Royal Princess

[John Arton]

The Royal Princess, Princess cruises latest ship, was drifting powerless in the Medi for around 5 hrs. due to electrical problems and the 12 day cruise she was on had to be curtailed after 7 days.
From linkedin it would appear that she has suffered all sorts of problems since being handed over from the yard only a short while ago.
These modern cruise ship are diesel electric driven and generate enough electricity to power a small town. So why do they seem to suffer such problems. Carnival had a major problem on one of theirs not to long ago where it was drifting for days without power.
The (small) diesel electric ships I was one always had back up power in the form of redundancy amongst the generator sets and the emergency generator systems so surely these huge cruise liners should have sufficient redundancy and emergency back-up systems to allow them to be under control at all times instead of drifting around powerless with no toilet facilities, cooking, air conditioning as well as navigation gear.
Its a wonder that the cruise industry is still growing given the number of horror stories from these beasts in recent years.
Are they being thrown out from the building yards too quickly with more attention being paid to the passenger fittings etc. and not enough to the basics i.e hull design, machinery etc. and are they doing sufficient stringent sea trials.
I don't know but have no wish to go on one of these as a fare paying passenger only to end up drifting round seating your bullocks off and eating now't but sarnies for a number of days.
Did that many years ago but with only 30 or so crew mates to contend with not 3-4000 others on board all complaining like crazy.
rgds
JA

[Des Taff Jenkins]

Hi John.
I don't want to see it happen but, I'm still waiting for that day when we wake up to a terrible disaster.
Cheers Des

[happy daze john in oz]

We had one, Costa Concordia!!