how many cruise ships have sunk in antarctica

How Many Cruise Ships Have Sunk?

The thought of a cruise ship sinking conjures images of historic maritime tragedies, sparking curiosity and concern among modern travelers.

Despite the advancements in safety and technology, the question lingers in the minds of many: How many cruise ships have actually sunk? In this article, we dive deep into the annals of maritime history and safety records to uncover the truth.

By examining the rare instances of cruise ship sinkings, we’ll provide perspective on the safety of cruising today.

Whether you’re a maritime history enthusiast or planning your next vacation at sea, understanding these incidents sheds light on the impressive safety standards that protect millions of passengers each year.

The Titanic Tragedy (April 1912)

The Titanic’s sinking is one of the most well-known maritime disasters. On its first trip across the Atlantic Ocean, the ship hit an iceberg on the night of April 14, 1912. In just over two and a half hours, the Titanic was completely underwater. Sadly, most passengers couldn’t evacuate safely because there weren’t enough lifeboats for everyone.

The disaster led to more than 1,500 deaths, making it one of the deadliest incidents at sea. The freezing waters made survival even harder for those who couldn’t get on a lifeboat. The Titanic’s sinking is remembered as a tragic event in maritime history.

The Empress of Ireland Tragedy (May 1914)

Just two years after the Titanic sank, the Empress of Ireland had its own tragic accident. In May 1914, this ship with nearly 1,500 passengers hit the Norwegian ship Storstad. They could see each other earlier, but then fog made it hard to see.

The crash caused 1,012 passengers and crew to lose their lives. The Empress of Ireland was close to making 1,000 trips without any problems, but this was not one of them. This accident is another sad event in the history of ships at sea.

The Sinking of the Lusitania (May 1915)

Cunard Line has been operating ships since 1940 and is still active today. One of its famous ships is the Queen Mary 2, the last ocean liner still in service.

The RMS Lusitania, built for Cunard Line, was the world’s largest passenger ship for three months. On May 7, 1915, while sailing off the coast of Ireland to Liverpool, England, a German U-Boat torpedoed the Lusitania. The ship started to sink faster than expected, and only six lifeboats could be launched.

Nearly 1,200 people died in the sinking of the Lusitania. This event is remembered as one of the major maritime tragedies of the early 20th century.

The Britannic’s Fate (November 1916)

The Britannic was the younger sister of the Olympic (1911) and Titanic (1912). Although intended to be a passenger ship, the outbreak of World War I changed her purpose. She became a hospital ship in December 1915.

In November 1916, less than a year into her service, the Britannic hit a German naval mine in the Kea Channel between the Greek islands of Kea and Makronisos. She sank 55 minutes later.

Fortunately, the casualties were minimal. Most people on board managed to escape on the 35 lifeboats that were launched. However, around 30 people still lost their lives in the sinking of the Britannic.

The Sinking of the Principessa Mafalda (October 1927)

The Principessa Mafalda was an Italian ship named after a princess. It started sailing in 1909 between Genoa, Italy, and Buenos Aires, Argentina.

In October 1927, the ship had a big problem when its propeller shaft broke, damaging the bottom of the ship. It sank off the coast of Brazil, and sadly, more than 300 people died.

The Saint-Philibert Tragedy (June 1931)

The Saint-Philibert, a small cruise ship, capsized and sank on June 14, 1931, off the coast of France. This tragic event led to the loss of nearly 500 lives, with only 8 passengers surviving.

Before this disaster, the Saint-Philibert was known for offering summer voyages along the French coast.

Check out: What Cruise Can You Go on Alone at 18?

The Sinking of the Georges Philippar (May 1932)

The French ocean liner Georges Philippar sank on the second leg of her maiden voyage near present-day Yemen, resulting in the loss of 54 lives.

The sinking was caused by an electrical fault. A fire started in one of the luxury cabins due to a faulty light switch that sparked and set the wood paneling on fire.

Before setting sail, there were worries about the ship’s safety. The ship’s launch was almost delayed to fix defects. However, these concerns were ignored to avoid penalties for delays.

The Tragedy of the SS Morro Castle (September 1934)

The SS Morro Castle, an American ocean liner operated by Ward Line, was traveling from Havana, Cuba, to New York City when it caught fire and ran aground on September 8, 1934.

