursued a successful career in politics, while Mr. Schettino is serving a 16-year sentence in a Roman prison for homicide and for abandoning the ship before the evacuation was completed. Other officials and crew members plea-bargained for lesser sentences.

During the trial, Mr. Schettino admitted that he had committed an “imprudence” when he decided to sail near the island of Giglio at high speed to greet the family of the ship’s headwaiter. The impact with the half-submerged rock near the island produced a gash in the hull more than 70 meters long, or about 76 yards, leading to blackouts on board and water pouring into the lower decks.

Mr. Schettino tried to steer the cruise ship toward the port to make evacuation easier, but the vessel was out of control and began to tip as it neared the harbor, making many lifeboats useless.

“I can’t forget the eyes of children, scared to death, and of their parents,” said Mr. Pellegrini, who had boarded the ship to speak with officials and organize the evacuation. “The metallic sound of the enormous ship tipping over and the gurgling of the sea up the endless corridors of the cruiser.”

Sergio Ortelli, who is still the mayor of Giglio ten years later, was similarly moved. “Nobody can go back and cancel those senseless deaths of innocent people, or the grief of their families,” he said. “The tragedy will always stay with us as a community. It was an apocalypse for us.”

Yet Mr. Ortelli said that the accident also told a different story, that of the skilled rescuers who managed to save thousands of lives, and of the engineers who righted the liner, refloated it and took it to the scrapyard.

While the global attention shifted away from Giglio, residents have stayed in touch with the outside world through the people who temporarily lived there.

For months, the Rev. Lorenzo Pasquotti, who was then a pastor in Giglio, kept receiving packages: dry-cleaned slippers, sweaters and tablecloths that were given to the cold, stranded passengers in his church that night, returned via courier.

One summer, Father Pasquotti ate German cookies with a German couple who were passengers on the ship. They still remembered the hot tea and leftovers from Christmas delicacies that they were given that night.

“So many nationalities — the world was at our door all of a sudden,” he said, remembering that night. “And we naturally opened it.”

Gaia Pianigiani is a reporter based in Italy for The New York Times.  More about Gaia Pianigiani

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"I felt like my heart stopped"

Updated on: April 16, 2014 / 12:05 PM EDT / CBS/AP

MOKPO, South Korea -- A ferry carrying 462 people, mostly high school students on an overnight trip to a tourist island, sank off South Korea's southern coast on Wednesday, leaving more than 280 people missing despite a frantic, hours-long rescue by dozens of ships and helicopters. At least four people were confirmed dead and 55 injured.

Deadly ferry accident off South Korea

The high number of people unaccounted for - likely trapped in the ship or floating in the ocean - raised fears that the death toll could rise drastically, making it one of South Korea's biggest ferry disasters since 1993, when 292 people died.

CBS News correspondent Seth Doane reports that a U.S. Navy ship was on standby in the area ready to aid the rescue effort.

Hundreds of parents desperately boarded buses to be taken to the area near where the ferry sank.

A mother of an 18-year-old student said, "I felt like my heart stopped. I can't describe the feeling with one word. I can't even talk about it."

One student, Lim Hyung-min, told broadcaster YTN after being rescued that he and other students jumped into the ocean wearing life jackets and then swam to a nearby rescue boat.

"As the ferry was shaking and tilting, we all tripped and bumped into each another," Lim said, adding that some people were bleeding. Once he jumped, the ocean "was so cold. ... I was hurrying, thinking that I wanted to live."

Helicopters hover over a South Korean passenger ferry as it sinks off the nation's southwest coast

Local television stations broadcast live pictures of the ship, Sewol, listing to its side and slowly sinking as passengers jumped out or were winched up by helicopters. At least 87 vessels and 18 aircraft swarmed around the stricken ship. Rescuers clambered over its sides, pulling out passengers wearing orange life jackets. But the ship overturned completely and continued to sink slowly. Within a few hours only its blue-and-white bow stuck out of the water.

A ferry that departed from Incheon, South Korea, sank on its way to the island of Jeju April 16, 2014.

Some 160 coast guard and navy divers searched for survivors inside the ship's wreckage a few miles from Byeongpung Island, which is not far from the mainland and about 290 miles from Seoul. Cho Man-yong, a coast guard spokesman, said 16 divers approached the ferry Wednesday night but failed to get inside because the current was too strong. He said the water was very muddy and visibility was poor, but navy and coast guard divers planned to make another approach after midnight.

"We cannot give up," said South Korean President Park Geun-hye, after a briefing in Seoul with officials. "We have to do our best to rescue even one passenger."

Those rescued - wet, stunned and many without shoes - were brought to nearby Jindo Island, where medical teams wrapped them in pink blankets and checked them for injuries before settling them down on the floor of a cavernous gymnasium hall.

A passenger is rescued by South Korean maritime policemen from the sinking ship Sewol in the sea off Jindo April 16, 2014, in this picture provided by the Korean coast guard and released by Yonhap.

The ship had set off from Incheon, a city in South Korea's northwest and the site of the country's main international airport, on Tuesday night for an overnight, 14-hour journey to the tourist island of Jeju.

Three hours from its destination, the ferry sent a distress call at about 9 a.m. Wednesday after it began listing to one side, according to the Ministry of Security and Public Administration. Officials didn't know what caused it to sink and said the focus was still on rescuing survivors.

Lee Gyeong-og, a vice minister for South Korea's Public Administration and Security Ministry, said 30 crew members, 325 high school students, 15 school teachers and 89 non-student passengers were aboard the ship.

Authorities said the dead included a female crew member and two male high school students. A coast guard officer confirmed a fourth fatality but had no immediate details about it.

Kang Byung-kyu, a government minister, said 55 people were injured.

Coast guard officials said late Wednesday that they had found one more person who had been unaccounted for - a 5-year-old girl who was staying alone at a hospital after being rescued - raising the number of survivors to 175. A total of 283 people remained missing.

An injured passenger rescued by South Korean maritime policemen from the sinking ship Sewol in the sea off Jindo is treated at a port in Seogeochado April 16, 2014.

Yonhap news agency said the 480-foot-long ship, which travels twice a week between Incheon and Jeju, was built in Japan in 1994 and could carry a maximum of 921 people, 180 vehicles and 152 shipping containers.

The water temperature in the area was about 54 Fahrenheit, cold enough to cause signs of hypothermia after about 1 1/2 hours of exposure, according to an emergency official who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity citing department rules. Lee, the vice minister, said the ocean is 121 feet deep in the area.

Passenger Kim Seong-mok told YTN that he was certain that many people were trapped inside the ferry as water quickly rushed in and the severe tilt of the vessel kept them from reaching the exits. Some people urged those who couldn't get out to break windows.

Kim said that after having breakfast he felt the ferry tilt and then heard it crash into something. He said the ferry operator made an announcement asking that passengers wait and not move from their places. Kim said he didn't hear any announcement telling passengers to escape.

The students - about half of them boys and half girls- are from Danwon High School in Ansan city, which is near Seoul, and were on their way to Jeju island for a four-day trip, according to a relief team set up by Gyeonggi province, which governs the city. There are faster ways to get to Jeju, but some people take the ferry from Incheon because it is cheaper than flying. Many South Korean high schools organize trips for students in their first or second years, and Jeju is a popular destination. The students on the ferry were in their second year, which would make most of them 16 or 17.

At the high school, students were sent home and parents gathered for news about the ferry.

Park Ji-hee, a first-year student, said she saw about a dozen parents crying at the school entrance and many cars and taxis gathered at the gate as she left in the morning.

She said some students in her classroom began to cry as they saw the news on their handsets. Teachers tried to soothe them, saying that the students on the ferry would be fine.

The Maritime Ministry said the two previous deadliest ferry disasters were in 1970 when 323 people drowned and in 1993 when 292 people died.

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The 9 Worst Cruise Ship Disasters

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See recent posts by Neil Gladstone

The Titanic may be the most famous ship disaster, but surprisingly, it’s not even close to being the deadliest wreck that ever occurred on a luxury liner. If you’re trying to dissuade someone from taking a cruise, you should show them this list of maritime misadventures presented in no particular order. Disclaimer: The vast majority of cruises sail without incident and are safe and not filled with poop. (Oh yeah, we’ll get there.) Get your plate ready for a buffet of high-seas horror.

