An Associated Press story came in this morning about a cruise ship unexpected listing to port after suffering a "steering failure." Hundreds were thrown about by the sudden movement, water drained out of the swimming pool and the occupants of the pool suddenly found themselves sliding down the wet deck into whatever was in their way. Dozens of injuries were reported. Windows were broken, furniture was destroyed, TVs were thrown from their perches and broken and all sorts of other damage was inflicted on the ship.
The cruise ship was the month-old Crown Princess and displaces 113,000 tons of water with its huge bulk.
Parts of this story don't make sense.
The story quoted a passenger as saying that "several of the upper decks were flooded with seawater." Look at how high the upper decks are on the ship in the photo above. If several of the upper decks were flooded with seawater, exactly how far over did the ship go?
Now, if some of the LOWER decks were flooded with seawater, then that would make more sense, but the UPPER decks? What kind of steering failure would push the ship nearly onto it's side?
And the damage all over the ship? People were violently thrown about and were quoted in the story as "hanging onto stuff for dear life." They also indicated all of this happened very quickly; far too quickly for a steering problem to have this kind of widespread impact all over the Crown Princess.
It sounds like this ship was hit by a rogue wave. What's really going on here?
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