115mph out of the blue?

Happens every winter. Those floating condo cattle carriers should sail to the Bahamas out of NYC. Duh North Atlantic in winter worked in the days of REAL ships but these are not ships

I'd suggest re-reading the article, entire article. Then perhaps amend your comment.

The US flag car carrier that I sailed on. In the North LANT. In the winter time. The year before I went aboard.
Now the year I was on, we hit 40 degress ++. "Just another day at sea". I can only imagine what the cruise ship did with all that windage above the water line. A heck of a lot more than a PCTC ro-ro.

Typical sensation journalism. I seriously doubt the mentioned 45 degrees of heel caused by a single gust, even one with a magnitude of 100 Kts. It might have felt like 45 for an unexperienced passenger but such an unstable cruise ship would have never been classed by the NVGL. Of course can already 10 to 15 degrees of sudden heel throw porcelain off the table. But if the chaos on board would have been as dramatic as mentioned, the cruise would have been suspended at the next safe harbour and not been continued til NY.

I know Josef Meyer (personally) and his yard for more than 30 Years and I have been invited to several pre and final launches of his mighty ships (I have posted pictures of several launches on this forum). These guys really know the construction fundamentals of large cruise ships. They are not the largest and most successful Cruise Ship Builder in the world for no reason.

Even if low on fuel, heavy loaded with provisions and passengers and wrongly ballasted, such a ship has still to be stable enough to be save. I personally find those cruise ship monsters plain ugly and I would never make a cruise on a ship with thausends of people on board but they are not unsafe.

I have encountered several gail storms during my active time as a skipper of large cargo ships. 45 degrees of heel is no fun. And on a passenger ship it is a nightmare. Thausends of yelling and screaming people half of them seasick. No way, boxes may fall over board but they do not complain .

Just my 2 (Euro) cents

In general, people's judgement of angle is entirely skewed.

For example, stand at the bottom of the banking at Daytona Speedway and look up. You feel like you're staring at a wall, but the banking is actually only 31º... barely more than a third of vertical.

There's a name for the phenomenon, but I can't remember what it is. It has to do with the brain's perception of danger. Basically, our brain tricks us to think things are steeper than what they actually are to keep us away from perilous situations. Combine that natural instinct with an unexpected situation, not to mention the vast majority of people inside a ship would have no natural horizon to reference, and a handful of degrees felt like 45.

You know, build it high enough, with barely enough GM to achieve the lazy comfortable rolls of a cruise ship, throw in a little mismanagement of ballast, add a spectacular wind load, and you get:

2006


and ten years later, the Modern Express:





So much for the entertainment. Let's talk some numbers.

For example, let us determine the force of the wind load on the 20ft x 40 ft billboard. This is done using the formula F = 1/2 rho x v^2 x A x C where F is the force of the wind load in pounds, rho is the air density (Air has a density of 0.075 pounds per cubic foot.), v is the wind velocity, A is the surface area of the billboard and C is a dimensionless drag coefficient (assumed to be 1.0). The calculation yields 1/2 x 0.075 x 100^2 x 800 x 1.0 or 300,000 pounds of force, or 150 tons, which is substantial.

Let's work on the ship. ESCAPE is 1069 ft long. And although I can't find the air draft, let's say it is 150 ft. Applying the formula, we get:
1/2 x 0.075 x 100^2 x 160350 x 1.0 or 60,131,250 [yes, that's right, Sixty million, one-hundred thirty-one thousand, two hundred fifty] pounds of force, or 30,066 tons. Now I'm not a naval architect, but given the deadweight tonnage of ESCAPE of only 11,700 tons, with a gross tonnage of 164,000, I'd hazard a guess that 30,000 tons of wind load is enough to upset the apple cart.

Additional information (from Royal Carib):
Using the Voyager of the Seas, the first of the Voyager-class vessels as a guide: Gross tonnage is approximately 140,000 tonnes; and has a displacement tonnage of 64,400 tonnes with an overall length of 310.7 meters (1,020 feet).

So let's extrapolate displacement tonnage for ESCAPE based on the ratio for VOYAGER. That would be 75,440 tons. So we have determined an estimated wind load of 30,000 tons on a 75,440 ton vessel, which is about 40% of the weight of the vessel. Taking my 23 years in deep-sea shipping, I'm saying, "yeah, YUGE heel. Big League".

So enough of the conjecture; let's see if solid information of the ship's heel comes out.

What did I miss??

Seasmaster, that is 45 degrees of heel in Your pictures. These special car transport ship are really the ugliest floating devices on this globe. But the permanent heel was caused by more than 4000 cars tossed to the downwind side. When the cargo moves in high seas, every ship is in danger.

We have lost a large cargo vessel during a hurricane on mid Atlantic with only one survivor (the engineer) because of cargo breaking loose. This type of ship (a float on / float off carrier) was put out of service in the company after this tragic loss. But on a cruise ship not much weight can move completely to one side.

I agree with Kevin, for an unexperienced passenger, the felt tilt might have been 45 degrees. But imagine, 45 degress of heel means the floor under your feet has 100 % slope. That is a figure with no fun included.

I say again, those cruise ships are ugly and those types of cruises are not my world but a single gust will not throw them to 45 degrees of heel unless there is some serious damage on the ship beforehand.

Below some pictures I took in the Meyer Werft during prelaunches.


Some precise maneuvering is mandated, in order to get those monsters out of the shed.



This is picture of Disney Dreams bow just prior transfer down the river Ems towards the North Sea for sea trials. She still sits several meters obove her CWL. The final outfitting with lose items and optionals has to be done in a harbour at the coast. The river is not deep enough for full displacement.

