Cruises that Sank | The Worst Cruise Disasters of all Time

Pirate attack on MV Seabourn Spirit

On the morning of the 5^th of November 2005, the 5 star luxury cruise ship came under attack by pirates off the coast of Somalia. A mother ship released two pirate speedboats at 0550 hours and launched their attack on the boat.

There was 151 passengers on board, of which none of them were injured – despite the fact machineguns and RPG’s were launched at the ship. One of the RPG motors lodged itself into one of the ships rooms in a wall and had to be disarmed by sailors from USS Gonzalez after the attack had finished.

There were also reports of a second RPG bouncing off the stern of the ships as they were still making them out of rubber. Michael Groves, the ships Master-at-Arms was injured and hit by shrapnel whilst attempting to fight the raiders using a LRAD (long range acoustic device) which is a distance walling device that throws sounds at the target at long range, the LRAD is capable of projecting pain inducing and harmful tones.

By blasting powerful sound waves at the pirates, Michael Groves was successful in fighting off the pirates. Seabourn Spirit also destroyed one of the attack vessels by running over it.

Queen Elizabeth the II honoured both Michael Groves and Som Bahadur Gurung who was an ex-Ghurkha by presenting them with the Queens Gallantry Medal and the Queens Commendation for Bravery respectively.

After the attack had finished, the ship then made its way to Port Victoria to be repaired rather than heading for originally planned Mombassa, afterwards the ship then sailed into Singapore to return to its schedule.

This cruise ship sank due to what was probably the biggest incident arising from neglect of the ships health. In 1994 on August the 4^th, Oceanos sank.

The ship had been victim to either intentional or unintentional neglect, amazingly it sailed the day before it sank with a gaping ten centimetre hole in the “water tight” bulk head between the generator and the sewage tank, with loose hull plates and check valves that had been stripped for parts from a recent cruise.

For these many reasons, there was an explosion heard apparently from near the engine room, on the 3^rd of August at 2130 hours. As soon as the ships crew and the captain realised the ships fate, they fled, packing their belongings and being the first to leave – failing to fulfil the emergency procedures of closing the lower deck port holes. Not even an alarm was raised to the passengers. By the time the passengers realised that the boat was sinking, through people in the lower decks seeing water spilling in, the captain and the crew were already departing.

The Oceanos sailed into 40 knot winds and thirty feet swells, the storm then worsened and meant that the ship was rocking side to side so much that plates were falling off the tables while people were eating and decorations were falling over.

As the water was entering through the 10cm hole and as there was no check valves in the holding tanks, the water began to enter the ship through every shower, waste disposal unit and shower connected to the system, and as the water had flooded the generators, the power to the engines had been cut in fear of shorting the electrics, the Oceanos was now just a sitting duck in bad weather.

Luckily however for the passengers, vessels that were nearby picked up the distress call and raced to the location in order to save the passengers. It took the South African Air Force and the Navy seven hours and 16 helicopters to rescue every single person on board, saving 571 people.

The Oceanos managed to stay afloat all the way until 1530 hours on the 4^th of August before it finally reached its watery grave.

Again, this isnt exactly a ship sinking, but it does show how people can be put in danger while the ship is sailing happily and normally.

Onboard a Louis Cruise ship named the Majesty, the ship was on a 12 day cruise throughout the Mediterranean, when three rogue waves reaching in above 33 feet high (ten metres) and smashing the windows at the front and side of the ship.

A 69 year old German man and a 52 year old Italian man were both killed by the incident, Louis Cruises’ not giving away information about how they died however one was apparently struck by a large piece of glass and were both dead before any form of emergency treatment could have been issued. An elderly woman also suffered with two fractured legs, and many other people with broken bones.

All this damage was inflicted whilst the liner was sailing in the Mediterranean Sea, off the north eastern coast of Spain, on an apparently calm day. There were no storm warnings and the shipping forecast showed nothing abnormal. Marine scientists have, up until recently, dismissed stories of freak or rogue waves, as they had little evidence to back these claims.However, in 1995, an oil rig in the North Sea recorded rogue waves measuring 84 foot high, in an otherwise calm sea. Since that date, the European Space Agency have embarked on a project called MaxWave, using satellite data to confirm that these waves happen more frequently than we are led to believe.

The vessel, Louis Majesty, is seven hundred foot long and has ten passenger decks. The freak waves reached six deck heights and caused  excessive damage, forcing the liner to dock at Marseilles. There were around two thousand passengers on board at the time.

Other incidents of freak waves being reported have been dwarfted by a press release by the European Space Agency in 2004 which claims that “over 200 large vessels of six hundred feet or more have sunk without trace due to freak waves in the last two decades. An alarming figure, though not all confirmed, leads one to believe that incidents of rogue waves are not all that uncommon.        .

Whilst not particularly being a sinking cruise ship – this video does highlight one of the problems that can occur when travelling in rough seas. The cruise operator had hidden away this video for over two years before it was leaked out onto YouTube.

This particular incident happened onboard the P&O Cruises’ Pacific Sun. The ship ran into heavy strong weather in Mid 2008, underestimating the effects that the weather would have on the ship, the results were costly.