1. RMS Titanic

F.G.O. Stuart (1843-1923) {{PD-old}} /Wikimedia Commons

The many experts in 1912 who considered the Titanic “unsinkable” were to be proven wrong on the boat’s maiden voyage from Southampton to New York City. Thomas Andrews had designed the ship to withstand head-on collisions and rammings from other ships. However, the North Atlantic Ocean iceberg that took down the vessel scraped through five of its 16 watertight compartments. The boat would have reportedly remained afloat if it had only gone through four. Like other systems at the time, the Titanic’s lifeboats were designed to shepherd passengers to nearby rescue ships, not take them to shore. Unfortunately, help was many hours away in the wee hours of April 15 when the boat was going under. The poor crew organization also caused many lifeboats to leave the ship at far less than full capacity. Plus, they only had enough boats for about a third of the onboard. As a result, more than 1,500 people died — either on the ship or in the icy waters, waiting for help. A recent theory suggests a fire that started in the hull before the ship set sail weakened the vessel’s steel walls, making it susceptible to an iceberg that normally wouldn’t have caused as much damage.

2. Eastern Star’s Dongfang zhi Xing

In 2015, Dongfang zhi Xing was traveling on the Yangtze River in China when a thunderstorm struck, and the boat capsized. Ships in the area were warned that bad storms were coming and told to take precautions, but it is unclear if the Dongfang zhi Xing ever received the warnings and continued to sail. The ship was met with winds of up to 72-85 mph, and ultimately, a downburst (a strong downward wind) caused the ship to capsize and sink. Out of the 454 people on board, only 12 survived, making the total number of dead 442.

3. Carnival Cruise Line’s Triumph

DVIDSHUB/Flickr

A generator fire on Carnival Cruise Lines’s Triumph (now called Carnival Sunrise) left the ship powerless, and a late-night comedy punchline was born: “The Poop Cruise.” Without working bathrooms, passengers were forced to drop their payloads into red “hazardous waste” bags and stuff them into garbage cans left in the hall. Passengers described carpets soaked with more than two inches of raw sewage. News reports described the scene as a “shanty town” and a “new circle of hell.” One passenger reportedly called her husband and told him that their 12-year-old daughter had Skittles for breakfast. It took four days for the Triumph to be towed from the Gulf of Mexico to Mobile, Alabama, where it was possible to smell the ship from the dock. Later, 31 passengers claimed long-lasting damage, including PTSD, and sued. After the verdict, 27 of them split $118,000, many earning less than $3,000 (minus legal fees) for their troubles.

4. Costa Concordia

European Commission DG ECHO/Flickr

One of the biggest passenger ships ever wrecked, the Costa Concordia had 17 decks, six restaurants, a three-story theater, and enough room for 4,200 vacationers. On January 13, 2012, Captain Francesco Schettino agreed to a request by the ship’s chief maître d’, Antonello Tievoli, and sailed closer to Isola del Giglio than normal. Why? Tievoli, a native of Giglio, wanted to impress and “salute” local residents. Unfortunately, Captain Schettino turned off the ship’s alarm for the computer navigation system and later admitted he thought he knew the waters well enough to navigate by sight. However, the ship’s first mate testified that the captain had left his glasses in his cabin and requested them. The Costa Concordia struck an underwater rock, capsized, and sank, killing 32 passengers. Schettino’s worst maritime sin? He abandoned the ship with 300 passengers still onboard. A Coast Guard officer in contact with the ship at the time of the sinking claimed he told Schettino to get back onboard. After being convicted of manslaughter and pursuing several appeals, Schettino only started his 16-year prison sentence in May of 2017. The salvage effort (the ship was completely dismantled) was the largest effort of its kind.

5. SS Eastland

Launched in 1903, the SS Eastland was a passenger ship based in Chicago and used for tours. Although the ship had noted listing (tilting) since its inception and some measures had been taken to rectify this, the SS Eastland was still suffering from being top-heavy when boarding for a cruise in 1915. The ship was meant to sail from Chicago to Michigan City, Indiana, carrying workers from Western Electric Company’s Hawthorne Works for a picnic. On July 24, 2,572 passengers boarded, with many congregating on the open upper decks. While still docked, the ship began to list to the port side, and reportedly, at some point, more passengers rushed to the port side, causing the ship to roll onto its side completely. Despite the river’s bottom being just 20 feet below and the shore being about the same distance, a total of 844 passengers and crew members died, including 22 entire families.

6. Royal Pacific

When the Royal Pacific was first launched as a passenger ferry in 1964, it could carry 250 passengers, 91 cars, and 16 trucks. Sold and converted into a cruise ship in the late 1980s, the boat’s maiden voyage was a two-night “cruise to nowhere” from Singapore and sailed by Phuket, Malacca, and Penang before returning home. At around 2 a.m., when most passengers were asleep, the crew heard a loud bang, and the plates on the buffet table crashed to the ground. A Taiwanese trawler, Terfu 51, had accidentally rammed the ship, leaving a six-foot gash in the side. As the trawler pulled away, there was a deafening sound of metal scraping against metal. The PA system wasn’t working properly on the boat, but the safety officer ran downstairs to survey the damage. When he returned, he told everyone to put on their life jackets. Reports vary about how many passengers were impacted — most tallies number 30 dead and 70 injured. Several passengers also complained that a mix of Greek-, English- and Mandarin-speaking crew members led to few people understanding what anyone was saying.

7. SS Morro Castle

The story of the SS Morro Castle is so dreadful it’s surprising no Hollywood producer has turned the tale into a horror movie. Director Fritz Lang collaborated on a script about the tragedy, and named it “Hell Afloat” (which is a pretty apt description), but it was never made. Between 1930 and 1934, the SS Morro Castle regularly shuttled 480-plus passengers between Havana and New York. While onboard, there was no Depression to worry about and no Prohibition, which meant plenty of booze-filled partying. However, the September 1934 return sail from Cuba to the Big Apple seemed cursed. On September 7, Captain Robert Wilmott complained of stomach trouble after eating dinner and retired to his cabin, where he later died of an apparent heart attack. Chief Officer William Warms took command, and a few hours later, around 3 a.m. on September 8, a fire started in one of the storage lockers. The crew’s attempts to fight the fire were haphazard and inadequate, and soon, the blaze couldn’t be contained. Many crew members abandoned the ship, leaving confused passengers to fend for themselves in the dark, smoky hallways. Some jumped from the deck to their death in the water. Rescuers lined up on the Jersey Shore to meet the lifeboats carrying passengers. The next morning, the burning, black hull of the SS Morro Castle ran aground at Asbury Park, New Jersey. Of the 549 people aboard the cruise, 86 guests and 49 crew members died.

8. Royal Caribbean’s Explorer of the Seas

A cruise can be an oasis of calm in rough waters, but it’s also a petri dish of disease where viruses ricochet from passenger to passenger. In 2014, the Royal Caribbean’s Explorer of the Seas cruise from New Jersey to the Caribbean earned the dubious honor of being the ship with more sick passengers than any other boat trip since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention started keeping statistics more than 20 years ago. An estimated 700 passengers and crew members were sick at some point. Most cruise ship illnesses result from norovirus, that causes inflammation of the stomach and large intestines and regular trips to the “head.” If you’re wondering how to stay healthy on a cruise with sick passengers, plenty of handwashing (and avoiding ill people) is key. Bugs pass quickly through contact with ship railings, bathroom doors, and buffet food.

