how should cruise ship lifeboats and abandon-ship procedures be up graded?

Besides getting Captains who wont abandon before passengers?


For starters, shouldn't the lifeboats be able to launch, or self launch even when ship is suddenly listing heavily?

I'd want all passengers to have a 30minute immersion suit with lot of floatation so if the ship goes down fast (like Concordia would have if not blown to shore) at least anyone above decks would float off and have 30 minutes to get to a lifeboat that had also floated off.

I'd also design the ship so if it suddenly flips you would have a decent chance of floating up to the surface and not entangled in some part of superstructure.

Besides things like reefs jumping out into your path (like Concordia ) or collisions or rogue waves, I'd be worried a cruise ship might flip fairly quickly if lit up along one side by pirates with RPGs or "Boat Bomb".

Ship owners smuggling munitions or engaging in insurance fraud would be other Man Made reasons a ship might go down fast.


Just seems to me current "lower the lifeboats" totally relies on so many things being how you'd like them to be, like a ship on a fairly even keel and crew at stations and passengers behaving, and reasonably calm seas and no one shooting at you.

Oh yeah, I'd like the lifeboats to be fireproof, unsinkable and bullet-proof up to 30.06, with provision for hunkering down under the waterline for 80% of passengers, so any strafing by pirates with anything less than heavy machine-gun or RPG would be survivable once in the lifeboat.

I'd also consider padding the outer hull with at least a collar so when it slams against the ships hull being lowered or just after launch it wouldn't hurt the passengers or knock them out and off the boat.

I remember seeing a few inflatable covered liferafts, but was expecting the sea to be damn near covered with auto-inflating rafts. Maybe cruise ships could have a version of airline jet's inflatable slides with rafts at the bottom.

 

Bullet proof life boats and immersion suits?
The problem is that over half of what you described would cost so much the company would go under. Designing the thing so that superstructure doesn't prevent you from "floating up" is impossible. There is no possible way to estimate or prepare for everything, let alone design around it all.

The issue with the Concordia is human error, that can never be designed around, estimated, or done away with.

Let's say you do design some super "safe" ship with foam padding everywhere...
1: It's going to be stupendously expensive to build and operate.
2: No one will cruise on it. An overwhelming safety factor tends to make people feel like their being "mothered" by big brother.
3: Some ******* comes along ignores safety protocol and still manages to sink it.

I don't mean to sound so negative, but really bad things have happened when someone had good intentions.
(really, Really, REALLY bad things...)

 

that is what they said before Titanic, and only dumb luck

prevented Concordia from quickly rolling over and sinking without deploying lifeboats in deep cold water.

What would "biz climate" be for major reworking of cruise ship safety if there had been 2,000 out of 4,000 dead instead of 25?

I'm also surprised these ships don't have property compartmentalized hulls, since all the machinery, stores and crew cabins are the lower sections. Most losing battleships during WW1 and WW2 didn't get sunk outright after being utterly mauled and they were only well protected at the turrets and columns and small central section. But the rest of them was well honeycombed so even if the outer layer of thin steel was full of holes they still had watertight rooms deeper within.

At a minimum I'd want the lifeboats to float off and be useable on their own.

I've always though these cruise ships should feature trips from ship to shore at otherwise isolated locations with mass use of lifeboats, or have a lot of dual use boats. Yeah, I know it would be an issue to kept the boats always ready for lifeboat use.

 

The change in safety requirements you are referring to happens after an investigation of what went wrong. Ship goes down all hands, it's a terrible thing but what caused it? Human error? No change in any safety requirements would've prevented it. That's why these investigations take place. In the case of the Concordia either more strict protocol or more strictly following protocol prevents the whole mess, that's what the investigation turns up, that's what they enforce.

We can't live in a foam padded world...

 

inflatable slides that have detachable also inflatable life rafts at the bottom in a rack configuration so that as one gets full it releases and then another one pops open and takes its place as the first floats away.

 

Two incidences in a row with the same company doesn't convince me there is no wrong doing....