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Not Much of a Triumph
Feb. 15th, 2013 09:21 amLike everybody else, I've been watching the Carnival Triumph fiasco. Speaking as a former Navy man, the whole thing looks like a Charlie Foxtrot of the first order.
Now, granted my ship experience is based on warships, which are designed with an eye towards the idea that somebody just might take a potshot at them. However, I was struck with the truly horrible lack of redundancy on Triumph. Per the link above, Triumph is a diesel-electric ship, and has six generators. The only way a fire would result in the loss of all generators is for them to all be in the same space!
If that sounds like a stupid idea, well it is. You'd ideally want six generators in three compartments, two to a compartment, or at least two compartments of three each, allowing split-plant operations. Obviously, the decision was made to spend more money on the Lido deck then on the engineering plant. Carnival can get away with this because her ships aren't registered in the US. This allows them to avoid paying US taxes and meeting US regulations.
The second area of foxtrot-ishness is Carnival's response. The ship was stricken within 200 miles of Progresso, Mexico. One would think you'd tow her there. Now, granted, there were 900 passengers not traveling with US passports (moral of the story, kids - leaving the country = get a passport) but you could surely make arrangements to get them back separately. But then Carnival decided to ignore Progresso, and even more curiously not go back to Houston, from whence she sailed, to offload passengers. No, they towed her to Mobile (presumably to start repairs at Alabama Docks) with passengers aboard! And then they decided to bus the passengers to New Orleans!
At any rate, Carnival has bought itself another week of bad PR, and 3,500 people who are going to be dining out for the next year on their stories of surviving a cruise.
Now, granted my ship experience is based on warships, which are designed with an eye towards the idea that somebody just might take a potshot at them. However, I was struck with the truly horrible lack of redundancy on Triumph. Per the link above, Triumph is a diesel-electric ship, and has six generators. The only way a fire would result in the loss of all generators is for them to all be in the same space!
If that sounds like a stupid idea, well it is. You'd ideally want six generators in three compartments, two to a compartment, or at least two compartments of three each, allowing split-plant operations. Obviously, the decision was made to spend more money on the Lido deck then on the engineering plant. Carnival can get away with this because her ships aren't registered in the US. This allows them to avoid paying US taxes and meeting US regulations.
The second area of foxtrot-ishness is Carnival's response. The ship was stricken within 200 miles of Progresso, Mexico. One would think you'd tow her there. Now, granted, there were 900 passengers not traveling with US passports (moral of the story, kids - leaving the country = get a passport) but you could surely make arrangements to get them back separately. But then Carnival decided to ignore Progresso, and even more curiously not go back to Houston, from whence she sailed, to offload passengers. No, they towed her to Mobile (presumably to start repairs at Alabama Docks) with passengers aboard! And then they decided to bus the passengers to New Orleans!
At any rate, Carnival has bought itself another week of bad PR, and 3,500 people who are going to be dining out for the next year on their stories of surviving a cruise.