The night before the disaster, Captain Robert Rennison Willmott, the ship’s captain, suddenly died after complaining about a stomach ache. Command of the ship was then passed to Chief Officer William Warms.

There were 137 casualties in total. Much of the blame was placed on the crew for not handling the emergency properly. Although the lifeboats could hold up to 408 people, they were launched with only 85.

The Sinking of the Empress of Britain (October 1940)

The Empress of Britain, an ocean liner of over 42,000 gross registered tons, holds the sad record of being the largest ocean liner sunk during World War II, and also the largest ship sunk by a U-Boat during the conflict.

On October 26, she was first bombed from above, then sunk by a torpedo launched by German U-Boats on October 28.

Most of the 416 crew members, 2 gunners, and 205 passengers managed to abandon the ship, leaving few people on board. In total, 45 people lost their lives in this tragic event.

The Collision of Andrea Doria and MS Stockholm (July 1956)

On July 25, 1956, the Andrea Doria and the MS Stockholm collided while on their way to New York City. The accident resulted in 51 deaths. However, this event is also known for one of the largest rescues in maritime history.

Thanks to improved communication systems, the crew of the Andrea Doria was able to quickly start rescue efforts and get help from other ships. Only five people died on board the Stockholm.

The damage to the Andrea Doria was so severe that the ship could not be saved. Those who lost their lives did so because of the initial collision.

The Story of the Bianca C (October 1961)

The Bianca C first sank during World War II when the Germans scuttled her before she was completed. Later, her hull was raised and refitted to become a cruise ship. She was first owned by Panama’s Arosa Line as their flagship but was eventually sold to Costa Line, where she got the name Bianca C after the owner’s daughter.

On October 22, 1961, while docked off the coast of Grenada, an explosion in the ship’s engine room led to fires breaking out. Thankfully, except for one person killed in the initial explosion, everyone was able to evacuate the ship before it sank.

The Journey and End of the Angelina Lauro (September 1979)

The Angelina Lauro didn’t always serve as a cruise ship. She started her journey in 1939 as the MS Oranje. Initially meant to be a passenger ferry, she was kept in Indonesia and turned into a hospital ship. After World War II, she sailed as a passenger liner for around 11 years, making trips around the world from Amsterdam to Australia through the Panama Canal and back via Singapore and the Suez Canal.

In 1964, she was sold to Lauro Lines and refitted as a cruise ship. She embarked on her maiden voyage as the Angelina Lauro on March 6, 1966. In the late 70s, Costa Lines chartered her.

While docked in Saint Thomas, the Angelina Lauro caught fire. The blaze lasted for several days. Before she could be towed to a scrapyard, her weakened hull began to take on water. She finally sank on September 24, 1979.

The Sinking of the MS Mikhail Lermontov (February 1986)

The MS Mikhail Lermontov was an ocean liner operated by the Soviet Union’s Baltic Shipping Company, entering service in 1972. A decade later, it was upgraded to serve as a cruise ship.

On February 6, 1986, the ship left Sydney for a two-week cruise around New Zealand. Ten days into the journey, while sailing past Cape Jackson, it hit rocks. Out of the 743 crew and passengers on board, the majority managed to escape on lifeboats. Tragically, there was one casualty: crew engineer Pavel Zagladimov.

The Tragic Collision of the SS Admiral Nakhimov (August 1986)

The SS Admiral Nakhimov started its journey in 1925 as the SS Berlin, a passenger liner of the German Weimar Republic. It later served as a hospital ship before becoming a Soviet Union passenger ship.

In August 1986, the ship met a tragic end when it collided with another ship in Tsemes Bay. The ship sank quickly, and sadly, 423 people lost their lives in the incident. This marked the third and final time that the ship sank.

The Sinking of MV Jupiter (October 1988)

The MV Jupiter, a Greek cruise ship, started sailing in 1961 as the Moledet. On October 21, 1988, it sank after leaving Piraeus, Greece. An Italian freight ship hit it.

The ship had nearly 400 British students, 84 adults, and 110 crew members on a study cruise. Sadly, one student, one teacher, and two crew members died. About 70 others were injured.

