Man Overboard From Carnival Ship Rescued By Disney

A man who went overboard from the Carnival Sensation late Wednesday night was rescued 90 minutes later by the Disney Wonder, the Orlando Sentinel reports.

Carnival says the man jumped from a stateroom balcony as the ship was returning from the Bahamas to Port Canaveral in Florida. The Coast Guard sent out boats and a helicopter. The Disney ship, also returning to Port Canaveral, was asked to assist.

The rescue was recorded on Twitter by a passenger known as BigHeadDennis, who started out with a slightly profane exclamation and the report: “I’m on a Disney Caribbean cruise, and just now, we RESCUED A MAN FROM THE OCEAN.”

The CruiseJunkie Web site says Carnival has had eight people go overboard so far this year – one crew member and seven passengers. One other passenger was rescued. The six other people were not found.

Whale Was Already Dead When Hit By Cruise Ship

A fin whale impaled on the prow of the Sapphire Princess had been dead for five to seven days before the cruise ship hit it, the Vancouver Province reports.

The whale was pinned to the ship when it docked in Vancouver last month.

A juvenile fin whale was found dead last week on the bow of a cargo ship in the Port of Tacoma. Biologists believe that whale was killed by a collision with a ship, although possibly not the one it was found on, the News Tribune of Tacoma reported.

In January, Royal Caribbean’s Radiance of the Seas arrived at Puerto Montt, Chile, with a whale’s decomposed carcass caught in the prow. Biologists later said the whale was dead when the ship hit it.

Man Ejected From Cruise For Criticizing Art Auctions

Just ran across a story about a teacher who got thrown off a Royal Caribbean cruise ship for distributing a flier that questioned the value of art being auctioned on board.

This happened more than a week ago, which will show you how alert I’ve been lately. (I blame the rain; I’m always mowing.) The flier is posted on the Fine Art Registry site, which has been in a long and bitter dispute with the auction company, Park West Galleries.

This is just the latest in a controversy that leaves me wondering whether the cruise lines are making enough money on this to make it worth the damage to their reputations.

Cruise Ship Security Law Expected To Pass Next Month

A law tightening security and crime reporting on cruise ships is likely to pass after Congress returns from its August break, and I say bully for that.

I found the balcony railing on the Carnival Spirit high enough.

I’m also pleased to report that the bill has been stripped of its only truly stupid provision — one that would have required cruise ships to be retrofitted with railings at least 54 inches high. That requirement has been amended to 42 inches high, a standard that modern cruise ships already meet or exceed.

At 54 inches, I calculate that the railing would be at shoulder height for the average American woman (at 5 foot 4) and upper chest height for the average American man (at 5 foot 9). This would seriously interfere with enjoying the experience of being at sea, and would not prevent anyone determined to climb over the rails from doing that.

The bill will still require cruise lines to put peepholes in cabin doors, increase video surveillance, keep rape kits on board and report crimes to federal authorities.

The cruise industry had initially opposed the bill, but reversed its stand. That was wise. It will only enhance the credibility of an industry that has gotten more than its fair share of bad press lately.

[Added 8/2/2009] It appears I’ve vexed some people with this blog post, and I guess I can understand why the photo seems flippant to people who are concerned about cruise passengers going overboard. So, I’ll elaborate.

I believe that it is unwise to have extremely intoxicated people on a ship with railings that they can climb over. I think the way to address this is not to raise the railings, which wouldn’t be very effective. The way to address this is to deal with cruise line policies about serving alcohol to people who are drunk.

I can’t see any way that raising the balcony railing in the photo above would keep me safer. Despite the fact that I’m tall enough to get my feet on the railing (I’m 5 foot 9), it is still well above my center of gravity when I stand up. I can’t fall over it unless I climb up onto it, something I’m not going to do accidentally.

Many times, I’ve stayed at hotels with balcony railings at this height. Sadly, people do occasionally climb over and even get thrown over balcony railings at hotels or apartments. Sometimes they jump. I’m sorry about that, but I’m still going to enjoy a balcony that I can see over and rest my arms on (or feet, if I feel like it) – at sea or on land.