9. MTS Oceanos

Built by a French company and first launched in 1952, the MTS Oceanos was purchased by a Greek company in 1976. On August 3, 1991, Oceanos set sail for East London, South Africa, and headed north for Durban, led by Captain Yiannis Avranas. The ship reportedly headed into 40-knot winds and 30-foot swells, and thus, the typical sail-away outdoor deck party with British entertainers Moss and Tracy Hills was moved to an indoor lounge. The sea conditions worsened that night, leading to the ship rolling from side to side, and eventually, an explosion was heard due to a lack of repairs for the waste disposal system. This all led to the ship losing power and water filling its generator room, so the generators were shut down and the ship was led adrift. A distress call was sent and answered by numerous South African helicopters and a Dutch container ship. Shockingly, the captain and many crew members were among the first to be airlifted to shore, leaving the entertainment staff to coordinate the rescue efforts and help passengers to safety. All 571 passengers and crew members were saved by the time the ship sank nose-first into the sea.

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cruise ship sinks 2014

Did the Carnival Cruise Ship 'Triumph' Overturn and Sink?

"jokes are created by users." but not necessarily good jokes., published nov 7, 2018.

False

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On 7 November 2018, a brief article published on the "prank" web site React365 reported that the Carnival cruise ship Triumph had overturned and sunk off the coast of Mexico:

The Carnival cruise ship Triumph ran aground and overturned after striking an underwater rock off the coast of Mexico while coming into port the evening of November 5th 2018 resulting in 32 deaths. There may have been additional people not listed as on board, so the death toll could possibly be higher. The search for bodies was canceled after a small tropical storm came in and resumed the morning of the 6th. Scuba teams are still recovering bodies, stay connected for any new information pertaining to this devastating accident.

cruise ship sinks 2014

This was not a genuine news report, and the included picture did not show the Carnival cruise ship Triumph sinking off the coast of Mexico in November 2018.

This photograph depicts the Costa Concordia , a luxury cruise ship that ran aground off the coast of Tuscany, Italy, in January 2012. The disaster resulted in the deaths of 32 people:

On January 13, 2012 the Italian cruise ship, which was carrying 4,200 people, collided with rocks just off the coast of the Mediterranean island, Giglio. The impact tore a 230-foot gash into the ship's hull, eventually making it capsize. Thirty-two people died in the disaster, while the others were successfully evacuated. On February 11, 2015, the ship's captain, Francesco Schettino, was sentenced to a prison term of 16 years and one month for, among other things, negligent homicide.

Carnival's website for their Triumph cruise ship does not show anything out of the ordinary. It lists no reports about an alleged sinking, and potential customers can still book trips on the cruise ship.

React 365 is a "prank" web site that provides users with a template to create their own fake news stories in order to trick their friends on social media. A disclaimer at the bottom of the site reads: "This website is an entertainment website, jokes are created by users. These are humorous jokes, fantasy, fictional, that should not be seriously taken or as a source of information."

Boesalager, Matern.   "Ship to Wreck: Grim, Beautiful Photos of the Costa Concordia."     Vice .   29 January 2016.

Fox News .   "Court Hears How 32 Died in Costa Concordia Shipwreck."     17 July 2013.

By Dan Evon

Dan Evon is a former writer for Snopes.

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The world’s worst cruise ship disasters

Tragedies aboard cruise ships live on in infamy as the sinking of RMS Titanic, the biggest cruise disaster in history, bears witness. Ship-technology.com lists the worst ever cruise ship disasters.

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cruise ship sinks 2014

RMS Titanic

The sinking of RMS Titanic in April 1912 remains the worst, and the most infamous, cruise ship disaster in history. The sinking of the biggest passenger ship ever built at the time resulted in the death of more than 1,500 of the 2,208 people onboard.

The accident occurred when the ship hit an iceberg while cruising at its maximum speed of 23k on her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York City. The massive loss of life in the North Atlantic Ocean resulted mainly from hypothermia.

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RMS Titanic was the second of three Olympic-class ocean liners operated by White Star Line. It was constructed by the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast in three years and was designed by the naval architect Thomas Andrews.

RMS Titanic measured 269.11m in length, 28.042m in breadth, had a gross tonnage of 46,328t and comprised nine decks. The cruise ship was equipped with 20 lifeboats for 1,178 people.

The steamship’s three propellers were driven by two four-cylinder, triple-expansion, inverted reciprocating steam engines and one four-blade low-pressure Parsons turbine.

RMS Lusitania

The sinking of RMS Lusitania in May 1915, after being hit by the German military submarine U-20, caused 1,201 deaths during a voyage from New York to Liverpool. She was considered the largest, fastest and most luxurious ship in the world at the time of her launch in June 1906.

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The Lusitania disaster resulted in the death of many Americans and became one of the major reasons behind the US entering World War I.

The German submarine targeted the submarine as a naval ship, as it was also carrying war weapons for the British.

RMS Lusitania was built by John Brown and Co. of Scotland and completed its maiden voyage in September 1907. The steamship was owned and operated by Cunard Company; a rival of White Star Line, which owned the Titanic.

RMS Lusitania had an overall length of 239.8m, beam of 26.7m, draft of 10.2m, depth of 18.4m, gross tonnage of 31,550t and ten decks. It was designed to accmmodate 2,165 passengers and 827 crew members. It was equipped with four 375kW generator sets and possessed a service speed of 25k and a maximum speed of 26.35k.

RMS Empress of Ireland

RMS Empress of Ireland, which sank in the Saint Lawrence River in May 1914, claimed the lives of 1,012 people out of the 1,477 people onboard. It was the second major cruise ship disaster after the Titanic disaster. The Ocean Liner operated on the North Atlantic route between Quebec and Liverpool in England.

The passenger steamship collided with the 6,000t Norwegian collier, the Storstad, following a thick fog which engulfed the river. Just five of the 42 lifeboats could be launched into the water due to the listing of the vessel on her starboard side. The accident was aggravated by the cold conditions, failure to close the ship’s watertight doors and failure to close all portholes aboard.

RMS Empress of Ireland was owned by Canadian Pacific Steamship Company. It was designed by Francis Elgar and built by Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering. The ocean liner was launched in January 1906 and completed her maiden voyage from Liverpool to Montreal in June 1906.

The cruise ship was 168m long, its beam measured 20m and gross tonnage was 14,191t. The ship was equipped with two steam engines and two quadruple expansion propellers, which provided a maximum operating speed of 20k.

MS Estonia, formerly known as Viking Sally, Silja Star and Wasa King during different periods from 1980 to 1993, sank in September 1994 during its voyage from Tallinn to Stockholm, resulting in 852 deaths, while 137 people were saved through rescue operations.

The cruise ferry accident was caused by rough sea conditions in the Baltic Sea, when wind speeds ranged from 35mph to 45mph. The bad sea conditions forced the ship to initially list on the starboard side and later sink completely.

The ferry was constructed by Meyer Werft at its shipyard in Papenburg, Germany, in 1980. The ferry, initially named Viking Sally, was delivered in June 1980 to its first owner Rederi Ab Sally. The vessel was operated by EstLine from 1993 to 1994.

MS Estonia measured 155.43m in length, 24.21m in breadth, had a draught of 5.55m, a gross tonnage of 15,598t and featured nine decks and ten lifeboats. The vessel was equipped with four 4,400kW diesel engines connected to two propeller shafts, and had an operational speed of 21k. The cruise ferry had capacity to accommodate 2,000 passengers and 460 cars.

SS Eastland

The SS Eastland disaster in July 1915 claimed more than 844 lives out of the 2,500 people onboard. The disaster occurred when the ship listed while being still tied to a dock in the Chicago River during preparations to cruise to Michigan City.

The probable causes of the disaster are believed to be the flaws in its design and construction, inadequacy of its ballast tanks and overloading. The accident occurred when the passengers embarked the ship. The ship initially listed to the starboard side and further to portside, throwing off passengers and trapping some in the interior cabins.

SS Eastland was owned by Michigan Transportation Company and operated by Chicago-South Haven Line. It was constructed by Jenks Ship Building Company, which specialised in constructing freighters but had no prior experience in construction of passenger vessels. The vessel was launched in May 1903.

The cruise ship had an overall length of 275m, width of 38m and gross tonnage of 1,961t. It was equipped with two triple expansion steam engines, four scotch boilers and two shafts. The vessel was designed for a top speed of 16.5k. It was equipped with 11 life boats and 37 life rafts.