I have been onboard Disney Dream during one sea trial campaign with the boat still under yard flag. The classification authority ordered hard rudder at full throttle and speed. The yard captain warned all people onboard prior starting the maneuver. But nothing really happened. A little heel and a pretty quick 180 degree turn, thats all. A pretty stable ship.

By looking at those monsters with this number of decks above the waterline, one might think, they must be unstable. But the biggest weight is below the waterline and the stability and righting moment mandated by class has sufficient margin for some human errors.

I hope none of this cruises will ever end with and in catastrophy, just to many soles onboard. Especially since we know from the Costa Concordia tragedy, that the underpaid crews are not trained very well in assisting passengers during emergencies.

One more point

The wind load placed on the area of a ships body is not counteracted by a floating ship completely by heeling. A ship starts drifting (the smarter gives way) and therefore compensating some of the applied wind force. I am not going into details of NA fundamentals and ship stability science. Below a comprehensive article about this matter:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metacentric_height

One more nice example of operator induced heel. Much more speed, highly maneuverable ship and really top heavy.


And even that is by no means dangerous. Also flying operations might be a little bit hampered at that amount of heel . I have only landed with a helicopter (as a passenger !) on a carrier, the USS Nimitz. But I think, Your Navy is still doing fixed wing flying operations with their floating airfields rocking like that.

Although I'm not privy to the construction details of DREAM, don't the cruise ships have active stabilizers? So if the ship is steaming at full sea speed, and given hard rudder, the fin stabilizers would counteract the induced heel? And what was the Beaufort scale during this event? Certainly not a 10 or 11!!

Given that my background does not include working with NAVAIR or NAVSEA, but does include operating with the bird-farms, I can say this about that.

No aircraft are operated from a carrier when conducting a high speed turn as depicted in the picture.
The carriers will steam into the wind to launch and recover. Note to the arm chair admirals. Since the angle-deck of the carrier is approximately 15 degrees off-center, the ship would adjust course accordingly.

And for the sea trials that the ship was conducting, those vehicles on the deck were securely chained down!!
As for "really top heavy"? Given the amount of machinery below decks, and the fuel for aircraft, and the ordanance stowed deep in the hull, and given the thickness of the underbody, the ship is not top heavy.

In the case of COUGAR ACE, as originally reported in 2006, a ballasting error caused the ship to heel, then the cargo shifted. It is presumed the MODERN EXPRESS experienced cargo shift due to rough weather.

Postulating here, but given the weather conditions ESCAPE was experiencing before the extreme wind gust, I submit that the ship experienced the gust simultaneously as the ship rolled due to extremely heavy seas. And remember, the ship probably was proceeding at a relatively slow speed due to sea conditions, minimizing the effect of the stabilizers.

My 3 years on car carriers is my "resume" on this. Depending on how we were loaded, wind could make us heel. And when the wind and sea combined simultaneously, the ride REALLY got exciting. Fortunately, the Master was smart enough to give the watch officers the authority to maneuver when wx deteriorated. Great experience with ship handling in rough wx.

I do not think active stabilizers are allowed to be taken in account in order to keep the stability of a ship within IMO / SOLAS limits. They are used for more comfortable rides but during those sea trials they were definately switched off and retracted. Those testers from the classification societies want to see worst case cenarios. Some of these tests are really not very gentle to the boat. For example these crash stops should not be done to often. A lot of wear and tear to the machinery. The sea trials are taken in any weather except the speed and fuel consumption trials. They are only done in weather conditions stipulated in the contracts.

I have done many sea trials and acceptance tests in our company, when taking over new ships from the yards in Korea and Japan and even one or two in the Meyer Werft . Some of those test have caused substantial damage to the propulsion train and the steering gear. The crash stop is not very nice for the shaft bearings and the engine mounts. I remember, during one test, the shaft generator jumped off its mounting and destroyed some hydraulic gear. Pretty embarrassing for this Korean yard. But the most embarrasing event for this yard on a different ship was a loose bitter end during the anker drop test. The anker and all chain went down to bottom of the sea. Has happened before and will happen again, as long as humans involved in the process. But if that stuff does not work from the beginning, how will this boat make money later in its life.

I know that carriers are steaming straight into the wind during t/o and landing operation. I was a military jet pilot in the German Navy and later in the German Air Force in my "first life" before my family called me and my family loyalty into our family shipping business. I was just talking about the ships "rocking" in rough sea. And with top heavy I only ment it looks top heavy. Sorry for my humble and limited written english.

The only statement I wanted to place was and is, that my friend Josef Meyer and his Meyer Werft do not produce unsafe and unstable ships, period! And if they are not illegally altered by third party after sale like the ferry Estonia, they remain so.

We are "good" my friend. All is well. And trust me, if I tried to communicate in German, it would be awful. The best I could come up with would be: "Das Boot"!

I very much enjoyed reading yours - especially the stress to machinery from crash stops. Been there; done that!! Spent too many years teaching young deck officers about that!

You stated, "Happens every winter. Those floating condo cattle carriers should sail to the Bahamas out of NYC. Duh North Atlantic in winter worked in the days of REAL ships but these are not ships." You missed the fact that they were headed to Cape Canaveral so were not even headed out as far as the Bahamas and definitely not out into the North Atlantic. Doing basically what you said they should.

What I missed was the fairly obvious “NOT” in my post... should NOT sail to the Bahamas out of NYC

They were indeed going to Port Canaveral but on their way to the Bahamas

I may have issues with typos but not geography. Last time I checked and despite global warming, the waters along the east coast between NY and Cape Hatteras are still called the North Atlantic.