Passenger ships
 
In 1950 passenger ships were the largest, fastest and most glamorous vessels afloat. The trans-Atlantic route between Europe and North America was the most prestigious route of all with great liners competing for the fastest crossing – the Blue Riband. Other passenger services operated between Europe and South America, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand and were used in particular by emigrants leaving post-war Europe for a new life on the other side of the world.

The most famous ship of the period was the Cunard Liner Queen Mary, whose made maiden voyage was in 1936.  She had a cruising speed of 28.5 knots and before retiring from service in 1967 completed 1,001 Atlantic crossings.

The Normandie, owned by the French Line, held the Blue Riband for the fastest trans-Atlantic crossing and was considered by many to be the finest and most elegant of all the great trans-Atlantic liners. But she was trapped in New York by the outbreak of World War II and caught fire and then capsized in 1942.

The Queen Mary enters the King George V Graving Dock in Southampton, England, awaiting a final overhaul prior to her May 1936 Maiden Voyage.

The Queen Mary arrives in New York City on June 1, 1936, after completing her Maiden Voyage in just 41/2 days.

The Union Castle Line ran regular services between Europe and South Africa but like other passenger lines could not compete with the airlines for traffic. The photograph shows the Southampton Castle leaving Southampton for the last time in 1977. The ship was eventually sold for demolition in 1984.

 

 

Within twenty years, however, the great days of passenger shipping were effectively over. The development of aircraft, and especially the jet engine, meant that ships could no longer compete, either in cost or in time. The France was intended as a replacement for the Normandie when her keel was laid down in 1957, but by the time she was launched in 1960 time was running out for the liners. The France was withdrawn from service in 1974 and in 1979 was purchased by Norwegian Caribbean Lines and converted into what was then the world’s largest cruise ship. Cunard’s replacement for the Queen Mary, the Queen Elizabeth 2, was launched in 1969, right at the end of the age of the passenger liners, but she went on to achieve great success in what has developed into one of the greatest success stories in shipping in the last half century – the boom in cruise shipping.

Whereas passenger ships were originally regarded primarily as a means of crossing the sea, today they are seen as an essential part of the leisure industry. Oceans cruises normally take place where the climate is benign - such as the Caribbean and the Mediterranean – and where the ship can visit as many ports as possible. Cruises are often combined with air flights; passengers heading for cruises in the Caribbean, for example, frequently fly to Miami where they board the waiting cruise ship, thereby avoiding what might otherwise be a long, often tedious and possibly even uncomfortable ocean crossing.

The ships themselves are no longer designed for speed, but for luxury and comfort. They are more like floating resorts than ships and combine luxury and entertainment. Since the ship normally goes to a different port every night, there is little about the voyage to remind the passengers that they are actually on a ship at all.

Larger Ships, new safety Challenges

One of the most recent cruise ships to be launched is the Voyager of the Seas, which at 142,000 gross tons was the largest passenger ship ever built when she entered service in 1999. Her cruising speed is 23.7 knots and she can carry more than 5,000 passengers and 1,181 crew.

Imagine the Eiffel Tower in Paris tipped on its side, and you have some idea of her length.

With a capacity of around 1,800 crew and over 3,100 passengers, she can carry the population of a small town.

She boasts the highest “space-per-guest” ratio in the cruise market today and fully embraces the new concept of “the ship is the destination” with such innovative recreational features as an ice rink, a street fair and even an artificial rock-face for budding mountaineers.

This is a considerable contrast to the Queen Elizabeth 2, which was originally designed with the fast Atlantic crossing in mind and cruises at 28.5 knots and has a maximum speed of 32.5 knots. The Queen Elizabeth 2 carries 1,778 passengers and a crew of 921: the modern trend is reduce crew size and increase the number of passengers, since this obviously increases revenue and cuts costs.

Ships such as the Voyager of the Seas, have broken the boundaries of convention in terms of their concept, their design and their sheer size. So many things distinguish cruise ships from other ship types but a key factor in their very conception is that they create their own market.

Whereas containerships, for instance, are built in response to their owners’ perceptions of the market’s requirement, cruise ship owners create a concept and then set out to sell it.

Safety, of course, is a vital concern for passenger ship designers and operators. These vessels have the highest of profiles and their success could be undermined entirely if the public were to lose confidence in them
 

The photograph shows the Voyager of the Seas entering the Port of Miami, where she is based. Miami is a favourite port for the cruise ship industry, because it is convenient for American passengers – the most frequent cruise ship users – and also for the Caribbean, the favourite cruise ship destination.

The map shows a typical cruise of the Voyager of the Seas.

Although it cannot be denied that a number of incidents in recent years have indicated the vulnerability of these ships, it is also true that overall, their safety record is good. By and large, they avoid the worst excesses of the weather. Passengers demand that they should do so and a typical power installation capable of providing 25-knots enables them to outrun a hurricane.