Saint-Philibert Cruise Ship

Saint-Philibert was a twin screw-propelled small cruise ship that met with disaster in June 1931 resulting in the loss of about 500 lives, sparing just eight passengers while on its homeward run on the Loire Estuary in France.

The disaster was induced by harsh storms driving the passengers to take shelter behind the machinery casings, which caused the ship to list over. It was further struck by a wave causing her to sink. The ship, which carried approximately 500 people during the voyage, exceeded the normal carrying capacity by about 80%.

The inadequacy of the ship’s speed to face such waves, lack of coverings for shelter and absence of communication equipment further aggravated the situation. Besides, the captain and crew were considered unqualified.

Saint-Philibert cruise ship measured 32m in length and 6.4m in breadth, and had a draft of 2.74m and gross tonnage of 189t.

SS Admiral Nakhimov

The SS Admiral Nakhimov disaster in August 1986 resulted in the death of 423 people, mostly Ukranians, out of the 1,234 people onboard. The accident occurred in the Tsemes Bay near the port of Novorossiysk enroute Sochi.

The cruise ship collided with the large bulk carrier Pyotr Vasev at a speed of five knots, causing it to sink within a few minutes. The accident was caused by negligence of the captains of the two ships. The captain of Pyotr Vasev failed to heed the warning announced from SS Admiral Nakhimov, while the captain of Admiral Nakhimov was absent on the bridge at the time of the tragedy.

The passenger liner was originally named SS Berlin III and operated on the Crimean-Caucasian line. It was owned by Norddeutscher Lloyd and constructed by Bremer Vulkan.

SS Admiral Nakhimov had an overall length of 174m, beam of 21.02m and gross tonnage of 17,053t. It had a capacity to accommodate 1,125 passengers and 354 crew, and a cruise speed of 16k.

Aleksandr Suvorov

Aleksandr Suvorov, a river cruise ship of the Valerian Kuybyshev-class, met with disaster in June 1983 resulting in the death of 176 people out of the 415 people onboard, while cruising on the Volga-Don basin in Russia. The blame for the accident was placed on the captain who failed to prevent the accident and had not provided a proper order.

Just prior to the accident, an auction to be held at the cinema hall was announced, leading the passengers to the upper deck of the ship. The ship, which was cruising at a speed of about 13.5k at the time, crashed onto a bridge, failing to pass through the second span of the bridge. A freight train passing through the bridge was also affected by the crash, causing some cars to derail and fall on the ship.

Volga-Don Shipping Company was the operator of the ship at the time. Slovenské Lodenice constructed the vessel in Komárno, Czechoslovakia. The ship was restored after the accident and is currently operated by Vodohod.

Aleksander Suvorov has an overall length of 135.75m and width of 16.8m, and is comprised of four decks. It can accommodate 400 passengers and 83 crew, and runs on a 6CHRN36/45 (EG70 -5) diesel engine.

SS Morro Castle

The SS Morro Castle disaster in September 1934 resulted in the loss of more than 137 passengers and crew out of the 318 passengers and 240 crew onboard. The cruise ship was on its 174th return voyage to New York City from Havana.

The disaster was caused by a fire, which emanated from the cruise ship’s library and engulfed the entire ship. The fire was worsened by bad weather, inadequate crew and the ship’s design, which incorporated easily flammable interior materials. Just 12 lifeboats were launched out of the many lifeboats capable of rescuing 408 people.

The ship was owned by Agwi Navigation Co. and operated by Ward Line. It was constructed in 1930 at a cost of approximately $5m by Newport News Shipbuilding. The vessel completed her maiden voyage in August 1930 and served Ward Line along with its sister vessel SS Oriente for four years.

SS Morro Castle was 155m long, 21.6m wide and 11.9m deep, and had a capacity to carry 489 passengers and 240 crew. The steam turbo-electric liner was propelled by two turbines and sailed at a speed of 20k.

SS Andrea Doria

The SS Andrea Doria collided with the eastbound Swedish passenger liner Stockholm due to poor visibility caused by a thick fog. The disaster took place in July 1956 near the coast of Nantucket, Massachusetts, while cruising towards New York City resulting in the death of 52 people, while 1,660 people were rescued.

It is considered the world’s first major radar-assisted collision at sea, as the cause of the accident is assumed to be from the misreading of the radar. It was struck just aft and below the starboard bridge, and sank after 11 hours.

The ocean liner was owned by Italian Line and constructed by Ansaldo Shipyards of Genoa, Italy, at a cost of approximately $30m. It was launched in June 1951 and set out on its maiden voyage in January 1953.

SS Andrea Doria measured 212m in length, had a beam of 27m and a gross tonnage of 29,100t. It featured ten decks and was equipped with two steam turbines providing a top speed of 23k.

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Popular holiday island ‘heading for disaster’ due to sunken cruise ship

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A sunken shipwreck is threatening a popular holiday island as campaigners say it’s polluting the environment surrounding it.

The cruise ship, which sunk off the coast of the Greek island of Santorini in 2007, was left to rot under the sea for years.

And now experts fear the MS Sea Diamond is releasing toxic waste into the water which could affect the holiday hotspot.

Two passengers died when the 22,000-ton cruise ship sunk off the coast of the Greek island nearly 17 years ago.

Local people have been fighting for years to get the wreckage removed, worried about the consequences of the pollution caused by the ship’s fuel tanks.

And residents have this week demanded the necessary and immediate removal of the ship in a letter to the Greek Parliament’s Special Standing Committee for Environmental Protection.

Mandatory Credit: Photo by Sipa/REX/Shutterstock (655236a) A picture by one of the Spanish tourists aboard the Greek cruise ship 'Sea Diamond' shows the cruise ship listing heavily after striking rocks off the Greek island of Santorini. The 'Sea Diamond' sank 15 hours after the accident occurred. The evacuation of passengers from the Greek cruise ship 'Sea Diamond', Santorini, Greece - 05 Apr 2007

The letter read: ‘The shipwreck remains on the seabed and continues to pollute, at a slow but steady rate, it erodes daily and at any time it can cause an incalculable ecological disaster.’

But so far local authorities have failed to salvage the shipwreck.

It’s causing a long-running dispute on the island, which could spell disaster for the future of Santorini.

Campaigners told The Sun that the popular island is ‘heading for disaster’ if something isn’t done soon to tackle the wreckage.

They added that the government has ‘failed the community’ and the lack of action may lead to an environmental disaster.

There are fears that toxic waste could spill out of the sunken ship and poison Santorini’s coastlines, which would make it dangerous for people to go to the beaches and swim in the sea.

The shipwreck contains huge volumes of motor fuel and lubricants as well as hundreds of litres of battery electrolytes.

It also contains copper cables, toxic heavy metals and other dangerous chemicals.

Experts say it could take up to 400 years for all of these pollutants to fully decompose.

Now they have called the island a ‘ticking time bomb’ as the wreck could cause a catastrophic event impacting the popular destination.

The listing Greek-flagged cruise ship Sea Diamond, carrying nearly 1,200 passengers and some 400 crew, is surrounded by rescue vessels at the old port on the Greek island of Santorini April 5, 2007. REUTERS/Dimitris Prassos (GREECE)

Loucas Lignos said: ‘All these carcinogenic substances are dangerous for humans. At the same time, desalination procedures cannot filter through the dangerous heavy metals.

‘The main problem is that these chemicals can enter the human body through bioaccumulation – either via desalination of the water or by fish consumption.

‘If that happens it will be a huge environmental disaster for the Santorini beaches.’

The wreckage is around 800m from the port and around 100m underwater.

The ship, owned by Louis Hellenic Cruises, sunk on April 5, 2007, on a reef. It was carrying 1,195 passengers at the time.

Most of the people on board, who were mostly Americans and Canadians, were safely rescued but a French dad and his teenage daughter died.

The bodies of Jean Christophe Allain, 45, and his 16-year-old daughter Maud were never found.

In the months immediately after the wreckage there was an attempt made to decontaminate the waters around it.

This was followed by an unsuccessful effort to sort the problem with a pumping operation.

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at [email protected] .

