Captain Greybeard YOUR EXPERT GUIDE TO CRUISE SHIPS AND CRUISE HOLIDAYS
Arch blogger John Honeywell, aka Captain Greybeard, offers his latest musings on the wide World of Cruising
Out with the In with theNew Old
I
f the latest survey of American cruise passengers is to be believed, it’s no wonder Carnival, Royal Caribbean and Norwegian have been busy plac- ing orders for new ships this year. According to the Cruise Lines Interna-
tional Association (CLIA), the equivalent of the UK’s Passenger Shipping Association, 36 million Americans say they are likely to take a cruise holiday within the next three years That’s an awful lot of cabins that are likely to be filled up – and hence the reason at least 19 new cruise ships will be
38 WORLD OF CRUISING I Autumn 2011
delivered in the next four years. Thanks to changes in international maritime safety laws, the cruise lines couldn’t just carry on building ships to the designs it has been using for the last few years. Present-day thinking – which has absolutely nothing to do with the fact next year will be the centenary of the Titanic sinking – is that a cruise ship is its own best lifeboat. Whenever possible, it should be considered the first option to carry pas- sengers to safety. In the unlikely event of an emergency
(as they say at all the obligatory safety drills at the start of each cruise), simply trying to get thousands of passengers and crew into the lifeboats would be difficult enough. Now the International Maritime Organisation is equally concerned about the problems presented in getting large numbers of elderly, infirm and possibly injured people out of the lifeboats and into rescue vessels.
So, most of the new ships to be de-
livered after 2012 will look different and contain new safety features designed to
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