Disabled cruise ship delayed by rule of sea, tow drivers to blame

A disabled cruise ship, the Costa Allegra, is now docked at Port Victoria, Mahé, in the Seychelles, and disembarkation of guests is under way. The ship spent an extra 10 to 12 hours at sea without electricity, air conditioning, or toilet facilities all due to the hesitation of a French fishing vessel. First to respond to the emergency, the French vessel delayed rescue showing more concern about securing their claim to tow fees. They refused to allow faster tugboats to take over.

Seychelles government official Joel Morgan told The Associated Press that Costa Allegra would have likely arrived in port Wednesday night local time if the tugs had been allowed to take over. Instead, the ship arrived mid-day Thursday.

“The Seychelles authorities are not happy about this situation and we would have wished to get the ship into port as soon as possible in order to ensure the safety and well-being of the passengers,” said Morgan, the Seychelles minister of home affairs, environment, transport and energy, in an interview with Newsday.

The French vessel was towing at 4 nautical miles per hour. The tugboats could have traveled at 6 to 7 nautical miles per hour.The director of France’s Regional Operational Center for Surveillance and Rescue said maritime rules allowed the French fishing vessel to continue with the towing job.

“We were in a rescue operation; the tuna boat arrived first. Then there are negotiations, as one can imagine,” said Nicolas Le Bianic, a French official, in Newsday. “Any assistance to people is free, not the case here,” he said. “Assistance to the boat, in contrast, is paid. That’s the rule of principle set by maritime texts.”

We suppose that makes sense and encourages other ships to respond in situations such as this. They know that if they get there first they get the tow. But it kind of sounds like an episode of TruTV’s “South Beach Tow” where tow truck operators battle to get to the scene of an auto accident first in order to earn the tow charge.

Different from an episode of “South Beach Tow,” though, passengers off the ship today will spend a week or two (their choice) at a luxury Seychelles resort, compliments of the cruise line. Passengers from an episode of “South Beach Tow” usually just get a bill.




Flickr photo by bugeaters

National Geographic has untold cruise disaster stories

A new National Geographic special coming up on Sunday, February 12 is promising to answer a whole lot of questions about the grounding of the Costa Concordia last month. Featuring first-hand accounts of American survivors who share their own home video, Nat Geo will present Italian Cruise Ship Disaster: The Untold Stories.

How did the ship sink? Could it have been prevented? Why weren’t the passengers warned earlier? What are the similarities to and differences from the Titanic?” asks and answers NatGeo in the special episode Sunday night.

Costa Concordia was carrying more than 3,200 passengers and 1,000 crew, including Americans Sameer and Divya Sharma from Massachusetts and 18-year-old Amanda Warrick who was traveling with her older brothers. On Friday the 13th, while the Sharmas shrug off any bad luck, the Warrick siblings toss out the idea that “something’s gonna happen.”

Soon, the ship detoured off course and hit the rocks. Amanda describes the immediate impact, telling NatGeo, “At first there was a tilt and a shake of the ship, that’s when tables and glasses started crashing. I was kind of in shock, I remember immediately standing up and looking at my brothers. I was just kind of speechless and silent.”

Italian Cruise Ship Disaster: The Untold Stories includes in-depth stories from passengers and staff on board as well as Coast Guard rescuers with home video, some never before seen on U.S. television, and reconstruction of the sinking of the Costa Concordia as it happened.The hour-long program starts at 7PM ET/PT Sunday, February 12, rebroadcast February 13, at 10 p.m. ET/PT.


Flickr photo by EU Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection

Passengers sick again, cruise line cancels sailing

Last weekend nearly 700 passengers, on three different ships, contracted the flu-like Norovirus causing Princess and Royal Caribbean cruise lines to delay departure of this week’s sailing for extensive cleaning. Now, another outbreak on one of the same ships has caused its cancellation, mid-sailing, and an early return to port for even more cleaning.