But while the modern cruise giants have the power and speed to dodge the weather, they are particularly vulnerable to fire. Every passenger is a potential ignition source and the hotel services clearly have an inherent risk.

Prompted by a concern that the trend toward ever larger vessels could lead to new giants of the cruise world which might pose safety-related questions unforeseen by existing regulations, the then IMO Secretary-General William O’Neil took a personal initiative to raise the issue during the 72nd meeting of the Maritime Safety Committee (MSC) in May 2000.

As a result, the MSC agreed to undertake a global consideration of the safety issues pertaining to these ships and a working group on large passenger-ship safety began work at the next session of the Committee in November-December 2000, to review the current safety regime as it relates to large passenger ships.

What emerged is from IMO was a plan for a body of work that will constitute one of the largest ever investigations into the safety-related aspects a particular ship type ever carried out. The guiding philosophy of the work hinges on the following five elements.

a:    the regulatory framework should place more emphasis on the prevention of a casualty from occurring in the first place.

b)    future large passenger ships should be designed for improved survivability so that, in the event of a casualty, persons can stay safely on board as the ship proceeds to port.

c)    the regulatory framework should permit alternative designs and arrangements in lieu of the prescriptive regulations, provided that at least an equivalent level of safety is achieved.

d)    large passenger ships should be crewed, equipped and have arrangements to ensure the safety of persons on board for survival in the area of operation, taking into account climatic conditions and the availability of SAR functions.

e)    large passenger ships should be crewed and equipped to ensure the health safety, medical care and security of persons on board until more specialized assistance is available.
 

These five elements spawned a host of specific tasks and objectives, which have been built into a thoroughgoing review of the existing safety regime as it applies to these ships. Following work in the Radiocommunications, Search and Rescue (COMSAR), Ship Design and Equipment (DE), Fire Protection (FP), Safety of Navigation (NAV), Stability, Load Lines and Fishing Vessel Safety (SLF) and Standards of Training and Watchkeeping (STW) Sub-Committees between 2000-2004, the MSC agreed at its 79th session in December 2004 that as many of the issues discussed under the agenda item "Large Passenger Ship Safety" applied equally to all passenger ships, the agenda item should be renamed "Passenger Ship Safety". The Committee approved a revised work plan for passenger ship safety and the revised guiding philosophy, strategic goals and objectives.

The revised guiding philosophy for future work on passenger ship safety is based on the premise that the regulatory framework should place more emphasis on the prevention of a casualty from occurring in the first place and that future passenger ships should be designed for improved survivability so that, in the event of a casualty, persons can stay safely on board as the ship proceeds to port.


The unique circumstances of the cruise industry encourage ship designers to seek the key selling points that will make their creation somebody’s dream holiday destination.

Passengers’ demands for comfort, space and sheer prestige, coupled with economies of scale, mean that the quest for size is likely to continue.

IMO’s work is aimed at ensuring that, while this buoyant sector of the shipping industry continues to expand and push at the boundaries of convention, the key issues of safe design and operation can keep pace.
 

 

The Titanic Disaster

Because they carry so many people, the safety of passenger ships has always been a matter of great concern to legislators.    Over the centuries, there have been many accidents to passenger ships involving loss of life, the best known of them being the Titanic disaster of 1912.

Further information about the Titanic

A recent search showed there are some 874,000 Titanic links on the Internet. Here are some of them.

•		Web site for RMS Titanic Inc.
•		Web site of the Titanic Historical Society
•		Nick Wilson’s Titanic and Britannic Home Page
•		Claims to be the official Titanic web site.
•		A special exhibit from Britannica OnLine. Contains many useful links to other Titanic web sites.
•		Entrance to the Maritime Information Gateway on the web site of Britain’s National Maritime Museum. Key in the word Titanic for numerous references and links to the disaster.
•		Research Guide No. D3 RMS Titanic: Images and Artefacts at the National Maritime Museum
•		Encyclopedia Titanica web site. Includes material about Titanic and other passenger liners.

The Titanic disaster, in which more than 1,500 people lost their lives, led to demands for action and in 1914 the British Government arranged a conference that resulted in the adoption of the first International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea[1]. This has been extensively modified in the years that have followed and is now administered the International Maritime Organization[2], the United Nations agency responsible for shipping safety.

The SOLAS Convention has been modified and re-written so many times since 1914 that very few of the original features remain. One that does is the International Ice Patrol [3], which is operated by the United States Coast Guard specifically to protect the North Atlantic shipping lanes from the threat of icebergs.