The Sinking of MTS Oceanos (August 1991)

The MTS Oceanos, another Greek ship, sank three years after the MV Jupiter. It was traveling from South Africa to Durban when rough seas hit. A storm made things worse.

The ship’s waste system wasn’t fixed right. A key pipe wasn’t replaced. It’s thought that huge waves broke the pipe, letting seawater flood in.

No one died, but the captain and crew were found guilty of leaving without helping passengers. The ship’s entertainers led all rescue efforts.

The Sinking of MS Estonia (September 1994)

The sinking of the MS Estonia in 1994 was one of the worst maritime disasters of the 20th century. It was the deadliest peacetime sinking of a European ship after the Titanic and the Empress of Ireland. Over 850 lives were lost.

While sailing through rough waters in the Baltic Sea, a metallic bang was heard. Soon after, passengers and crew reported similar sounds. Around 1:15 am, the visor separated, opening the loading ramp and causing the ship to list as water flooded in.

It was difficult for those in cabins to reach the boat deck. Water was entering the ship through the car deck and the windows of public areas and cabins on Deck 6.

The Achille Lauro Incident (December 1994)

The Achille Lauro, originally the ocean liner Willem Ruys, was converted into a cruise ship by Italian businessman Achille Lauro in 1965. It had a series of unfortunate events, including collisions and onboard fires.

In 1985, the ship was hijacked by members of the Palestine Liberation Front. On November 30, 1994, the Achille Lauro caught fire while sailing to South Africa. There were 979 passengers and crew onboard. The majority evacuated the next morning when the ship listed, but two people were killed before it sank on December 2.

The Final Voyage of the Sun Vista (May 1999)

The Sun Vista started its journey in 1963 as the SS Galileo Galilei for the Lloyd Triestino line. Over the years, it sailed for five different cruise lines, including as the first-ever cruise ship for Celebrity Cruises, the Meridian. In 1997, it was transferred to Sun Cruises and renamed the Sun Vista.

On May 20, 1999, a fire broke out in the ship’s engine room. The Sun Vista sank in the early morning hours of May 21 in the Strait of Malacca. Fortunately, all passengers and crew were able to escape safely.

The Sinking of the Britanis (October 2000)

The Britanis began its life as the luxury ocean liner SS Monterey in 1932. It later sailed for Chandris under their “Fantasy Cruises” division starting in February 1971. When Chandris shifted focus to the Celebrity Cruises brand, all Fantasy Cruises operations ceased. In 1998, the ship was sold to AG Belofin and renamed Belofin-1.

Instead of being refurbished, the Britanis was sold to scrappers. While being towed to a scrapyard from Brazil, it developed a leak at the back of the ship. With no one on board, the ship was cut free and capsized off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa.

The Sinking of SeaBreeze (December 2000)

The SeaBreeze, originally named Federico C., was launched in 1958 and sailed for Costa Cruises. In 1983, it was transferred to Premier Cruises and renamed three times.

Premier Cruises went out of business in September 2000, leading to the ship being laid up. While being moved from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to Charleston, South Carolina, by its new owner, Cruise Ventures III, the SeaBreeze sank about 225 nautical miles off the coast of Virginia. All 34 crew members on board were rescued safely.

The ship sank due to the boiler breaking off, causing significant damage to the vessel.

The Sinking of MV Explorer (November 2007)

The MV Explorer, originally the MS Lindblad Explorer, began her career in 1969 as the first ship of her kind to sail through the Antarctic Ocean.

On November 11, 2007, she set sail from Ushuaia, Argentina, for a 19-day cruise. After visiting the Falkland Islands, she hit an iceberg in the Bransfield Strait on November 23, causing a gash in the hull that let water in.

All 91 passengers, 53 crew, and 9 guides were able to escape on lifeboats. They stayed there for five hours until the MS Nordnorge rescued them.

The Sinking of MS Sea Diamond (April 2007)

The MS Sea Diamond, originally known as Birka Princess, operated for Birka Line for most of her time at sea. In 2006, she was sold to Louis Cruises Line and renamed. A year later, she ran aground on a reef near Santorini, with 77 students from Paisley Magnet School in North Carolina on board.

