Carnival Epic Fail: Cruise Ships' Poor Engineering Design

Congratulations for the 3000 passengers who survived the Carnival "Triumph" Debacle, about the worst cruise since the Titanic disaster. It has come to my attention that these cruise ships have a serious design flaw. First, about myself. I was in the US Navy, and worked in one of the engine rooms of a twin engine ship. That ship had two boiler rooms, and two engine rooms, so if any one of the four rooms was ruined, like by a fire, the ship could drive back to a port under its own power.

I got orders at one point to go to a single engine ship that would drive across the Atlantic, but stayed on the twin engine ship I already knew. Why? I was afraid of the single engine thing breaking down in the middle of the Atlantic! Brave is one thing, but foolhardy is another. Here's the problem with ships of all types. Unlike a car, you can't assume there will be road side assistance. Same is true of planes as they wreck. Apollo 13 is the worst case. Most people fail to realize this, as being on a ship is not an everyday thing like driving a car is.

Now, for the design flaw with an awful lot of cruise ships: Both engines are in the SAME room! That means, of course, if there's a fire in that one engine room, you lose out on BOTH engines... and you are now stuck. If the electrical system is affected, you are in a heap of trouble, as you lose A/C, sewage pumps, water pumps, and so on. The Carnival Triumph fiasco was not an isolated incident. A few years ago it happened twice where the ship got stuck dead in the water. It's like Carnival Corp takes a standard layout that's flawed and has someone design the hotel building (superstructure) on it with hardly a thought about the propulsion system.

You mean to say that Carnival Corp Can't afford to add one wall in the right place? Are they THAT damn cheap? Now, they have a ship that is totalled as there is no way to get rid of the stench on the "Triumph". So, they will have to junk it and get the quarter gigabuck from their insurance. What they should do is add watertight walls (bulkheads) in the right places and rewire the electrical grids on their ships with the insurance payout. That way, they avoid this embarasment down the road. Getting their propulsion systems squared away would be money well spent. They deserve a totalled ship.