The International Ice Patrol was established after the Titanic disaster and is still operated today by the United States Coast Guard. The photograph on the left shows a Coast Guard plane on patrol. The photograph on the right shows an ice berg that was spotted in the vicinity of the Titanic shortly after the accident happened: it may be the one that sank the ship.  For more information about the International Ice Patrol, refer to the US Coast Guard website

International Convention on the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS)

The SOLAS Convention covers such subjects as construction and equipment of ships, fire safety, life-saving, radio communications and navigation. In almost every case, the regulations governing passenger ships are stricter than those for other types of ship. 

More information on SOLAS

There have so far been five versions of the SOLAS Convention. The 1914 Convention was replaced by a new text adopted in 1929 and this was in turn replaced in 1948. The first major task of IMO, which came into being in 1959, was to adopt another new text, which was done in 1960 and the existing version was adopted in 1974. One of the most important features of the 1974 was a new amendment procedure, which has enabled the Convention to be kept up to date regularly. It has been amended so many times that virtually every chapter has been re-written, in some cases several times.

Many of these changes have involved the safety of passenger ships and the recent boom in cruise shipping has made this aspect especially important. The demand for cruise ship holidays has not only meant the construction of new, larger ships, but has also encouraged owners to hang on to existing ships, many of which are now several decades old.

Review of Safety of passenger ships

IMO is currently undertaking a comprehensive review of the safety of passenger ships, following an initiaitve launched at the Maritime Safety Committee (MSC) in 2000 to evaluate current regulations and to ascertain whether they are adequate for some of the colossal cruise ships being built today. While there could be no doubt that such ships were being built, designed and operated in compliance with applicable IMO standards, the time had come for IMO to undertake a holistic consideration of safety issues pertaining to passenger ships, with particular emphasis on large cruise ships.

The concern was not whether such ships complied with the SOLAS requirements applicable to ships of their category, but whether SOLAS and, to the extent applicable, the Load Line Convention requirements, several of which had been drafted before some of the large ships in question had been built, duly addressed all the safety aspects of their operation - in particular, in emergency situations. Also, whether the training requirements of the STCW Convention relating to personnel operating large cruise ships were in need of any review or clarification.

The working group on large passenger-ship safety began work at the MSC in November-December 2000, with input from the cruise industry and Member States who have carried out studies into large passenger ships and areas of potential concern. The work reflects IMO's proactive stance on future legislation and includes the use of tools such as formal safety assessment, used in other areas of IMO's work such as bulk carrier safety.

What became clear from the initial work was that concern over large passenger-ship safety would be centred on the difficulty in safely evacuating some passengers, such as the elderly and injured, from lifeboats to rescue vessels. It is clear that the difficulties would not end, even with successful evacuation. Thousands of people, unfamiliar with ships and the sea, crowded into lifeboats and liferafts, would present a unique search-and-rescue challenge.

Fire also represents a particular vulnerability for large cruise ships. Every passenger is a potential ignition source and the hotel services have an inherent risk.

The MSC has agreed that future large passenger ships should be designed for improved survivability based on the time-honoured principle that "a ship is its own best lifeboat".

This approach envisages that passengers and crew should normally be able to evacuate to a safe haven on board and stay there. In addition, this envisages that a ship should always be able to proceed to port at a minimum safe speed.

Since 2001, the Sub-Committees on Radiocommunications, Search and Rescue (COMSAR), Ship Design and Equipment (DE), Fire Protection (FP), Safety of Navigation (NAV), Stability, Load lines and Fishing Vessel Safety (SLF) and Standards of training and Watchkeeping (STW) have been working on tasks assigned to them and have reported back to the MSC.

At its 79th session in December 2004, the MSC agreed that as many of the issues discussed under the agenda item "Large Passenger Ship Safety" applied equally to all passenger ships, the agenda item should be renamed "Passenger Ship Safety". The Committee approved a revised work plan for passenger ship safety and the revised guiding philosophy, strategic goals and objectives, developed by the Working Group on Large Passenger Ship Safety which met during the session.

The revised guiding philosophy for future work on passenger ship safety is based on the premise that the regulatory framework should place more emphasis on the prevention of a casualty from occurring in the first place and that future passenger ships should be designed for improved survivability so that, in the event of a casualty, persons can stay safely on board as the ship proceeds to port.

The work is continuing with a target completion date of 2006.

 

The table below shows how passenger ships have developed over the last 70 years. In many ways, the size of ships has not greatly increased since the 1930s, although tonnage has. It is noticeable, however, that the ratio of crew to passengers has diminished. The transatlantic passenger liners had roughly one crew to every two passengers. Nowadays the ratio is one to more than three – and rising.

DETAILS OF SHIP CAPACITIES & OVERALL LENGTH

 

Ships with information on capacity only.

Titanic              =   3,473 passengers and crew.