Initially, it was believed that all passengers and crew were safe. However, two French citizens, Jean Christophe Allain, 45, and his daughter Maud, 16, were reported missing and never found.

Greek authorities later announced plans to charge the captain and five other officers with negligence.

The Capsizing of Costa Concordia (January 2012)

The Costa Concordia was the first ship of Costa Cruises’ Concordia Class, entering service in 2006. On January 13, 2012, she set sail on a 7-night Mediterranean cruise with 3,206 passengers and 1,023 crew members.

Captain Francesco Schettino veered off course, sailing too close to the island of Giglio. The ship struck a large rock, causing a 174-foot gash in the hull, leading to flooding and loss of power. The ship’s rudder position made it unsteerable, and it began tilting toward the starboard side.

The evacuation took over six hours and resulted in 32 deaths. An investigation focused on the crew’s actions, particularly Captain Schettino’s, as he left the ship while passengers were still on board.

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Passengers on Antarctic cruise ship hit by deadly 'rogue wave' speak out

The Trusdales were passengers on the Viking Polaris cruise ship last week.

Tom and Pam Trusdale were enjoying a bucket list trip to Antarctica , until their trip of a lifetime turned into a deadly disaster.

"It was going real smoothly, and we were only anticipating nothing but smooth going forward," Tom Trusdale told ABC News.

The Trusdales were passengers on the Viking Polaris cruise ship sailing toward Ushuaia, Argentina, when it was hit by a "rogue wave" last week , killing an American passenger, Sheri Zhu, and injuring four others.

"Good Morning America" airs at 7 a.m. ET on ABC.

The Trusdales said the wave wasn't the only disaster. The Trusdales and ABC News later confirmed that a day before the accident, another passenger was seriously injured during a Zodiac boat excursion.

"It was a real loud, it was a boom, and I flew up in the air, and the passenger across from me flew up in the air. She came down and hit hard," Pam Trusdale said.

MORE: 'Rogue wave' strikes Antarctic cruise ship, leaves 1 dead and 4 injured

Tom Trusdale said he saw two passengers tossed into the air from what seemed to be an apparent explosion.

"I saw the woman go, probably about 3 feet in the air, and then the gentleman straight across from me go up in the air, and then roll over into the sea," Tom Trusdale said. "So I went across and leaned over the pontoon, and I just grabbed on to the life jacket. He was face up, so he was stabilized, and I reassured him that, 'Hey, you're safe.'"

Tom Trusdale said he and another passenger were able to quickly pull the man back on the boat, but the woman's leg was severely injured.

"She said, 'I hurt my legs. I can't feel my leg,'" Pam Trusdale said. " And then I could hear her kind of straining that, you know, I could tell that she was in a lot of pain."

The passenger's leg required surgery, which led the ship's captain to turn back to Argentina. During the trip back toward Argentina, through a known turbulent stretch of ocean, was when the "rogue wave" crashed into the cruise ship.

"This wave hit it and came over and literally broke through windows and just washed into these rooms, and not only did it wash into the rooms, but it broke walls down, and once some walls went into the next room," Tom Trusdale said.

Viking said in a statement on its website that it's investigating the wave incident and is committed to the safety and security of all guests and crew.

Viking issued a second statement about the Zodiac boat incident, saying: "On November 28, the Viking Polaris deployed a small boat with six guests and one crew member near Damoy Point, Antarctica. On this trip a guest sustained a serious but non-life-threatening leg injury while on board the small boat and was taken to the medical center on the Viking Polaris."

"Following a detailed diagnosis by the ship's medical team, the decision was taken for the ship to immediately sail to Ushuaia so that the guest could receive additional medical care from a shore-based hospital," it continued. "The guest is now recovering shoreside in Ushuaia and will then return home; Viking is continuing to support them during this period. We are committed to the safety and security of all our guests and crew, and we are investigating the cause of the incident."

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Is Antarctica Getting Too Popular for Its Own Good?

This past season was the busiest—and deadliest—on record for antarctica. has the white continent fallen prey to overtourism.

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Witnessing the beauty of Antarctica—but at what cost?

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Pam Trusdale and her husband, Tom, of Wichita, Kansas, were just a few days into their dream cruise to Antarctica when she said the first “freak” accident happened.