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How Many Cruise Ships Sink Each Year

Published: December 20, 2023

Modified: December 28, 2023

by Ferne Amundson

how-many-cruise-ships-sink-each-year

Introduction

Welcome aboard the exciting world of cruises! A vacation at sea is a dream for many, offering a unique blend of luxury, adventure, and relaxation. Cruise ships serve as floating cities, providing passengers with a wide range of amenities and memorable experiences. However, amidst the allure of these magnificent vessels, it’s natural to wonder about their safety and the risk of sinkings.

While cruise ship sinkings capture headlines and evoke fear, it’s important to put things into perspective. Cruise ship sinkings are relatively rare occurrences, with the industry taking extensive measures to ensure the safety of passengers and crew. In this article, we will delve into the history of cruise ship sinkings, explore the factors that contribute to these incidents, examine the safety measures implemented by the cruise ship industry, and highlight notable sinkings in recent years. Additionally, we will provide statistics to help you better understand the overall safety of cruising.

So, grab your life jacket and join us as we dive into the world of cruise ship sinkings.

History of Cruise Ship Sinkings

The history of cruise ship sinkings dates back centuries, highlighting both past tragedies and advancements in maritime safety. While sinkings can evoke a sense of fear, it’s important to remember that the cruise industry has made significant improvements over the years to prevent such incidents.

One of the most infamous cruise ship sinkings occurred in 1912 when the RMS Titanic struck an iceberg and sank during its maiden voyage. This tragedy claimed the lives of over 1,500 passengers and crew, serving as a monumental wake-up call for the maritime industry. The sinking of the Titanic led to the creation of international regulations and safety standards, such as mandatory lifeboat requirements and improved communication systems.

In the decades that followed, numerous cruise ship sinkings occurred, although the frequency decreased significantly. Notable incidents include the sinking of the RMS Empress of Ireland in 1914, the SS Andrea Doria in 1956, and the MV Estonia in 1994. These incidents highlighted the importance of ongoing safety improvements and emergency response protocols.

Since the turn of the century, there have been several high-profile cruise ship sinkings. The most notable of these include the sinking of the Costa Concordia in 2012 and the Sewol ferry disaster in 2014. These incidents served as sobering reminders of the need for constant vigilance and adherence to safety protocols.

It’s important to note that the vast majority of cruise ship voyages are completed without incident. The industry has implemented numerous safety measures to reduce the likelihood of sinkings, including extensive crew training, advanced navigation systems, and regular inspections by regulatory authorities.

While cruise ship sinkings do occur, it’s crucial to remember that they are rare events in comparison to the number of successful voyages undertaken each year. The cruise industry continues to prioritize safety as a top concern and works diligently to ensure the well-being of all those who embark on their voyages.

Factors Contributing to Cruise Ship Sinkings

Cruise ship sinkings can be caused by a variety of factors, ranging from natural disasters to human error. Understanding these factors is crucial in preventing future incidents and improving safety protocols within the industry.

1. Natural Disasters: Cruise ships can encounter severe weather conditions at sea, including hurricanes, storms, and rogue waves. These natural disasters can cause structural damage to the vessel, leading to potential sinkings. The cruise ship industry closely monitors weather patterns and alters itineraries or cancels trips when necessary to ensure passenger safety.

2. Mechanical Failures: Like any complex piece of machinery, cruise ships can experience mechanical failures. These failures can range from engine malfunctions to problems with navigation systems or onboard utilities. Regular maintenance and inspections, along with backup systems, are implemented to minimize the risk of mechanical failures and their potential impact on the ship’s safety.

3. Human Error: Human factors can play a significant role in cruise ship sinkings. Errors in navigation, communication, and decision-making can lead to disastrous consequences. It’s crucial for crew members to receive comprehensive training and adhere to established protocols to mitigate the risk of human error.

4. Fire Incidents: Cruise ships are equipped with various fire prevention and suppression systems, but fires can still occur onboard. Electrical malfunctions, unattended smoking, or equipment failures can lead to fires that pose a risk to the ship and its passengers. Regular fire drills, training programs, and stringent safety regulations help prevent and mitigate fire incidents.

5. Collision or Grounding: Collisions with other vessels or grounding on reefs or shallow waters can result in serious damage to a cruise ship, potentially leading to a sinking. Navigation systems, experienced bridge crews, and up-to-date charts help minimize the risk of collisions or groundings, but vigilance and adherence to safe operating practices are imperative.

It’s important to note that the cruise ship industry continuously evaluates and updates safety measures to address these contributing factors. Collaboration between cruise lines, regulatory bodies, and governing agencies plays a vital role in identifying potential risks and implementing necessary improvements.

By understanding and addressing these factors, the cruise ship industry strives to create a safer environment for passengers and crew, minimizing the chances of future sinkings and incidents at sea.

Safety Measures Implemented by the Cruise Ship Industry

The cruise ship industry places a paramount emphasis on passenger and crew safety. To ensure a secure voyage, numerous safety measures have been implemented throughout the industry. These measures address a range of areas, including crew training, onboard regulations, and emergency preparedness.

1. Crew Training: Cruise ship crew members undergo extensive training protocols to handle various emergencies and ensure passenger safety. This includes training in firefighting, first aid, evacuation procedures, and crowd management. Regular drills and simulations are conducted to test the ability of the crew to respond effectively in different scenarios.

2. Safety Regulations: The cruise ship industry is subject to strict regulations and standards enforced by regulatory bodies such as the International Maritime Organization (IMO) and the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS). These regulations cover a wide range of safety aspects, including construction standards, lifesaving equipment, fire protection, and ship stability.

3. Advanced Technology: Cruise ships are equipped with state-of-the-art technology to enhance safety. This includes advanced navigation systems, radar, and weather monitoring tools to detect potential risks at sea. The use of computerized monitoring systems allows for real-time analysis of crucial ship functions, promoting early detection of potential issues.

4. Emergency Preparedness: Cruise ships have comprehensive emergency response plans in place to handle various incidents, including medical emergencies, fires, and ship evacuations. These plans outline the roles and responsibilities of crew members, evacuation procedures, and the deployment of life-saving equipment such as lifeboats, life jackets, and rafts.

5. Regular Inspections: Cruise ships undergo regular inspections by flag state authorities and classification societies to ensure compliance with safety regulations. These inspections cover various aspects, including structural integrity, fire safety, lifesaving equipment, and operational systems. Non-compliance can result in penalties, fines, or the revocation of operating licenses.

6. Passenger Safety Briefings: Before a cruise ship sets sail, all passengers must attend a mandatory safety briefing. During this briefing, important safety information is provided, including the location of life jackets, emergency exits, and the assembly stations to gather in case of an evacuation. This ensures that passengers are well-informed and prepared for any potential emergency.

The cruise ship industry remains committed to continuously enhancing safety measures. As new technologies and practices emerge, cruise lines actively integrate them into their operations to further improve the safety of their passengers and crew. Through ongoing training, regulations, and preparedness, the industry strives to provide a secure and enjoyable experience for all on board.

Notable Cruise Ship Sinkings in Recent Years

While cruise ship sinkings are relatively rare, there have been some notable incidents in recent years that have captured the attention of the public. These incidents serve as important reminders of the importance of safety protocols and the need for continuous improvement within the cruise industry.

1. Costa Concordia (2012): One of the most infamous cruise ship sinkings in recent memory, the Costa Concordia struck a reef off the coast of Italy in January 2012. The captain made a navigational error, leading to the ship capsizing and resulting in the loss of 32 lives. This incident highlighted the importance of trained and responsible navigation, as well as the need for effective evacuation procedures.

2. MV Sewol (2014): While not a traditional cruise ship, the sinking of the MV Sewol ferry in South Korea in April 2014 had a profound impact on the maritime industry. The overloaded ferry capsized, resulting in the tragic loss of 304 passengers, mostly students on a school trip. The incident sparked a nationwide discussion on safety standards and resulted in tighter regulations for passenger vessels.

