Passengers on Quark Expeditions’ Ocean Explorer ship heading again from Antarctica skilled a harrowing journey by means of the turbulent Drake Passage, the place the expedition cruise ship hit waves as excessive as 30 to 40 toes. Passengers described the 48 hour expertise as being trapped on a “endless curler coaster at sea.”
One passenger, journey blogger Lesley Anne Murphy, documented the ordeal within the video beneath:
It appears to be like like nice enjoyable. However once I first watched the video, I felt nervous. I immediately thought that the window dealing with the bow of the cruise ship would possibly blow in inflicting a disastrous inflow of water into the ship.
That is precisely what occurred when a big wave hit the Louis Majesty Cruise Ship crusing in Mediterranean waters in 2010, killing two passengers and injuring fourteen others. (The Ocean Explorer has stronger bow home windows, hopefully?) You may learn concerning the catastrophe in our article on the time: Monster Waves Hit Louis Majesty Cruise Ship. Our YouTube web page exhibits a video produced by CBS Information concerning the lethal incident:
The wave and wind situations on the time of the Louis Majesty disaster ought to have clearly alerted the officers on obligation to warn the passengers to safe themselves of their cabins. The Grasp ought to have instructed the passengers to avoid the general public home windows, notably on the vessel’s bow. The cruise ship was heading immediately into the waves and people passengers killed and injured had been notably susceptible within the public areas on the bow.
All cruise ships have what are known as “security administration methods” (SMS) or “security and high quality” (SQM) protocols which tackle how the vessel ought to be operated in tough climate and the forms of precautions which ought to be thought of to guard the passengers. What sort of security procedures did the cruise ship have on the time? Did the vessel’s officers ignore them?
I can’t assist however suppose what the officers aboard the Ocean Explorer had been considering with passengers strolling exterior of their cabin whereas the ship was encountering these climate situations?
The Louis Majesty was once NCL’s Norwegian Majesty and, earlier than that, the Royal Majesty operated by Majesty Cruise Strains from 1992 – 1997. Lengthy earlier than I started representing passengers and crewmembers, I represented Majesty Cruise Strains (round 1995) when this cruise ship was primarily based in Miami. I’ve been on this ship and within the space the place the glass blew out. It was unimaginable fifteen years in the past that passengers misplaced their lives on this ship. It’s baffling to me that simply final week the Ocean Explorer didn’t implement security precautions.
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Picture credit score: Ocean Explorer – Ulstein; video – Storyful / Lesley Anne Murphy; Louis Majesty – CBS Information.