Riding in a Zodiac that was taking them from Viking’s newest expedition ship, Viking Polaris , to the luxury vessel’s mini submarine for one of their first excursions, Trusdale said she was taking pictures of penguins when an explosion rocked the small inflatable boat “and we flew about two to three feet in the air.”

One man landed in the icy water and was quickly pulled back in, unharmed. But the woman next to Trusdale suffered a broken leg and shattered heel, prompting Viking to cut the cruise short and head back to Argentina to get the passenger medical attention.

That’s when a second—and fatal—accident occurred. Sailing through the notoriously turbulent and unpredictable Drake Passage, a rogue wave slammed into the ship, “knocking down walls and breaking out windows,” Trusdale said. One American passenger died, and four others were injured.

The Viking accidents in late November came less than two weeks after two other Americans on a Quark Expeditions trip died when their Zodiac flipped near Cape Lookout, Elephant Island, where water temperatures can reach minus 70 degrees Fahrenheit. Also in November, a passenger died aboard a Netherlands-flagged Antarctic cruise ship. Few details have been released on that incident, although unconfirmed reports on social media indicate the person fell in the shower during rough seas.

Following the accidents, Viking and Quark issued statements saying they were investigating the cause of the incidents. Quark said the capsizing of its Zodiac appeared to have been caused by a breaking wave and promised “full cooperation with the relevant authorities.” Viking added that it is committed to the safety and security of all guests and crew.

The back-to-back mishaps came at the beginning of what was expected to be the busiest—and was ultimately one of the deadliest—Antarctic tourism seasons on record. And they prompted the U.S. Coast Guard , the National Transportation Safety Board, and other international bodies to send teams to the region to investigate.

Is it safe to cruise in Antarctica?

Data collected by the International Association of Antarctic Tour Operators (IAATO) show major incidents are rare—the last one prior to the late 2022 incidents was in 2007 when one of the original Antarctic passenger ships, the MS Explorer , sank after striking an iceberg. All passengers and crew were rescued. According to IAATO, the only other fatality involving a cruise passenger in recent history came in 2013, when a scuba diver who got separated from her group died.

This season’s incidents may prove to be just what Trusdale characterized them as: freak accidents. It will likely take a while before the investigations shed further light into whether human error, ship design flaws, or other factors may have played a role. But they come as tourism to the White Continent is exploding.

Travel to this remote, rugged, and wildlife-rich corner of the world—which many who have made the journey characterize as a life-changing event—was on the rise well before COVID-19. In the past year, as international travel has rebounded, it has become “one of the hottest tickets” in travel, and a destination on “everyone’s radar,” says Bob Simpson, vice president of expedition cruise product development for Silversea Cruises. That already growing interest, he and others say, has been further fueled by a combination of postpandemic demand for once-in-a-lifetime adventures and the launch of some two dozen upscale, luxury, and ultra-luxury ships since 2019 with amenities new to expedition sailing like spacious suites, spas, and high-end toys like mini submarines and helicopters.

Scott Caddow, a luxury travel advisor and founder of the Legendary World agency, also attributes the growth to an increase in younger, more adventurous travelers who can afford a journey on the new luxury expedition ships, which can run upwards of $25,000 per passenger.

The IAATO estimates that a record 106,000 tourists sailed to the region on 86 ships this season, up from 73,670 on 62 vessels in the 2019–2020 season. And with any such rise comes increased odds for accidents and human error.

Breathtaking images of natural beauty make the Antarctica experience meaningful for so many.

Photo by Shutterstock

Because no one country or region governs Antarctica, the industry is essentially self-regulated, meaning there is no central, public database of safety records for individual companies and operators. But IAATO—which sets safety and environmental rules for member cruise lines and tour operators, including things like minimum expedition team member experience requirements and passenger-to-crew ratios—tracks all major incidents involving humans and wildlife as part of its mission to “ensure risks are understood and appropriate lessons are learned for all Antarctic operators.” Members are required to report all accidents. Details are included in annual reports the group files with the Secretariat of the Antarctic Treaty, which regulates all human activity in the region. When picking a cruise line or tour operator, veteran guides suggest researching the companies and their individual safety records carefully and looking for ships and companies with proven experience in the region.