3. Norwegian Dawn (2015): In May 2015, the Norwegian Dawn, a cruise ship operated by Norwegian Cruise Line, encountered severe weather off the coast of the United States. The ship was hit by a massive wave, causing water to flood several decks and resulting in injuries to several passengers and crew. The incident highlighted the importance of monitoring weather conditions and taking appropriate measures to ensure passenger safety.

4. Viking Sky (2019): The Viking Sky, a cruise ship operated by Viking Ocean Cruises, made headlines in March 2019 when it experienced engine failure in treacherous conditions off the coast of Norway. The ship was left adrift and in danger of running aground, prompting a daring rescue operation to evacuate over 1,300 passengers. This incident underscored the importance of contingency plans and effective emergency response procedures.

These notable sinkings serve as reminders of the ever-present risks that can arise at sea. In their aftermath, the cruise industry has implemented additional safety measures, such as enhanced training, improved communication systems, and stricter guidelines for navigating challenging waters. The lessons learned from these incidents help shape regulations and enhance the industry’s commitment to passenger safety.

Statistics on Cruise Ship Sinkings

When considering the safety of cruise ship travel, it is important to look at the statistics surrounding cruise ship sinkings. By examining the numbers, we can gain a better understanding of the overall safety record of the industry.

According to data from the Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA), the likelihood of a cruise ship sinking is extremely low. Out of the millions of passengers who embark on cruise vacations each year, only a small fraction will ever experience a sinking or a major incident.

In fact, a study conducted by the University of Plymouth’s Maritime Research Group found that the chances of a cruise ship sinking are less than one in a million. This statistic includes all types of cruise ships and takes into account both major and minor incidents.

Furthermore, cruise ships are designed and built to withstand extreme conditions and are subject to rigorous safety regulations. Advances in technology, such as weather monitoring systems and state-of-the-art navigation equipment, have further enhanced the safety of modern cruise ships.

It’s also worth noting that cruise lines prioritize passenger safety and invest heavily in crew training and emergency preparedness. Regular safety drills, comprehensive emergency response plans, and ongoing safety inspections contribute to maintaining a high level of safety standards across the industry.

While cruise ships may encounter incidents such as engine failures or minor fires, the vast majority of these situations are handled smoothly and do not lead to sinkings or loss of life. The prompt response of trained crew members, advanced safety protocols, and proper evacuation procedures ensure that passengers are kept safe in the event of any incident.

As with any mode of transportation, there is always a certain level of inherent risk. However, statistics indicate that cruise ship travel remains one of the safest forms of leisure travel available today.

It is essential to keep these statistics in mind when considering a cruise vacation. While the possibility of a sinking exists, the overall risk is extremely low. By following the safety guidelines provided by the cruise line and remaining aware of emergency procedures, passengers can enjoy their cruise experience with peace of mind.

Embarking on a cruise ship vacation is a thrilling experience, filled with excitement, relaxation, and exploration. While the concept of cruise ship sinkings may evoke concern, it’s important to have a realistic perspective on the safety of the industry.

Throughout history, cruise ship sinkings have prompted significant improvements in safety regulations and practices. From the defining tragedy of the Titanic to more recent incidents, the industry has learned valuable lessons that have shaped its commitment to passenger safety.

The cruise ship industry has implemented a wide range of safety measures, including comprehensive crew training, adherence to strict regulations, advanced technology, and emergency preparedness. These measures work in harmony to reduce the risks associated with cruising and ensure the well-being of passengers and crew members.

Notable sinkings in recent years have further highlighted the importance of constant vigilance and the need for continuous improvement. By analyzing these incidents, the cruise industry is able to identify potential areas for enhancement and further strengthen its commitment to safety.

Statistics show that the chance of a cruise ship sinking is extremely low, with the industry continually striving to improve its safety record. Advances in technology, ongoing crew training, and regulatory oversight contribute to providing an environment where passengers can enjoy their vacation with confidence.

As in any form of travel, there will always be some level of inherent risk. However, the cruise ship industry’s dedication to safety measures and ongoing improvements make it one of the safest modes of leisure travel available today.

So, if you’ve been dreaming of embarking on a cruise adventure, rest assured that the industry’s commitment to safety is unwavering. By choosing a reputable cruise line, following safety guidelines, and staying informed about emergency procedures, you can indulge in the wonders of cruising while experiencing peace of mind.

Fair winds and smooth sailing on your next cruise journey!

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FOX News

UK-owned ship struck by Houthis sinks, first vessel lost during war

A U.K.-owned cargo ship that was struck by the Iran-backed Houthi rebels nearly two weeks ago has finally sunk, making it the first vessel to be lost since the onset of the Israel-Hamas war.

The ship, a Belize-flagged bulk carrier called the "MV Rubymar," was attacked by two anti-ship missiles launched by the Houthis on Feb. 18, one of which hit and caused severe damage, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) reported at the time. 

Two nearby ships responded to the incident and safely evacuated all 24 crew members but the Rubymar was left dead in the water, slowly taking on water as its cargo, fertilizer and fuel, spilled into the sea. CENTCOM called it an "environmental disaster."

US FORCES CARRY OUT MORE STRIKES AGAINST ANTI-SHIP CRUISE MISSILES, DRONE IN RED SEA

Incredible aerial footage taken on Wednesday showed the partially submerged vessel near the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a crucial waterway linking the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. It was drifting northward while an oil slick stretching at least 18 miles could also be seen. 

Plans to tow the ship to a safe port never materialized.

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On Saturday afternoon, the British military’s maritime trade operations center, which watches over Mideast waterways, separately acknowledged the Rubymar's sinking. The vessel is owned Golden Adventure Shipping SA of Southampton in the U.K.

Yemen’s internationally recognized government, as well as a regional military official, confirmed the ship sank.

Satellite pictures analyzed by The Associated Press from Planet Labs PBC showed smaller boats alongside the Rubymar on Wednesday. It wasn’t immediately clear whose vessels those were. The images showed the Rubymar’s stern sinking into the Red Sea but still afloat, mirroring earlier video taken of the vessel.

Then, on Friday, the private security firm Ambrey separately reported about a mysterious incident involving the Rubymar where a number of Yemenis were reportedly harmed during a security incident. It did not elaborate on what that incident involved and no party involved in Yemen’s yearslong war claimed any new attack on the vessel, the Associated Press reports. 

STAMPEDE, GUNFIRE AT GAZA HUMANITARIAN AID DELIVERY KILLS OVER 100, REPORTS SAY

A satellite image taken Friday by Maxar Technologies showed new blast damage on the Rubymar not previously seen, with no other vessels around it. It sank soon after. 

The Houthis, a Zaydi Shiite group, seized Yemen's capital in 2014 and have battled a Saudi-led coalition since 2015. Their Zaydi people ran a 1,000-year kingdom in Yemen up until 1962.

Freight going through the Suez Canal has plunged since  Iran-backed  Houthi militants began attacking vessels in the Red Sea as a show of support for Palestinians in the Israel-Hamas war which began following the Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people. 

The Suez Canal is a critical shipping lane, given that it offers vessels a direct route between the North Atlantic and northern Indian oceans via the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea. Those vessels have included at least one with cargo bound for Iran, the Houthis’ main benefactor and an aid ship later bound for Houthi-controlled territory while an American drone worth tens of millions of dollars was also shot down.

The attacks led to U.S. and British forces launching a series of proportionate strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen .

On Thursday, CENTCOM forces  conducted two self-defense strikes against six mobile anti-ship cruise missiles that were prepared to launch towards the Red Sea. Earlier in the evening, CENTCOM forces shot down a drone over the southern Red Sea in self-defense, the agency said. 

The Houthis insist their attacks will continue until Israel stops its combat operations in the Gaza Strip, which have enraged the wider Arab world and seen the Houthis gain international recognition.

However, there has been a slowdown in attacks in recent days. The reason for that remains unclear.

Fox News’ Bradford Bens and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

Original article source: UK-owned ship struck by Houthis sinks, first vessel lost during war

The cargo ship Rubymar, carrying Ukrainian grain, is seen in the Black Sea off Kilyos near Istanbul, Turkey in November 2022.

The Family Cruise Companion

How Often Do Cruise Ships Sink?

