43 Replies to “I Amuse Myself”

  3. This whole saga reads like the clueless, hopeless and useless cruising together.
    These diesel electric cruise ships keep all their generation capacity in one room?
    No over the rail latrines on the down wind side?
    What happened to marine engineering?
    Then there is the response after burning up their engine room, no emergency power generators?
    No one in the crew could haywire some temporary power?
    Or is the ships electrician, licensed to change bulbs only?

  5. It’s nothing short of insanity if there aren’t regulatory exclusions for emergencies such as this that endanger human health. After all, it’s not as though fish leave the ocean to take a piss.

  6. Used to live in Seattle.
    In Lake Washington, a tug drags its anchor over an underwater sewage pipe and tears it open, spilling millions of gallons of raw sewage into the lke.
    They got a stern letter.
    On the other hand, if I went to the edge of Bill Gate’s dockand peed, I could get a $5,000 fine and locked up to boot.
    Poop overboard?
    The EPA would likely have shot them.

  8. I liked this one, too:
    Steve Rauber ‏@cali_stingray
    News reports today that several passengers demanding to reboard the cruise ship after realizing they had docked in Alabama

  9. Yeah, I was gonna tell a salty Navy story…But john @ 11:23 nailed it.
    People just aren’t expected to fix their own s*it anymore. Osama was right, in his own way…we are a decadent society. Sad.

  10. Oh, but it costs too much money to have a separately located auxiliary/emergency generator, oh budget chief!!
    Worked in marine ship engineering, these ships are cheap crap!!! Only the frills get the bucks.

  11. marc
    Has anyone gotten ill, sick or died from Victoria’s deep, cold outfall?
    but we’ve gotta spend a billion bucks on a problem that doesn’t exist, sounds like glowbull warming……

  14. I would guess that a lot of people were throwing (or taking) a crap overboard. I know I would have been.
    Where was the backup generator?
    And the backup backup generator?
    You would think a floating city would be better prepared for this type of thing….

  15. Look at the upside here. This cruise ship emitted less C02 without it’s generators running.
    Pres. Obama, upon hearing of this, issued a fatwa…err, I mean Executive order, that all cruise ships match the C02 emissions of this one.
    That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

  16. When I was fishing we used to sit with our thighs on the bulwark cap-rail and our butts over the water and let ‘er rip.
    Anyone who has ever dealt with marine toilets would appreciate the simplicity and convenience of that…maneuver.

  17. A. They could have towed the ship back to Mexico.
    and
    2. They could have airlifted a couple of gen sets on board.

  19. Hey marc,
    Halfilax has sewage treatment now. Well they got it working, and people were actually swimming in it, then it flooded and then they fixed it – maybe – not sure, but better off than Victoria, or what’s downstream of Victoria.

  20. Too bad nobody on board had a joint…. The U.S. Coast Guard would have been there in a flash.

  21. Wonder if any of the passengers were from greenie haven like Victoria where they dump their raw sewage/shit into the ocean, or Montreal or Halifax for that matter?
    It may give people pause for thought next time they ponder booking a cruise.
    If the ships can’t afford to keep trades people on board for emergencies maybe they should find space for porta potties and lots of disinfectant wipes.

  22. First, those cruise ships have just gotten way too big. When I watched a program on the latest multi-thousands-of-passengers ship I could only think to myself that one day this is going to make the Titanic disaster look like a speed bump.
    Second, pooping and peeing in the ocean is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Victoria’s sewage doesn’t need to be treated as long as it’s pumped well out into Juan de Fuca straight. Fish food! Likewise on the cruise ship, a line of port-a-potties discharging over the side would have solved the sanitation problem. Wind and current would likely have cleared most of the odiferous matter.
    And It absolutely beggars belief that ships carrying that many people have no auxiliary power.

  23. The people who booked passage on this Carnival ship were just plain stupid. Carnival’s the company whose cruise ship, with the love-sick, criminally negligent captain, was run aground off the coast of Italy last year and over 30 people died.
    If I went on a cruise — which seems increasingly unlikely — I’d check out the record of the cruise company. Criminally negligent captains, ships running aground, passengers dying? No way.

