Monday, July 21, 2003 8:30 am (Vacation Edition)

The cruise liner, one of the largest, most modern and most luxurious liners afloat, had just exited a bay filled with the thickest ice in years, when it hit a large submerged boulder encased in a huge chunk of glacier ice.  The boulder sliced across 140 feet of the 91,000 ton ship's hull, ripping a 10 foot long by 5 inch wide hole in one section and damaging one of the props. 

On decks four and five, in the two-level main dining room, the waiters and passengers rushed to the windows upon hearing the loud grinding noise. On deck three in cabin 3046, a passenger turned to his wife and said "I think we just hit ground" and rushed to the outside deck. On deck ten, water sloshed out of the swimming pools. On deck six, the ship's orchestra, singers, and dancers paused their rehearsal of the theme song from Titanic, which was scheduled as part of the evening's entertainment, to wonder whether history was repeating itself.

Is this an excerpt from the script for the sequel to the movie Titanic? Nope - this a true story that actually took place less than two weeks ago in Yakutat Bay, Alaska. The incident happened on Wednesday, July 9, a clear and sunny day, between 1 and 2 PM. The ship was the one-year-old 965-foot GTS (Gas Turbine Ship) Summit of the Celebrity Cruises line. She was under the control of Jack Thrasher, a local marine pilot familiar with the waters. There were around 1750 passengers aboard, and 900 crew. The man in cabin 3046 was none other than myself. The ship's orchestra, singers, and dancers actually did perform the theme song from the movie Titanic that very evening (although whether they were practicing at the time or not I do not know). What the ship actually hit is a matter for an investigation by the Alaska Board of Marine Pilots to ascertain. The theory that it hit a boulder encased in ice is a possibility raised by the president of the Southeast Marine Pilots Association Dale Collins in an interview with the Anchorage Daily News. The damage to the hull and prop was discovered by divers two days after the incident. The photographs shown above and below were taken by my wife and myself that day (in the case of the sea of ice in Yakutat bay) and two days earlier (of the ship from atop Mt. Roberts while anchored off of Juneau).

The similarities between this incident and the sinking of the Titanic are uncanny. Both ships were thought to be damaged by the slicing action of a very large chunk of ice or boulder-ice combination. Both were operating at sea-speed. Both had clever engineering features that made them "unsinkable" (although nobody has dared to make that boast about a ship since the sinking of the Titanic). These features include double hulls, watertight bulkheads and sea doors to compartmentalize the ship, so that seawater cannot flood the whole ship in the event of a hull breach. Unfortunately for the Titanic, the double hull was confined to the keel area only, and the iceberg sliced a hole above the keel. Also, because of the length of the cut, the bulkhead compartmentalization approach was insufficient to maintain buoyancy, and the ship famously sank.

In the case of the Summit incident on July 9, the double hull worked. Although a 10-foot by 5-inch hole 25 feet below the water surface can introduce a huge amount of seawater at an alarming rate, the only part of the ship that was flooded was a ballast tank built into the hull. The GTS Summit kept on course, never even slowing down to assess damage. The captain was unaware of the hole in the hull, only suspecting a potential problem upon noticing one day later that one of the ballast tanks showed an unusually high water level. The passengers on board knew of nothing amiss until reading newspaper reports two days after disembarkation. Upon reaching its final port of Seward, Alaska, divers inspected the hull and discovered the hole and a 140-foot long crease in the hull. The divers applied a temporary patch from outside the hull. The ship then pumped the ballast tank dry and welders welded a steel box around the inside of the hole, filling it with a chemical compound that created a permanent seal. With a two-day delay for the repair and certification by the Coast Guard, the ship was sailing again. 

Moral: It pays to pay the extra cost for good engineering.

The shipbuilder’s engineers who designed Summit’s double hull, and Celebrity Cruises who paid the extra costs associated with that safety feature, deserve to be congratulated.  The passengers, crew, and investors should all be grateful, although I suspect that many of them are unaware of the incident and the heroic engineering that kept it from becoming a catastrophe.