With the world's largest cruise ship set to make its maiden voyage in six months — and in light of another recent disaster at the Titanic — it's hard not to wonder what would happen if the Icon of the Seas met the same fate as the storied ocean liner.
The Icon of the Seas is currently set to sail in the Caribbean, meaning it won't be encountering ice. But even if in the future its used in an area in which there could be ice, it's still incredibly rare for a cruise ship today to strike an iceberg. It's not impossible though.
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In 2007, in an incident The New York Times dubbed the "modern Titanic," a small cruise ship struck ice, causing a fist-sized hole that let water into the engine room and caused the power to fail. The 154 people on board had to evacuate on lifeboats and rafts.
Last year, a Norwegian Cruise Line ship hit an iceberg while traveling through dense fog near Alaska, causing enough damage to shorten the voyage and cancel another so it could undergo repairs.
But neither was a catastrophe of Titanic proportions.
Cruise industry expert Stewart Chiron, better known as The Cruise Guy, told USA Today that last year's incident was "extraordinarily rare." While cruise ships might occasionally make contact with ice, Chiron said it's uncommon for a ship to have physical damage or change its plans as a result.
Cruise ships rely on radar technology and satellite monitoring to avoid collisions with icebergs. Improvements in GPS and aircraft patrols of the oceans have also made sailing the seas safer, but there's still asmallrisk.
Thankfully cruise ships today are also better prepared for disaster.
Royal Caribbean, the cruise line behind Icon of the Seas, says all of their cruise ships carry "sufficient lifesaving craft to accommodate every guest and crew member onboard, as well as additional capacity in reserve." Passengers on their cruises are also required to complete drills so they know what to do in case of emergency.
So even if unlikely tragedy did strike, the lifeboat and raft protocols could help passengers avoid living out some of the most dramatic, and controversial, scenes of the "Titanic" movie.
Unlike titanic, modern liners are welded together not riveted. But the hull would still buckle impacting an iceberg that hard and presuming she hits and the bow takes a large impact, she will sink. Could any modern ships survive an iceberg hit like the one Titanic suffered? Probably not.
Due to the size and speed of the Titanic it was not able to avoid the iceberg. Some historians suspect that if the order hadn't been given to stop the engines, the Titanic may have been able to swing around and out of the way of the iceberg.
A large cruise ship can sink at any time, when buoyancy is lost or the ship capsizes due to an accident that allows water into the into the hull or loss of ballast in sufficient quantity. It doesn't matter is there is a hurricane raging or the sea is glassy calm if there is loss of buoyancy.
Experience the Icon of the Seas, the world's largest cruise ship surpassing Titanic, set to awe and entertain in 2024. Book your unforgettable journey now! Forget what you thought you knew about the world's biggest cruise ship, because it's not the Titanic.
Probably the most anticipated ship of 2024, the Icon of the Seas is the first of Royal Caribbean International's Icon class. At 250,800 gross tons, the vessel will claim the title of the largest cruise ship on the planet, edging out the line's Wonder of the Seas in the Oasis class.
Those changes, along with the advent of superior technologies for navigation and communication, have made the seas much safer since 1912. As such, it is unlikely that the specific circ*mstances leading to the sinking of the Titanic will recur.
Obviously, it will all depend on the size of the vessel, how fast she is moving, where the iceberg has collided with the vessel, the weather conditions, etc. But with the latest technology of warning and also of ship building, the chances of survival are extremely high.
If the Titanic was built and designed differently, it would absolutely have prevented its tragic sinking. Some factors could include Watertight Tops or Roofs that could completely seal the compartments and prevent water from spilling over the bulkheads. In reality, the Watertight Bulkheads were only built up to E Deck.
First thing to realize is that ships don't have brakes. The only way to stop one is to cut the engines or throw them into reverse, which on a big ship takes a long time to do without breaking things. Even if you do apply full reverse, 50,000 tons of steel is not going to stop on a dime. The ship's o…
According to the British enquiry after the accident, the iceberg was 1500 feet away (about a quarter of a nautical mile or 457 metres) at the time of the sighting. For a ship moving at 22.5 knots (41.7 kilometres per hour), the iceberg would accordingly have been sighted 40 seconds before impact.
Put simply, cruise ships float because their mass is low in relation to the volume of water they're sailing on. This creates an effect called buoyancy, which keeps the ship upright and afloat.
In fact, the Icon of the Seas is a staggering five times the size of Titanic. Built by Royal Caribbean, the Icon is 365 metres long, weighs 250,800 tonnes, and can comfortably host 5,610 passengers served by 2,350 crew.
The world's largest cruise ship, Royal Caribbean's Icon of the Seas, set sail for the first time on Saturday (27 January). It has overtaken sister ship Wonder of the Seas to claim the title.
The Titanic and the Icon of the Seas have both held the title of the world's biggest ship. Royal Caribbean's Icon of the Seas, however, is a whopping five times the size of the Titanic. Photos show how the two ships' dining rooms, luxury bedrooms, and more compare.
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