Cruise Ship Disasters

3.0 Disaster on Cruise Ship

Cruise vessels form a very important part in the vacation itinerary of people. Each year, over 20,000,000 individuals board a cruise ship, searching for fun and relaxation. The number of cruise passengers for 2014 is forecast to hit 21.7 million according to the Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA). However, there is a major type of maritime accident occurs in cruise vessels.

3.1 Past

There are several notable past cruise ship accidents in century of 20th and 21st including type of sink of cruise, fire or explosion on cruise, collision and pirate. Here are the notable cruise disaster happened in 20th and 21st century.

3.1.1. RMS Titanic

One of the notable and worst cruise ship disaster happened in 20th

On that day, the Sun Vista was en route returning to Singapore from Phuket, Thailand. Suddenly, a small fire ignited by a malfunction in the engine room switchboard (Martin Cox, 2010). Fire cannot be controlled and spread throughout the ship. The Sun Vista slowly sank deeper and deeper in about 200 feet of water some 60 nautical miles south of Penang Island, 50 nautical miles west of Port Weld, in the Strait of Malacca over the next seven hours. Luckily the passengers eventually rescued by a passing freighter in the lifeboats. Therefore, there were no fatalities with some minor injuries

Human factor is a product of incorrectly made decisions, negligence action arising from captains of cruise and decision based on inadequate technical knowledge. Negligence action arising or improper operation of the captain of the cruise will lead to accident such as collisions which are probably the most common type of disaster. The cruise may collide with rocks reefs, icebergs, piers and other vessels if the captain does not carry the cruise in proper way or without monitoring constantly throughout the voyage. For instance, in the incident of Costa Cruises on 2012 a major human error on the part of ship’s Master, Captain Francesco Schettino. The evident showed that the cruise is too close to the shore and the captain had not followed the standard procedures in handling the emergency appears. Moreover, poor trained crews will also contributed to the causes of cruise ship accident. Most of the equipment especially navigation aids on the cruise is needed special knowledge to handle. If the crews are poorly trained, they cannot operate and interpret the information from the equipment well. Besides that, passenger’s behavior also lead to cruise mishap occurred. In March 2006, the Star Princess of Princess Cruises caught fire when en route to Jamaica and resulting blaze damaged 100 cabins on four decks. the fire is reported caused by an untended cigarette in a passenger