Princess Cruises Crown Princess was on a seven-night Caribbean cruise when the outbreak occurred and will skip calling at the ports of Curacao and Aruba to come back two days early.

“In consultation with the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC), who has informed us that there are widespread outbreaks of Norovirus occurring in the US, it was agreed that the best course of action to stop the spread of the illness is for the ship to undergo a two-day extensive sanitization,” said Princess Cruises in a statement on their website.

To make that happen, Crown Princess, scheduled to return to Fort Lauderdale on Saturday, February 11 will come back two days early, ending the current sailing on Thursday, February 9th.

Passengers on the current sailing will receive a full refund, assistance re-booking flights if they had been booked through the cruise line as well as hotel accommodations if necessary and 25% of what they paid as a credit to use on a future cruise.”On the current sailing 114 passengers (3.70% out of 3,078) and 59 crew (5.01% of 1,178) have reported gastrointestinal illness,” said Princess. On the previous cruise, 364 passengers (11.73% of 3,103) and 30 crew (2.57% of 1,168) were affected.

The move by Princess is unusual but not unprecedented. Norovirus, which causes vomiting and diarrhea, is a common illness that is easily transmitted in closed environments like nursing homes, schools and cruise ships.


Photo: Princess Cruises

Cruise line makes offer, gets sued, waits

The cruise line that owns Costa Concordia is trying to move forward, past recovery and initial assistance efforts to make an offer to non-injured passengers. Still without conclusive forensic reasons or blame placed for the tragic grounding of January 13, Costa Cruises faces legal action as it and the entire cruise industry review safety standards.

The families of those who died, passengers that were injured and crew members will be handled on a case by case basis. For everyone else, the line is offering:

  • A lump sum of 11,000 euros (about $14,500) per person as indemnification, covering all patrimonial and nonpatrimonial damages, including loss of baggage and personal effects, psychological distress and loss of enjoyment of the cruise vacation;
  • Reimbursement of the value of the cruise, including harbor taxes;
  • Reimbursement of air and bus transfers included in the cruise package
  • Full reimbursement of travel expenses to reach the port of embarkation and return home;
  • Reimbursement of any medical expenses resulting from the cruise;
  • Reimbursement of expenses incurred on board during the cruise.

Almost simultaneously, crew member Gary Lobaton off Costa Concordia has filed a complaint in the federal court of Chicago seeking class-action status in a $multi-million lawsuit.

“The defendants failed to properly and timely notify all plaintiffs on board of the deadly and dangerous condition of the cruise ship as to avoid injury and death,” Lobaton said in the complaint. The passengers and crew “were abandoned by the captain.”

Meanwhile, Fox News reports six passengers off the stricken cruise ship filed a complaint against Carnival Corporation, parent company of ship owner Costa Cruises, in a Miami court demanding $460 million in compensation.

Maritime law experts say such actions probably won’t go far. Similar attempts to sue in the U.S. have been turned away by the U.S. Supreme Court and the expense of filing in a foreign court is often too great. Between the liability limitation clauses of the passenger contract cruise travelers agree to by booking passage on a cruise ship and the nearly-exempt status of foreign flagged cruise ships, cruise lines have themselves covered.


“It’s well-settled law,” said Jerry Hamilton, a maritime attorney who regularly defends cruise lines against lawsuits in STLToday. “The Supreme Court has said those clauses are valid clauses. They will be upheld.”

Still, the cruise industry moves on and the Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA), a trade group that represents the interests of 26 member lines, announced a global safety review in answer to questions raised by the Costa Concordia grounding.

Key components of the Review include:

  1. An internal review by CLIA members of their own operational safety practices and procedures concerning issues of navigation, evacuation, emergency training, and related practices and procedures.
  2. Consultation with independent external experts.
  3. Identification and sharing of industry best practices and policies, as well as possible recommendations to the IMO for substantive regulatory changes to further improve the industry’s operational safety.
  4. Collaboration with the IMO, governments and regulatory bodies to implement any necessary regulatory changes.