By: Author David Chapman

Posted on Last updated: February 21, 2024

Categories Health & Safety , LEARN

Modern cruise ships are engineered to withstand the toughest conditions and offer the utmost safety and reliability. Nevertheless, people may wonder how often do cruise ships sink.

The short answer: It’s rare. In the last 50 years, a ship has sunk during the course of a cruise less than once per decade.

Nevertheless, while it rarely happens, we can all easily think of terrible disasters where it did happen – such as the century-old disaster of the RMS Titanic or the decade-old capsize of Costa Concordia. So, how often do these modern marvels of the sea meet a similar fate? The best way is to dive into the history of known cruise ship sinkings to understand the probability of it happening to today’s state-of-the-art vessels.

How Often Do Cruise Ships Sink

How Often Do Cruise Ships Sink? It’s Rare!

Cruise ships are some of the largest and most luxurious vessels on the water and are designed to be safe and reliable. However, it is not uncommon for cruise ships to encounter problems at sea; in some cases, these problems can lead to the ship’s sinking. Over the past 100 years since the RMS Titanic sank in 1912, only 18 cruise ships and some ocean liners have been publicly known to have sunk. And, over the past 50 years , only four cruise ships have sunk while navigating on a cruise . 

cruise ship sinks 2014

To fully understand the rarity of a cruise ship sinking, let’s examine the known causes of these disasters, beginning with the iconic RMS Titanic.

Exploring Past Sunk Cruise Ships – RMS Titanic In 1912 To Orient Queen In 2020

The RMS Titanic was a luxurious passenger liner known for its grandeur and advanced safety features. Even though the Titanic was an ocean liner rather than a cruise ship , it was the largest ship of its time and was thought to be unsinkable due to its watertight compartments. However, on April 15, 1912 , the Titanic struck an iceberg, broke in half, and sank in the North Atlantic Ocean, resulting in the loss of over 1,500 lives.

The Titanic disaster profoundly impacted the maritime industry and sparked significant changes in how ships were designed and built. One major factor that contributed to the number of lives lost during the sinking was the lack of enough lifeboats on board. 

The ship was carrying only enough lifeboats for about half of the passengers and crew, which proved to be a tragic oversight when the ship began to sink.

As a result of the Titanic disaster, new regulations were put in place to ensure that all passenger ships, including cruise ships, were required to carry sufficient lifeboats for passengers and crew on board. Additionally, new safety standards were implemented to improve ships’ design and construction, including stronger materials and more watertight compartments. 

cruise ship sinks 2014

Fortunately, since 2020, no confirmed cruise ship capsizing or sinking has occurred. The last one was the Orient Queen suffering no crew or passenger casualties, which sank due to a nearby ammonium nitrate explosion while moored. 

Below is a list of some available records of cruise ship sinkings since the iconic Titanic .

Comparing 20th To 21st Century Maritime Disasters

The tale of two disasters – the Titanic and the Costa Concordia – highlights the importance of ship design in terms of safety. When the Titanic collided with the iceberg in 1912, it tore a 300-foot gash in the ship’s hull, sending freezing water flooding into the base of the vessel. 

This caused the back of the ship to tilt upward, leading to a catastrophic breakage that made it harder to evacuate. The lack of lifeboats was also a major factor in the high death toll of over 1,500 people, making it one of the worst peacetime maritime disasters in history.

Fast forward to 2012, and the Costa Concordia disaster (now more than ten years ago) off the coast of Italy provides a modern-day equivalent. When the cruise ship struck a rock reef, it tore a 16-foot gash in the hull around 25 feet below sea level. The ship began flooding, the engines and generators went offline, and it began to sink. 

However, the ship’s design allowed it to lean heavily to its side and sink much more slowly, allowing the crew to initiate a hasty evacuation. Thanks to a sufficient supply of lifeboats, they evacuated the passengers over six hours, ultimately resulting in a death toll of 34 people. Most of these deaths were caused by the ship tilting and passengers falling into the water. 

Three people were even rescued from the ship over 24 hours after the incident, thanks to the slow sinking of the vessel. While the Costa Concordia disaster was one of the worst maritime disasters of the 21st century, it was nowhere near as catastrophic in terms of loss of life as the disasters of the 20th century.

When you compare modern cruise ships to Titanic-era ships , you can readily see that safety has improved considerably. As demonstrated in the table shown above by the low number of cruise ships to sink in recent history, modern vessels are generally better equipped to survive a disaster than their predecessors. And as you saw, the number of lives lost had decreased to nearly zero.

cruise ship sinks 2014

Why Don’t Modern Cruise Ships Sink As Often?

When people buy tickets for a cruise, they’re not just looking for a vacation – they’re also buying safety and peace of mind. They want to know that their needs will be taken care of and that they will be safe for the duration of the trip. And cruise ships are designed with this in mind. These floating resorts are built to withstand all sorts of rough conditions that would have sunk ships of the past.

But it hasn’t always been this way. During the heyday of sea travel, it was fairly common for ships to be lost at sea due to rough weather, enemy attacks, or collisions with icebergs. However, the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 and the RMS Empress of Ireland in 1914 made it clear that something needed to change. 

These were both sturdy ships and were ocean liners built for long-distance travel. But to achieve this reliability, they sacrificed maneuverability. They would be rock-solid if everything went according to plan, but there was little hope of saving the voyage if something went wrong.

Today, however, cruise ships are a different story. These vessels are typically made of lighter materials and are much more agile, allowing them to navigate rough seas easily. 

Cruise Ship Stability: What Keeps Them Afloat?

Have you ever wondered how cruise ships manage to stay afloat despite their massive size and seemingly top-heavy design? This is often a big topic of discussion, and the answer lies in the careful balance of weight distribution and stability.

When you board a large cruise ship, you are stepping onto a floating resort with thousands of staterooms, dozens of restaurants, and endless recreation opportunities. Yet, despite all these amenities, cruise ships remain stable and steady on the water despite their weight. 

This is thanks to a combination of factors, including the ships:

  • Machinery’s placement
  • Stabilizer fins use
  • Modern navigation systems

So how does it all work? First, it’s important to understand that only a small portion of the ship is actually below the waterline. This means that most of the weight is concentrated above the water, making the ship appear top-heavy. But the ship’s design actually works in its favor, pulling down on the water to provide balance and stability.

The key to this balance is the ship’s center of gravity. While the goal is to keep the center of gravity as close to the ship’s middle as possible, this is not always possible due to the weight of the ship’s engines and other machinery. As a result, ships usually have a heavier bottom half than a lighter top half to compensate for this.

What Happens If An Obstacle Is Unavoidable?

Cruise ships will do their best to take detours to avoid rough weather in the event of a storm at sea. But sometimes, a storm comes on fast and hard, and the ship must rely on more than just its center of gravity to stay afloat. That’s where the design of the ship’s hull comes into play.

  • Cruise ships have rounded edges on the bottom of the hull, which makes it easier for the ship to roll with the waves and then return to its original position. They also have several ballast tanks, which are water-filled tanks that provide additional stability and distribute the load evenly. These features help the ship handle rough seas in a way that older ships could not.

Of course, no system is perfect, and cruise ships are not invincible. They typically have less hull strength than ocean liners but are equipped with better radars to avoid obstacles like icebergs. If a cruise ship were to hit an iceberg, it could potentially cause serious damage to the hull. 

Are Cruise Ships Failsafe?

There is no possible closer answer than the word “almost.” While the Costa Concordia disaster in 2012 was a shocking reminder that no vessel is invincible, modern cruise ships are designed with safety in mind. From advanced navigation systems to sturdy hulls and ballast tanks, these ships are built to weather even the roughest of storms. 

And in the rare event of a catastrophic disaster, cruise ships have enough safety features in place to allow for a safe evacuation.

As to the ship’s safety, you can rest assured that cruise ship designers have done everything in their power to keep you and your fellow passengers safe.

