Cruising at dead stop

[woodchip]

By now you have all read about the Norwegian cruise ship losing engine power causing evacuation of its passengers. Now my question is...how do you lose power to all 4 engines?. I can see one engine but all 4? Aren't modern ships built better than this. Are we relying too much on computers and software to control the engines? I'm honestly curious as didn't we fight a world war where naval forces had no computers and I can't think of ships being lost because all 4 engines died in the middle of a storm.

[Tunnelcat]

Time will tell what caused the engine failures. Maybe the engineer or the ship's software didn't correct the engine's power output every time the props came out of the water in the rough seas and the over speed conditions damaged something. But that's not the only issue with these big ships. They are now very tall and have a huge amount of air draft or hamper and are top heavy, coupled with very shallow drafts and mass below the level of the water. They're barely seaworthy and tend to roll. The only thing that's keeping them from outright tipping over in even a mild sea or wind is a stabilizer system. If that system fails due to mechanical or electrical failure and the seas are heavy, these ships will turn turtle in a heartbeat, a la The Poseidon Adventure and sink even quicker. There was another recent story of a cruise ship getting struck by a heavy gust which caused it to roll severely, hurting many people. The ships even lean just by turning. Any ship that rolls all the way over without warning with a full load of passengers is going to drown a lot of people. These ships are nothing but a high rise condo unit shoe box plopped down upon a minuscule ship's hull as a means to keep it afloat and the builders compensated for that idiotic design by using powered technology that must be active all the time just to keep the ship upright. Besides, they're butt ugly as hell as ship designs go anyway.

https://onlyinamericablogging.blogspot. ... nsafe.html



Oh, and you're forgetting how the navy lost a few ships in a typhoon during WWII. No computers involved, just the mistake of an admiral. So mother nature can deal any ship a fatal blow.

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-b ... -can-19583