  24. A former naval officer told me it was unbelievable that the ship did not have a proper auxiliary power system.
    Come to think of it, many severely damaged naval vessels in WWII were able to operate. Carnival seems to have a serious design problem in her ships

  25. There would be inquiries, repercussions, fines and probably jail time for the person that authorized such a flash of common sense. Greentardation has come even to our rural areas. I’ve been in rural areas where large metal containers are set up every few miles for farmers. The garbage is then hauled 20 miles to an official dump site where large pits are dug and the garbage is covered with clay. Woe to the town or rural government that bucks this nonsense. If you are a small village just try lighting your garbage and a local fire brigade will be called to extinguish the fire and the offender will be charged for the cost of the fire call.

  27. First, those cruise ships have just gotten way too big. When I watched a program on the latest multi-thousands-of-passengers ship I could only think to myself that one day this is going to make the Titanic disaster look like a speed bump.
    Posted by: DrD on February 16, 2013 8:15 AM | Reply
    Some trivia for SDA’ers:
    White Star Line owned the Titanic.
    In 1934 White Star Line merged with Cunard Line and since 2005 Cunard Line is part of Carnival.
    History does have a habit of repeating itself does it not?…

  28. I believe it was a Costa ship that ran aground in Italy last year. However, Carnival is the flagship name, with subsidiary lines under that name, such as Costa, Cunard, Princess, and about three more names.
    We have always sailed Princess and have been very satisfied. Try it, you might like it. No cooking or making your bed. 😉
    Like others here, I am surprised that this ship and maybe others do not have auxiliary power. Imagine this happening in the middle of the Atlantic or Pacific.
    Nold, the official dump is supposed to have a minimum clay base. Many of the old dumps were located in unproductive land that often had a sand base, and I’m sure you have heard of chemicals leeching. You are right about municipalities being fined if they do not conform. That said, the new system of long distance hauling and “proper” disposal, etc has raised the cost of waste disposal about ten times.
    Frank Q, exactly. But can you imagine the media outrage.

  31. It hasn’t taken very long at all for this incident to show up on the “bread and circuses” gong show circuit. Gov’ts that have a hard time fulfilling even their most basic obligations will now “work tirelessly towards preventing such tragedies(?) from ever occurring again”! People really need to understand that things break in this universe and there is nothing we could possibly do to ever change that.

  32. And to quote Admiral Beatty at the battle of Jutland shortly after two of his battlecruisers had exploded, “Chatfield, there seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today.”

  33. @KATE
    I said that to my wife actually i said why not just cordon off an area at the back of the ship and hang your ass over the side and feed the fish!!

  34. I suspect this is but a minor example of things to come….
    No provision for what if?
    Years back I was searching a “tramp” for contraband. It was a “motor ship” (Diesel direct drive), in separate spaces were 2 locomotive diesels……for steerage and electrics….one in use, the other as stand-by.

  35. Well, if the waste from the ship’s toilets flows by gravity to a holding tank in the hold, it ought to be possible to bucket-flush them with sea water from a bucket lowered over the side. But if the system relies upon pumps to move the waste, then that’s not an option.
    For a ship that large not to have redundant systems is little short of criminal, IMHO.

  38. Yeah, flying in a generator or two and some pumps could have done a lot to east the anguish of those pilgrims. If the heads (naval jargon for toilets) were conventional like land based units then putting pressure in the plumbing would have been job #1. I realize that they use desalinated sea water to get their fresh water and that might well be in the engine room but directly using sea water would be preferable and easier to “flush” out later than entire decks. People who have had basements ruined by sewer backups can attest to that. Also, would not the fire fighting lines be pressurized, even with an engine room fire?

  39. On further thought, Carnival Cruises probably has a government mandated, standard operating procedure for just such an emergency, and would be fined out of business if they deviate from it.
    Of course it will be the standard safety snafu,
    1 In event of total power failure, turn on electric pump A.
    Safety First.
    If nobody moves nobody gets hurt.

  40. If they had back up generators and extra storage for waste products it would have taken up space where you could have put in another passenger cabin or slot machines. What waste space on what seems like common sense necessities when the space could be used to generate profit.

  41. these poor dears(propably mostly city slickers) had such a trying ordeal to endure, and y”all is making fun of them!!

  43. Triumph had 6 generators on board. 5 damaged, not working including main engine. unbelievable. a major design flaw

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