Closing Thoughts

While cruise ships have sunk or encountered a disaster in the past, the likelihood of your ship sinking is close to minuscule. Modern ship design and protocols are in place to prevent things like weather and obstacles from ruining your cruise or endangering passengers onboard.

cruise ship sinks 2014

David Chapman

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COMMENTS

  1. List of shipwrecks in 2014

    List of shipwrecks: 14 January 2014 Ship State Description BJL I Indonesia The ferry capsized at Tanjung Priok.: ECC Topaz United Kingdom The windfarm service vessel caught fire and sank in the North sea 11 nautical miles (20 km) east of Lowestoft, Suffolk at around 1pm. The crew of three was rescued by a Royal Air Force (RAF) rescue helicopter from RAF Wattisham, and were not seriously injured.

  2. Survivor recounts Costa Concordia cruise capsizing 10 years later

    Associated Press. 0:00. 1:35. GIGLIO, Italy — Ten years have passed since the Costa Concordia cruise ship slammed into a reef and capsized off the Tuscan island of Giglio. But for the passengers ...

  3. Sinking of MV Sewol

    The ferry MV Sewol sank on the morning of April 16, 2014, en route from Incheon towards Jeju in South Korea. The 6,825-ton vessel sent a distress signal from about 2.7 kilometres (1.7 mi; 1.5 nmi) north of Byeongpungdo at 08:58 KST (23:58 UTC, April 15, 2014). Out of 476 passengers and crew, 304 died in the disaster, including around 250 students from Danwon High School in Ansan City.

  4. The Costa Concordia Disaster: How Human Error Made It Worse

    The Italian captain went back onboard the wreck for the first time since the sinking of the cruise ship on January 13, 2012, as part of his trial for manslaughter and abandoning ship.

  5. Haunting photos from inside the wrecked cruise ship Costa Concordia

    In August of 2014—two years and seven months after the cruise ship the Costa Concordia sank off the coast of the Tuscan island Giglio, claiming 32 lives—photographer Jonathan Danko Kielkowski swam aboard to document what was left. At that point, the ship had only recently been raised from the bottom of the ocean, having spend two and a half ...

  6. Costa Concordia disaster

    On 13 January 2012, the seven-year-old Costa Cruises vessel Costa Concordia was on the first leg of a cruise around the Mediterranean Sea when she deviated from her planned route at Isola del Giglio, Tuscany, sailed closer to the island, and struck a rock formation on the sea floor.This caused the ship to list and then to partially sink, landing unevenly on an underwater ledge.

  7. Concordia Cruise Disaster

    Dec 2, 2014; Workers find body while dismantling the Costa Concordia ... Costa Concordia, the Italian cruise ship that sank off the coast of Italy in January 2012, is finally leaving her resting ...

  8. The Gustloff Incident

    The blast disabled the engines and cut the ship's power. It also extinguished the lights and silenced the vessel's communications system. Over the next 90 minutes, the ship sank. Death Toll. Today, the Wilhelm Gustloff lies on the sandy bottom of the Baltic Sea. Although the tally of dead and living wouldn't come until years after the war ...

  9. Costa Concordia captain Schettino guilty of manslaughter

    Costa Concordia captain Francesco Schettino is jailed for 16 years for the manslaughter of 32 people who died when the cruise ship sank in 2012. ... Jul 2014: Costa Concordia refloated and towed ...

  10. South Korea ferry disaster: Sewol remains 'not human'

    The National Forensic Service conducted tests and confirmed them as animal bone fragments, the maritime ministry said. The Sewol sank off Jindo island on 16 April 2014, killing 304 people, almost ...

  11. What happens when a huge ship sinks? A step-by-step guide to averting

    The wreck of the Costa Concordia cruise ship off Giglio Island is towed after it was refloated using air tanks attached to its sides, July 2014. Photograph: Tiziana Fabi/AFP/Getty Images The stern ...

  12. South Korea Raises Ferry That Sank in 2014 Disaster

    The ferry, the 6,825-ton Sewol, capsized and sank off the southwestern tip of South Korea on April 16, 2014. The accident was the country's worst catastrophe in decades, and it contributed to ...

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  14. 6 Years Later: Verdict in Deadly Sinking of Sea Diamond Cruise Ship

    The cruise ship, owned by Louis Hellenic Cruises, sank on April 6 2007 after ramming a reef near the Aegean island of Santorini with 1,195 passengers and 391 crew on board. A French man, Jean Christophe Allain (age 45) and his daughter Maud (age 16), died. According to a Greek newspaper, the judges also sentenced the navigation officer (two ...

  15. South Korea ferry sinks carrying hundreds of students

    Updated on: April 16, 2014 / 12:05 PM EDT / CBS/AP. MOKPO, South Korea -- A ferry carrying 462 people, mostly high school students on an overnight trip to a tourist island, sank off South Korea's ...

  16. The 9 Worst Cruise Ship Disasters

    A Coast Guard officer in contact with the ship at the time of the sinking claimed he told Schettino to get back onboard. After being convicted of manslaughter and pursuing several appeals, Schettino only started his 16-year prison sentence in May of 2017. The salvage effort (the ship was completely dismantled) was the largest effort of its kind. 5.

  17. Did the Carnival Cruise Ship 'Triumph' Overturn and Sink?

    The Carnival cruise ship 'Triumph' overturned and sank off the coast of Mexico in November 2018. On 7 November 2018, a brief article published on the "prank" web site React365 reported that the ...

  18. See the Harrowing Footage of a Massive Wave Slamming into a Cruise Ship

    The cruise ship was nearly 600 feet long and weighed over 300,000 tons when it was struck by a rogue wave. ... it's believed that rogue waves were the cause of the sinking of the Edmund ...

  19. The world's worst cruise ship disasters

    The sinking of RMS Titanic in April 1912 remains the worst, and the most infamous, cruise ship disaster in history. The sinking of the biggest passenger ship ever built at the time resulted in the death of more than 1,500 of the 2,208 people onboard. The accident occurred when the ship hit an iceberg while cruising at its maximum speed of 23k ...

  20. Terrifying Video Shows Tourists Scream for Help as Boat Sinks

    A cruise ship passenger dies in the Bahamas after an excursion boat capsizes. ... was on a five-day vacation with her family when a double-deck catamaran carrying over 100 people sank late Tuesday ...

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    Two passengers died when the 22,000-ton cruise ship sunk off the coast of the Greek island nearly 17 years ago. Local people have been fighting for years to get the wreckage removed, worried about ...

  22. List of maritime disasters in the 21st century

    The ship was towed and beached. 33 people died while around 200 passengers were rescued. 33 2012 Italy: Costa Concordia - The Italian cruise ship ran aground, capsized and sank in shallow waters on 13 January off the Isola del Giglio, killing 32 people (27 passengers and 5 crewmembers) out of 3,216 passengers and 1,013 crewmembers aboard. 32

  23. Cruise Ship Sinks in MASSIVE Storm with 571 Passengers On Board

    Passengers and crew of a sinking cruise liner are forced to abandon ship in a ferocious storm in the Indian Ocean, in this scene from Season 5, Episode 5.Sta...

  24. Houthis vow to target more British ships after Rubymar sinks in Gulf

    Yemen's Iran-backed Houthis vowed on Sunday to continue targeting British ships in the Gulf of Aden following the sinking of a UK-owned vessel. "Yemen will continue to sink more British ships ...

  25. How Many Cruise Ships Sink Each Year

    2. MV Sewol (2014): While not a traditional cruise ship, the sinking of the MV Sewol ferry in South Korea in April 2014 had a profound impact on the maritime industry. The overloaded ferry capsized, resulting in the tragic loss of 304 passengers, mostly students on a school trip.

  26. UK-owned ship struck by Houthis sinks, first vessel lost during war

    US FORCES CARRY OUT MORE STRIKES AGAINST ANTI-SHIP CRUISE MISSILES, DRONE IN RED SEA ... confirmed the ship sank. ... seized Yemen's capital in 2014 and have battled a Saudi-led coalition since ...

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    Health & Safety, LEARN. Modern cruise ships are engineered to withstand the toughest conditions and offer the utmost safety and reliability. Nevertheless, people may wonder how often do cruise ships sink. The short answer: It's rare. In the last 50 years, a ship has sunk during the course of a cruise less than once per decade.