“While the cruise industry has an outstanding safety record, CLIA is fully committed to understanding the factors that contributed to the Concordia incident and is proactively responding to all maritime safety issues,” the organization said in a statement, adding “The Cruise Industry Operational Safety Review will enable the industry to do so in a meaningful and expedited manner.”

How this story ends, how much compensation will be given or awarded, will have a lot to do with conclusive results of investigations underway involving the captain of the ship and black box evidence of what really happened.

For now, concerned parties wait while preliminary operations to pump fuel out of the cruise ship were suspended Saturday due to bad weather. Workers decided the sea was too rough to continue the salvage operation.


Flickr photo by Cyr0z

Cruise tragedy calls for increased focus on safety

On the heels of the Costa Concordia cruise tragedy, where a once-proud ocean going vessel now lay on its side off the coast of Italy, calls for increased safety standards and procedures are being made. While history will remember the Concordia event as more of a near-miss than a Titanic-like disaster as tabloids might have us believe, most experts agree: this can’t happen again.

As rescue workers still try to find 20-some missing passengers, blame has been placed squarely on the shoulders of the ship’s master, Captain Francesco Schettino. The ship was sailing a course approved by the cruise line, similar to an airline flight plan, when Captain Schettino chose to deviate from that plan, sailing too close to a nearby island in order to show the ship to locals.

“This route was put in correctly. The fact that it left from this course is due solely to a maneuver by the commander that was unapproved, unauthorized and unknown to Costa,” said Costa Chairman and CEO Pier Luigi Foschi in a live press conference via telephone from Italy yesterday.
Rogue move on the part of an out-of-control captain or not, it is clear that changes will have to be made in the way cruise lines do business to insure another event like this never happens again.

“The incident has many in the maritime industry and those contemplating a cruise questioning how something like this could happen” says cruise expert Paul Motter on FoxNews. “After all, the Costa Concordia, which was carrying 4,200 passengers and crew, was stocked with the state-of-the-art navigation equipment.”

Look for changes in the way cruise lines do business very soon. Maybe more focus on safety instructions, starting at embarkation. Perhaps more detail and a different way of handling safety drills and surely some sort of check system that requires more than just a Captain’s whim to change a ship’s course. But Motter urges passengers to take responsibility for their own safety with a number of suggestions.

“Choose a cruise line that specializes in your native language,” says Motter. During the Costa Concordia event, safety instructions being broadcast over the ship’s loudspeaker system were difficult to hear in any language, leaving those who did not speak the language being broadcast at a disadvantage. “Costa, MSC and other cruise lines offer cruises in as many as five languages simultaneously. Europeans are used to hearing announcements in five languages consecutively; Italian, French, German, Spanish and English. In a critical situation the idea of having to communicate in five languages is not just daunting, it can mean life or death.”

Another lesson to be learned from Costa Concordia is to avoid itineraries where passengers are allowed to embark from multiple ports. In the U.S., passengers embark and disembark at the same port in most cases. European sailings allow passengers to embark along the way.

“During a disaster, having people onboard who have not yet had a boat drill can really add to the chaos, ” says Motter, noting the International maritime law requirement that says a ship must hold its safety drill within 24 hours of sail-away. Many cruise lines have a safety drill before the ship begins to move. While procedures followed on Costa Concordia were in compliance with this rule, it left 600-some passengers who embarked the ship the day of the event, uninstructed on safety procedures, adding to the confusion of getting off the ship.

Cruise lines, appropriately, will wait until the final story is told about Costa Concordia. The ship’s “black box” of navigational data and other pertinent information was seized by local authorities in connection with their investigation of the captain. That may add information that will steer the direction the cruise industry takes.

Costa has placed priority appropriately. They still have 20-some unaccounted for passengers to find. Addressing potential environmental hazards caused by that ship laying on its side off the coast of Italy is also a priority right now. But look for changes to be coming soon, changes that will impact the on-board experience of a cruise vacation, hopefully in a safety-conscious way that will make for smooth sailing into the future.

Getty image/daylife