If you look at 47 seconds you can see a woman in the back of the room being launched into the pillar face first through the force of the boat rocking, then collapsing onto the floor and subsequently sliding off down the floor. You may also notice the speed at which the furniture starts to slide increases as the ship pitches and rolls. This video gives one an insight into how people get injured during such violent weather.

The cruise operator did not expect such a violent roll or they would have fastened the furniture to the deck. Smaller vessels, expecting more pitch and roll, are in the practice of  bolting down everything that moves.

This is not an isolated incident by any means. In 2007, Holland America’s cruise ship MS Prinsendam, sailing in the Antarctic, was hit by two rogue waves causing severe damage to the upper decks. Luckily, no one lost their lives, although 40 people were taken to hospital, upon their arrival in Argentina. There are many such similar incidents, some reported, some not. The U.S Coast Guard has claimed that many lost aircraft, including helicopters,are believed to be victims of freak waves, mainly conducting air/sea search and rescue missions.

The RMS Empress of Ireland was an ocean cruise liner built between 1905 and 1906 and was built by Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering at Govan for Canadian Pacific Steamships. The ship departed Quebec City on route to Liverpool at approximately 16:30, at our local time, on May the 28^th, 1914 – carrying onboard 1,477 crew and passengers. At the beginning of the month, Henry George Kendall was promoted to the captain of the ship, making this trip his first through the Saint Lawrence River as commander on board the Empress of Ireland.

In the early hours of the next morning on the 29^th of May, the ship was on its way down the channel near the Pointe-au-pere in Quebec, sailing through very heavy fog.

At 02:00 hours local time, the Norwegian Collier ship Storstad collided into the side of the Empress of Ireland.

The Storsdad itself did not sink however the damage sustained by the Empress was sufficient enough for it to take on a rapid flow of water. With extremely severe damage to the starboard side of the Empress of Ireland, the ship rolled over and sank – in a total of 14 minutes, claiming 1,012 crewmen and passengers.

Out of the total passengers, only 465 survived, and shockingly, only four of these were children, 134 children were lost. Only 42 women were found and 279 had been killed.

Among the dead was the English Novelist, Laurence Irving. On the other hand, one of the survivors Frank “Lucky” Tower was said to have been one of the few crew men to have escaped. Frank “Lucky” Tower is said to have survived the Titanic, then survive the Empress, and then survive the RMS Lusitanian whilst serving as a crewman during WWI.

16 Canadians were travelling onboard a cruise yacht Alta that was operated by Quasar Expeditions, when the yacht had tried to come in to the harbour, the yacht struck a reef in the Galapagos Islands and rendered it immovable. The ship was then left there to sink while all of its passengers onboard were taken to safety with no reported injuries at all. The passengers who were rescued were then put up in a hotel on the waterfront.

Although this is not a particularly big sinking of a boat – it does show to some extent at how efficient the rescue services are nowadays compared to what they used to be like – safety has become number one on cruise ships and there are always measures in place in case something goes wrong.

We have all heard of the infamous sinking of the RMS Titanic that happened on the 14^th of April 1912 whilst on her first, maiden voyage. The Titanic was an passenger liner in the Olympic Class that was owned by White Star Line. It was built at a shipyard in Belfast, Ireland by Harland and Wolff.

As shown in the famous film of the incident, the Titanic struck an iceberg which meant that a short time of 2 hours and forty minutes later, it sank.

When she was launched from the port in 1912 she ranked first in the largest passenger steamship ever, this meant that at least 1,517 people were killed, ranking it as the fifth worst maritime disaster, being behind theSultana, MV Joola, the Halifax Explosion and MV Dona Paz.

Now, let us not forget that the Captain, Edward John Smith, was challenged to cross the North Atlantic in the quickest time possible. R.M.S. Titanic was the pride of the White Star Line, and it is widely believed that the Captain was trying to set a record time for crossing the North Atlantic.

Despite three warnings of icebergs in the area that night, all failed to reach the bridge. This was due to the fact that the radio operators were paid by Marconi and their main function was to relay messages to the PASSENGERS, not the Captain on the bridge. Such failures of communication do not happen  in the modern world.

Approximately 30 seconds after three bells were sounded, the Titanic collided with the iceberg. This resulted in a three hundred foot gash being inflicted on the right hand side of the vessel, opening up six compartments, below the waterline. The Titanic was designed to stay afloat with a maximum of four compartments flooded. It was to take a further two and a half hours to sink, and now lays 2.5 miles below the North Atlantic

At the time it was made, it used the most up to date technology to ensure that it was as safe as could be, and was popularly accepted that it was ‘unsinkable’. However, despite the advanced crew and the technology, we all know that was not the case.

The wreck was discovered in 1985, by a team that was led by Robert Ballard have ensured that the Titanic persistently famous.

Such is the curiosity of the disaster that the cruise liner Balmoral will follow the original route taken by Titanic, and intends to stop over the point at which the Titanic rests on April 15th 2012. This cruise is operated by Fred Olson Cruise Lines.