Icon of the seas

[happy daze john in oz]

Instead of sending old ones to Alang, maybe could be used to house all the illegals.
Similar to the prison ships on the Thames back in the 1770's.

Just as long as they stay there and ae not moved to a new country.

[Ivan Cloherty]

I know there are many cruise devotees on site and I hope they continue to enjoy them, it is something that has never appealed to me, I don't have a logical explanation for that except I prefer to retain my sea going memories from my tramping and bulker days, rather than the limited passenger number vessels I served on, however that's just me. I was watching a number of passengers disembarking from a cruise liner and it was like an F1 scramble with motorised wheelchairs and mobility scooters vying for position, which begs me to ask from our cruise buddies, are disabled (physically impaired) passengers allocated cabins near to lifeboats/rafts etc or is it one service suits all. I ask out of mere curiosity and evacuation procedures for such passengers.

[Johnny Kieran]

I think they just assume that if there's a fire, or a collision, or any other disaster on board, it'll take a long time to sink or burn. That will give the crew plenty of time to get everyone off the ship to safety.
Of course that is a load of b#####ks which doesn't happen on real ships. The real life lifeboat drill is on the telly these days, and behind the cabin door. You have to assemble in a bar, allocated on boarding, when the call to muster is piped. I always check the best way out after sorting the cabin out, where the fire doors are, stairs and such. I've experienced a real emergency on one cruise (fire), and I can tell you, it can be chaotic.

[j.sabourn]

Assembly point true to tradition Johnny , one for the road ? , in this case one for the sea , maybe the last one you get as well. JS

[Johnny Kieran]

Assembly point true to tradition Johnny , one for the road ? , in this case one for the sea , maybe the last one you get as well. JS

Bloody bars were always shut though. Since the covid thing, they don't even do that.

[Des Taff Jenkins]

I don't think there will be many left on site who went through the war, we can only go on films of ships sinking and seamen desperately trying to get the lifeboats into the water, many jumping in panic as fire took hold, or she started to go down, and they where seamen not old age pensioners.
Maybe they should show one of those films before sailing to give them some idea how important it is. And of course their chances of survival.
Des

[happy daze john in oz]

Life boat drill now i only for the crew.
Passengers must watch a TV showing of it.
If you fail a nasty note is sent to your cabin, big brother knows if you have seen it.

But on modern cruise ships the number of life boats and inflatables looks enough, only an emergency will tell.

[Les Woodard]

John I recall that lifeboats where supposed to cater for the whole crew on each side in case of listing. So your assumption that they look like they have enough is probably based on both sides being able to be launched. Bloody hard to launch the port side boats when she is listing to starboard and vis verser

[j.sabourn]

What I remember of lifeboat falls was they had to be long enough to reach the water on the high side with a 15 degree list the same as the boarding ladder . Correct there has or had to be sufficient boats on either side to take the ships complement total, there may of been a 5% addition on this but can’t remember. Under the old Rules generally the ships motor lifeboat had to have fuel for 100 miles , the idea of a ships motor boat was to pull the other lifeboats clear of the ship and not to be first ashore for the beer. JS

[Johnny Kieran]

I don't know offhand the capacity of most lifeboats, just those I've seen, but I'm sure there wouldn't be enough each side to accommodate all souls on board. I usually have a look around in that area, and find they don't even have room for half on each side. Mind you there are plenty of those inflatable raft things.
If you think about it, most lifeboats I've see on cruises hold about 150 people, so you'd need God know how many boats (not good at maths) on a ship with 5000 passengers, plus crew. I think they hope it goes down level. Then again, maybe I've got it all wrong.