Hundreds of P&O Cruise Passengers Flown Home After Tanker Crash

Table Of Content

• Four MSC Ships Will Cruise from North America next Summer
• A 'small number' of passengers on a P&O cruise ship were injured after it struck an oil tanker in the Mediterranean
• How many ships hit bridges, lose power every year? Data shows jarring numbers on the rise.
• Bon Jovi gets up and leaves This Morning studio
• Thousands protest in Canary Islands over 'unsustainable' mass tourism
• Heavy rainfall floods parts of China
• P&O Cruise Ship Crashes Into Oil Tanker, Injuring Passengers
• Cruise Ship Hits Oil Tanker During Bad Storm

Nathan Diller is a consumer travel reporter for USA TODAY based in Nashville. “Following inspections, our third-party surveyor has confirmed that one of Britannia’s lifeboats has sustained structural issues and cannot be repaired onboard. Heavy rains and winds have swept across parts of the Balearic Islands, including Mallorca, and Catalonia in northeastern Spain. The pair then went back onto the ship, and according to Gary ‘about eight seconds later’ the boat broke free of its moorings’. Mfame website is run by maritime professionals who have experienced many years of fuel usage, machinery problems and are interested in finding solutions. One of the people who witnessed the incident captured the scene in a video that has gone viral on social media.

Four MSC Ships Will Cruise from North America next Summer

Ludeman was heading back to Phoenix, and said she was able to rebook her Sunday flight for Monday while at sea. Three years earlier, the 604-foot-long Manistee went dark as it was backing out of Ashtabula Harbor east of Cleveland. The engineer on watch forgot to throw a switch that would prevent the generators from overheating, leading to the outage. In the case of the Dali simulation, the unfortunate lesson was that there was little they could do to avoid a catastrophe once the power was down except alert others to their plight. The frequency of such malfunctions and the risks to life and property are at the heart of Cal Maritime’s simulation exercises, which train students how to react to the worst disasters in a controlled environment. Often the dividing line between major and routine came down to a last-minute effort by the crew or rescue teams.

A 'small number' of passengers on a P&O cruise ship were injured after it struck an oil tanker in the Mediterranean

The Britannia cost £473 million ($596 million) and can carry up to 3,647 passengers. Guests who were asked to leave will get a pro-rata refund of their fare for the days they missed and a 20% cruise discount to be used in the future. Britannia visited the port as part of a two-week, round-trip cruise from Southampton, England that departed Aug. 18, according to CruiseMapper.

How many ships hit bridges, lose power every year? Data shows jarring numbers on the rise.

Fortunately, a pair of tugboats were able to rescue the U.S.-flagged vessel and tow it to safety, where it was determined a broken air compressor valve was to blame. Now, just a half mile from the span, the vessel has gone dark – no power, no steering, no propulsion. Inside the ship’s towering command center, the crew tries to re-engage the system but no luck. Visual documentation of the incident, captured by passengers, provided a tangible record of the encounter.

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“That’s when you’re giving all your engine orders,” said Calnan, the assistant professor of marine transportation who ran the simulation at Cal Maritime for USA TODAY. Calnan has operated large ships himself and has experienced what is sometimes known as a dark ship, though only while out at sea. On March 16, 2018, the bulk carrier Strategic Alliance lost power and propulsion on the Delaware River just north of the Commodore Barry Bridge, a 2.6-mile span connecting Philadelphia to New Jersey and carrying more than 41,000 vehicles a day. For the past half hour, the crew navigated the hulking vessel through relatively calm waters and lined it up to pass perfectly under the main truss of the steel bridge, softly lit in the early morning darkness. Another passenger shared videos on X of the ship guests waiting at the port terminal, which had debris from the storm outside.

Lloyd’s was unable to provide updated data, but a representative told USA TODAY incidents have continued to rise. “Captain, we are on a collision course with the bridge support,” announces the officer of the watch, who recommends dropping its anchor. A desperate call goes out to the shore to stop traffic from crossing the bridge. He was on the balcony of his cabin when the cruise vessel and tanker crashed, per the outlet. Flights from Barcelona airport were delayed throughout Sunday because of the high winds.