As for the vessels themselves, in 2017, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) adopted a mandatory Polar Code to ensure that ships operate safely in the polar regions and that environmental protections are properly taken into account. The Polar Code divides ships into ice class ratings, which range from Polar Class 1 (PC 1) to Polar Class 7 (PC 7). A vessel with the highest rating, PC 1, can operate year-round in all polar waters. Here is the full list of Polar Codes:

• PC 1: Year-round operation in all polar, ice-covered waters
• PC 2: Year-round operation in moderate multi-year ice
• PC 3: Year-round operation in second-year ice, which may include multi-year ice
• PC 4: Year-round operation in thick first-year ice, which may include old ice
• PC 5: Year-round operation in medium first-year ice, which may include old ice
• PC 6: Summer/autumn operation in medium first-year ice, which may include old ice
• PC 7: Summer/autumn operation in thin first-year ice, which may include old ice

Most passenger vessels in Antarctica have a PC 6 rating as they operate only in the Southern Hemisphere’s safer summer months, between November and April. Cruise ships with a PC 5 rating include Lindblad Expeditions’ National Geographic Endurance and National Geographic Resolution . And one passenger cruise vessel has a PC 2 rating, French line Ponant’s Le Commandant Charcot .

French cruise line Ponant’s Le Commandant Charcot is the only passenger vessel in Antarctica with a very high Polar Class 2 (PC 2) rating.

Photo by Olivier Blaud/Ponant

The IMO Polar Code is based on requirements for polar class ships developed by the International Association of Classification Societies (IACS). IACS outlines detailed structural and safety requirements for polar class ships that include precise specifications for the design of the ship’s hull and ice load capabilities (including what type of ice the vessel would be able to bypass). The polar class rating of any cruise ship should be readily available by searching online for the name of the vessel and “polar class rating,” or by asking the cruise line or tour operator directly.

How rough is the Drake Passage? Can it be avoided altogether?

There is no real “better” time to sail the notorious Drake Passage, where waters from the Pacific, Atlantic, and Southern oceans converge, although some say it can be calmer at the height of the southern summer in December and January. (The Antarctica cruise season runs from November through March.)

About the only thing predictable about the Drake Passage is its unpredictability. Conditions can range from totally calm, or what is known as the “Drake Lake,” to the “Drake Shake,” when swells of 20 feet of more roil the waters. And those conditions can change on a dime. Captains, however, are experienced and equipped to change course regularly to forge a smoother path.

IAATO reports only one other incident involving damage to a ship during a Drake passing, in December 2010 when a large wave hit the MV Clelia II , breaking a bridge window and causing an electrical and communications malfunction. One crew member was slightly injured, and the ship returned safely to Ushuaia.

For many, sailing the Drake Passage is a key part of the Antarctic experience. But the passage takes two days each way. For those looking for a shorter cruise, more time on the Seventh Continent, or simply to avoid the potentially harrowing waves (and seasickness ), a number of both traditional expedition cruise operators and new luxury lines offer what they call “bridge sailings,” where passengers fly from Chile to King George Island so they can board the ship directly in Antarctica, thus bypassing the passage completely.

What other health and safety considerations are there when sailing to Antarctica?

Simpson advises that in order to take advantage of all the activities and experiences offered by expedition cruises, there is a level of fitness to consider. But even in situations where mobility may be challenging, he said, “We always have a journey that is the right fit for any guest. Sitting on the balcony taking in the experience or going on as many excursions as possible would depend on each individual, but generally we can accommodate guests of all levels of fitness or mobility.”

People come from far and wide to view the beautiful—and fragile—Antarctica landscapes.

Photo by Long Ma/Unsplash

What is the environmental toll of sailing in Antarctica?

Ricardo Roura, a senior advisor to the conservation-focused Antarctic and Southern Ocean Coalition that has been trying unsuccessfully for years to limit ship traffic in the region, says he is less concerned about the recent boom’s impact on human safety than its effect on wildlife.

The growth in ship traffic, he said, poses increased threats of collisions with whales and problems from underwater noise pollution. And cruise ships all land in a relatively small geographic area, meaning more passengers are treading on pristine habitats to get up close and personal with penguins and other wildlife.