You can say “if it saves one life” it’s worth the inconvenience or annoyance to thousands or millions of other people, but it’s arguable whether it really would save a single life. In cases where people climb onto or over 42-inch rails, they can presumably climb over 54-inch rails.

But let’s say for the sake of argument that it would save lives, how then could I be against improving safety?

Well, it would improve safety to outlaw motorcycles or hang gliding or to take any of a million other measures. We don’t try to create a perfectly safe world. We all draw the line somewhere between our fun, our convenience, financial considerations and safety, in just about everything we do. OSHA draws the line on railings at 42 inches, and that makes sense to me.

I also believe the cruise lines need to be more accountable for crimes on board, particularly sexual assaults, and I agree with every other provision of the bill.

Cruise Ship Docks With Whale Impaled On Bow

The Sapphire Princess docked in Vancouver on Saturday with a dead fin whale impaled on its bow. A necropsy has been completed, but the results still need to be analyzed, Canada Press reports. In January Royal Caribbean’s Radiance of the Seas arrived at Puerto Montt, Chile, with the carcass of whale caught in the prow. Biologists later said the whale was already dead when the ship hit it.

Woman Killed On Cruise Ship

A woman was killed aboard a Carnival cruise ship and her husband was arrested when it docked today in San Diego, the Union-Tribune reports. The cruise industry has taken a lot of criticism over security lately, some of it justified. But it’s not the cruise industry’s fault when people bring their troubles with them on vacation. This could just have easily have happened in a hotel – or in the couple’s home, for that matter.

When A Cruise Ship Is Not A Cruise Ship

News reports tell us that a huge melee broke out around the gangway of a cruise ship in Seattle around 1:30 Sunday morning and that 12 people have gone overboard from cruise ships this year.

But neither of these stories is entirely correct unless you have a very broad notion of what a cruise ship is.

Read the rest of this entry »

More Cruise Ship Passengers Go Overboard

A man was rescued from Tampa Bay on Monday morning after he climbed up on a railing of the Carnival Inspiration, slipped and fell overboard, the St. Petersburg Times reports.

The passenger spent three hours clinging to a buoy and later told authorities he had been trying to get a better view of the pilot boat, which ferries harbor pilots between ships and the shore.

Meanwhile, a search is under way for a 50-year-old woman who reportedly went overboard from the Carnival Holiday in the Gulf of Mexico, CNN reports. Read the rest of this entry »

Australia Deals Sensibly With Cruise Ship Flu

There’s nothing like the threat of infectious disease to test the courage and compassion of humanity.

Responses range from the saintly self-sacrifice of Father Damien among the lepers to the burning of Chinatown in Honolulu under fear of bubonic plague. And that’s just Hawaii.

In Australia, authorities recently had to figure out what to do about a cruise ship, the P&O Pacific Dawn, with three staff members recovering from swine flu. There was talk of a full-blown quarantine — refusing to allow any passengers off the ship.

Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed. Passengers were allowed to disembark at Brisbane and, after being screened, are being asked to quarantine themselves at home. It looks as if the rest of the passengers will be allowed off in similar fashion in Sydney.

That’s a very cautious approach, and a humane one. There are already hundreds of confirmed cases of swine flu in Australia, but nobody in that country has died. This flu spreads easily, but does not seem at this point to be any more deadly than an ordinary flu.

Contrast Australia’s behavior with that of China, which was quarantining Mexican visitors on no other grounds than their nationality.

Civil liberties are often threatened in pandemics, and often to no public health benefit. If swine flu does end up posing a serious threat, panic will not serve us well.

Lessons From A Man Overboard

On May 24, 18-year-old Bruce O’Krepki went overboard from the top deck of the Carnival Fantasy into the Gulf of Mexico. This was widely reported.

Witnesses say he jumped. This detail was much less widely reported.

Read the rest of this entry »