Worldwide, between 1960 and 2015 ships or barges caused 35 major bridge collapses that killed 342 people, according to a 2018 report from the World Association for Waterborne Transport Infrastructure.More than half occurred in the United States. Despite the frequency of power failures and bridge strikes reported to the Coast Guard, the maritime shipping industry has had relatively few major accidents like the one that toppled the Francis Scott Key Bridge. “Lack of inspection, testing replacement/maintenance of the time delay relays” was to blame in February 2019, when the captain of the Portuguese container ship EMS Trader ordered an emergency lowering of the anchor. The ship had lost power, steering and propulsion not far from the Commodore Barry Bridge southwest of Philadelphia. At the time of the incident, Mallorca was already on an amber weather alert due to extreme winds and torrential rains. There have been 74 mph winds and torrential rains in Mallorca, with an amber weather alert in place across the island on Sunday.

P&O Cruise Ship Crashes Into Oil Tanker, Injuring Passengers

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Even though the vessel’s crew was trained to slowly increase the pitch of the bow thruster so as to not overload the generators, “the pilot adjusted the pitch from 0% to 100% instantly,” according to the incident report. Coast Guard incident reports blame a host of culprits for the power outages reported by hundreds of ships over the years. They include unpredictable events like lightning strikes, fires on board or even fish clogging water inlets meant to help cool the engines. Although such disasters are rare, the conditions that could cause them are frighteningly common, according to a USA TODAY analysis of U.S. Coast Guard maritime incident data, which includes any reportable maritime event involving a death or injury, collision, grounding, environmental harm, or the loss of power and propulsion. The Britannia was blown by gales towards the other vessel on Sunday after a storm battered the island in the Balearics.

Cruise Ship Hits Oil Tanker During Bad Storm

“The guests remaining on board will be able to enjoy the entertainment and activities scheduled for the remainder of their trip." Ricky Stubbs, one of the passengers aboard, gave a play-by-play of the incident. In a report filed by The Guardian about the incident, he stated that a deafening crash echoed from the ship’s sunset bar as he and his children prepared to disembark. This was followed by a rush of people fleeing the impact and battling the fierce winds and rain. Hundreds of passengers on a P&O cruise ship that crashed into an oil tanker during a storm in Spain have been flown home. One of the Britannia's lifeboats was damaged, meaning the cruise was required to return to Southampton with a "reduced number of people onboard," and some passengers and crew were told they had to leave the ship, per the statement.

“A loud crash came from the bar and the door flung open with people running in. Within seconds there was more crashing followed by chaos as people were trying to escape the onslaught of wind and rain. Only one run involving tug boats averted the disaster, and even then only when two tugs at full power were tethered to the ship all the way under the bridge. That lineup is not a current day reality except in rare situations, such as tankers transporting oil or other toxins in certain ports.

Fourteen people died and five were injured in the accident, which the report said caused an estimated $30.1 million in damage to the bridge and $276,000 to the barges. Such incidents reinforce the need for extra precaution when ships navigate near critical infrastructure, said Pandey of Massachusetts Maritime, who advocated for mandatory tug escorts regardless of the ship, its cargo or the port. Even if the engine had been working, Calnan said, it would have taken 0.8 nautical miles to bring that particular vessel under those particular conditions to a full stop – farther than the distance to the bridge it was about to hit. Sometimes a simple miscalculation can cause a crew to lose command of a ship – or cause an otherwise seaworthy ship to hit a bridge.

The investigation revealed about 16 gallons of water had leaked into the fuel oil supply tank. When the blackout occurred, the ship’s rudder was turned 3 degrees to the starboard side and remained stuck there as the vessel drifted off course. Its towering stack of containers acted as a sail for the wind, which aimed it directly at the bridge’s support column. USA TODAY’s data analysis revealed at least 2,600 bridge strikes occurring in U.S. waters since 2002, the earliest year for which such data is available. The majority, however, were minor – a ship’s antenna or mast hitting a bridge, or a barge clipping a bridge’s protective fender. Roughly 500 feet from the country’s longest suspension span – crossed by nearly a quarter-million vehicles a day – the ship was adrift with no steering, no propulsion and no engine.