Simpson, a former chair of IAATO, notes the organization has very stringent—and constantly evolving—environmental protection safeguards that all members are obliged to follow. And he said IAATO members have been working for more than a decade to expand their range of operations beyond what they refer to as “hot spots.” As part of that effort, he said Silversea recently conducted a 12-day scouting voyage to map, verify, and create site guidelines for new locations throughout the Antarctic Peninsula and South Shetland Islands.

For passengers who are concerned about their footprint in the region, they should research the sustainability and wildlife conservation commitments of the cruise line or tour operator they are traveling with and should also pay attention to whether and how the company is getting guests further off the beaten path.

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Massive waves bombard Drake Passage cruise ships in viral videos. What to know about Antarctica cruises

Waves in drake passage can reach up to 40 feet.

Large waves buffet Antarctica cruise ship in Drake Passage

One American woman was killed and four others injured after a rogue wave hit the cruise ship. (Ann Clark Mah)

Several harrowing videos of heavy waves battering cruise ships in the Drake Passage as passengers look on have gone viral in recent months, serving as a reminder that the high-priced cruises to Antarctica, while breathtaking, take passengers through arguably the most treacherous waters in the world.

In early December, a TikTok vlogger who goes by "Natasha" shared a video of massive waves battering her cruise ship as it sailed through the Drake Passage between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans at the southern tip of South America. The video was viewed more than 12 million times, the New York Post reported .

"Waves are crazy in Drake Passage," another user named "Edmundo" posted on TikTok in December to show a cruise ship dealing with rough seas: "Reaches Deck 6 of our ship."

"It’s very common," travel expert Lee Abbamonte, who has traveled to all 193 United Nation member states along with the North and South Pole, told Fox News Digital about the rough seas in the Drake Passage.

VIKING POLARIS PASSENGERS SPEAK OUT AFTER 'ROGUE WAVE' STRIKES ANTARCTIC CRUISE SHIP, KILLING AMERICAN WOMAN

The bow of the icebreaker Kapitan Khlebnikov pushes through a wave in rough seas while crossing the Drake Passage. (David Tipling/Universal Images Group via Getty Images/File)

"The Antarctica season is very short, only a few months, and the Drake is notorious for its waves being unpredictable," Abbamonte said. "Some get lucky and get Drake Lake, others will likely be laying horizontal for a few days. It’s Antarctica, not the Caribbean."

In late November, a 62-year-old American passenger on a Viking cruise ship was killed when a rogue wave smashed through a window , sending broken glass flying. Four other passengers suffered non-life threatening injuries.

NYC-SIZED ICE SHELF COLLAPSES IN EAST ANTARCTICA

Waves are seen crashing alongside the Viking Polaris cruise ship during its recent voyage in the Drake Passage. (Ann Clark Mah/File)

The Viking Polaris ship, which was traveling near Argentinian city of Ushuaia on an Antarctic cruise, suffered "limited damage" and returned to Buenos Aires after canceling the voyage.

The massive currents colliding at the 620-mile-wide waterway results in layers of cold seawater from the south mixing with warmer seawater from the north, which causes powerful eddies that are often exacerbated by strong winds from storms, according to travel blog Oceanwide Expeditions.

Blogger Candice Gaukel Andrews wrote about a trip across the passage in 2015, writing that she woke up one night to waves hitting the ship "as if I were riding a bucking horse in a rodeo."

"Not only were we bouncing up and down on huge swells, but we were also twisting side to side," Andrews wrote. "I clung to the side of my bed with white knuckles to keep from falling out. My roommate finally gave up trying to stay put, shoved her mattress onto the floor and flopped on top of it. Everything that wasn’t bolted down—books, bottles, papers, pens—went flying through the room, much as if we were experiencing zero gravity that had somehow speeded up."

"Outside the porthole, though, it looked more like a washing machine."

THIRD AUSTRALIAN CRUISE IN WEEKS TURNS INTO 'NIGHTMARE' AFTER FUNGUS OUTBREAK PREVENTS ENTRY INTO NEW ZEALAND

Waves break on the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise in the Drake Passage as it navigates toward the Antarctic Peninsula on Feb. 10, 2018. (Reuters/Alexandre Meneghini/File)

The average water flow of the main current that flows through the passage, the west-to-east Antarctic Circumpolar Current, stretches more than 12,400 miles and is estimated to carry 135 million cubic meters of water, about 600 times the Amazon River’s volume.