Ille de France   =   1,786 passengers. (Crew unknown)

Notes:

⁽¹⁾     No information

⁽²⁾     Certified Passenger Figures

⁽³⁾     Not yet in Service

⁽⁴⁾     These figures are not measured against a consistent base, noting the entry into force of the International Convention on Tonnage Measurement of Ships, 1969.

Speed at sea

Over the centuries, ships have changed enormously. Wood has given way to steel and sail to engines. Ships are bigger and more complex than ever before. But one thing that has not changed as fast as most is speed.

In 1900 a steam ship would operated at about 10 knots. Fifty years later speed had increased to about 12 knots and today it has risen to around 15 knots – not much of a change when other forms of transport are taken into account.

The main reason for this is that ships operate in water, which provides much more resistance than anything met by road vehicles or aircraft. At speeds of around 12-14 knots the frictional drag of water provides about 75% of the resistance met. But as speed increases, the ship develops more and more waves: at 14 knots waves provide about 25% of the resistance encountered, but by 30 knots this has increased to around 90%. The total resistance met by the ship also rises as speed increases. A 400-ft long ship will encounter resistance of about 30,0000 pounds. By 19 knots this will have risen to 100,000 pounds and by 30 knots to 900,000 pounds.

Shipbuilders have attempted to overcome this barrier in various ways. One is to increase the length of the ship in relation to its weight and width. That is why rowing skulls are long and thin. But this can only be achieved at the expense of stability and cargo carrying capacity.

For most cargo ships, speed was not a major consideration. Cargo handling techniques were such that ships often spent longer bin port than they did at sea. Increasing speed between ports, therefore, would not greatly shorten total voyage times.

The Alice, probably French, was `typical of the sailing ships that operated at the end of the 19th century. Technically sailing ships probably reached their peak at this period. The fact that they did not need to carry fuel meant that they had more space for cargo and this made them well-suited to some bulk trades (such as carrying wool from Australia or nitrates from Chile) in which speed was not crucial. Nevertheless, some sailing ships of the 19th century could occasionally reach 20 knots – better than the normal operating speed of powered ships 60 years later. Source: National Maritime Museum

For some ships, notably passenger ships operating on routes such as the North Atlantic in the days before aircraft, speed was definitely a bonus, since passengers wanted to get to their destination as quickly as possible. The Mauretania could operate at 26 knots, with engines that developed 76,000 shp. In 1935 the Normandie sailed at 30 knots but needed 100,000 shp to do so. For cargo ships there was not the same incentive. In the 1950s, a general cargo ship might spend six weeks on a turn-round in Europe before setting off for the Far East. But by the ends of the century, the container revolution had reduced turn-round times to days and hours rather than weeks. A modern container ship spends more time at sea than in port and it therefore pays to reduce voyage times as much as possible. As a result, engine power has been increased and designs have been altered to enable ships to go faster: lines are finer, bows are more flared and today nearly all ships have bulbous bows, which cut down waves and reduce hull resistance.

Nevertheless, bigger engines mean that more fuel is used and when fuel is expensive the cost involved in producing a few more knots on displacement ships can be prohibitive.

One solution is to raise the ship from the water. Hovercraft, which were first developed in the 1950s, achieved this by enabling the craft to float on a cushion of air. Hydrofoil ships, which were also first developed commercially in the 1950s, escape water resistance by lifting up on foils, so that contact with the water is kept to a minimum.

Speed is becoming more and more important in shipping today, especially on short-sea passenger routes. Superseacat 2 is the largest monohull fast ferry operating between the United Kingdom and the Continent. She can carry 674 passengers and 148 vehicles at more than 40 knots.

Useful passenger shipping links

 

•	International Council of Cruise Lines the web site contains useful links to ICCL members.
•	Normandie The Ship of Light web site devoted to the great French liner.
•	Cunard Line home page.
•	Chris Frame’s Cunard page
•	Web site of the Queen Mary in Long Beach, California.
•	Another Queen Mary web site
•	Another Queen Mary web site
•	Web site devoted to the Normandie
•	Claims to provide the most comprehensive database of cruise information on the Web.
•	Home page of Royal Caribbean cruise Lines
•	Site devoted to one of the most modern and largest of the new cruise liners. The opening picture shows Voyager entering Miami
•	This takes you to a web cam on board the Voyager of the Seas
•	Cruise Log (with links)

Further Information:

Information Resources on passenger ship safety

Focus papers

SOLAS

Ro-ro safety

Safety of Navigation

Life Saving: Surviving Disaster at Sea

Search and Rescue and the GMDSS

STCW Convention

Websites - see also IMO Library Directory of Maritime Links

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[1] Link to the existing Focus paper on SOLAS.

[2] Link to the IMO web site

[3] Link to Ice Patrol web site