The choppy waters of the Drake Passage, named after English explorer Sir Francis Drake, who never actually traveled through the waterway but sailed close to the location in 1578, are believed to have caused more than 800 shipwrecks .

Generally, it is believed that the best month to visit Antarctica is in January when the Drake Passage seas are typically calmer, but the waterway remains unpredictable regardless of the month.

ANTARCTICA’S THWAITES 'DOOMSDAY GLACIER' SCIENTIFIC STUDY BLOCKED BY GIANT ICEBERG

Despite the sometimes dangerous waters and waves that can reach up to 40 feet, Abbamonte says passengers are willing to shell out "upwards of $20-$30K" in some case for the chance to visit the remote continent via luxury cruise.

"You can go out in zodiacs and see the ice up close," Abbamonte said. "Some people actually jump into the water, and you generally will see a lot of penguins in their own habitat."

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Abbamonte said that the cruises to Antarctica are "very safe as far as expedition cruises go" despite the viral videos showing rough seas, and that travelers who would rather avoid the Drake Passage can fly to Antarctica, but those trips can be more expensive.

Andrew Mark Miller is a reporter at Fox News. Find him on Twitter @andymarkmiller and email tips to [email protected].

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How Many Cruise Ships Have Sunk?

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• Cruise ship sinkings are rare, with roughly 22 incidents in the last 100 years.
• Advanced safety features and improvements in technology have reduced the likelihood of sinking.
• Many sinkings occurred while ships were berthed or towed, not during active cruises.

Cruise ships are a popular vacation choice for millions worldwide, offering luxurious amenities, exciting activities, and the opportunity to visit multiple destinations in a single trip. However, the safety of these massive floating hotels occasionally comes into question, particularly when considering the possibility of sinking.

In the last century, only a few cruise ships have sunk. When a cruise ship does sink, most or all of the passengers and crew remain safe thanks to the cruise line industry’s safety protocols.

Table of Contents

Since 1912,  only 24 cruise ships have sunk , including ocean liners and river cruise ships. It’s essential to note that some cruise ship sinkings occurred while the vessel was berthed or towed.

We can attribute the rarity of cruise ship sinkings to modern safety features and the robust designs of these vessels.

Cruise ships today are built with a focus on safety, making them incredibly resilient to sinking. Even if an unfortunate incident occurs, modern cruise ships are equipped with numerous safety measures to save as many lives as possible.

As a result, the loss of life in such events is generally minimal.

Sadly, some of the earliest sinkings resulted in a large number of casualties.

On average, since 1912, a cruise ship sinks every four and a half years, emphasizing the infrequency of such occurrences. However, the frequency of cruise ship disasters is decreasing as technology and safety improve, and we continue to learn from past tragedies.

Despite the rare nature of cruise ships sinking, there have been a few notable instances, such as the Titanic and the Costa Concordia disaster. However, these high-profile events tend to overshadow the actual safety record of the cruise industry, which is, by and large, quite impressive.

How often do cruise ships sink?

It’s important to understand that cruise ship sinkings are incredibly rare occurrences. Over the past 100 years, only 22 cruise ships have sunk.

However, several sinkings occurred while ships were moored or being towed. Cruise ship sinkings are rare when you consider the number of cruise ships operating year-round .

Modern cruise ships are designed with numerous safety features that help to minimize the risk of sinking. Additionally, strict regulations and inspections help to maintain a high level of safety aboard these vessels. These efforts, along with advancements in technology, contribute to the infrequent nature of cruise ship sinkings.

However, cruise ships specifically have an even lower frequency of sinking compared to this overall number. While it is challenging to determine the precise number of cruise ship sinkings in the recent past, one can generally conclude that these events are rare and not a significant concern for travelers.

In summary, cruise ship sinking is infrequent, thanks to modern technology and strict safety regulations. Passengers can feel confident in the safety and stability of their cruise ship experiences.

How Often Do Cruise Ships Sink?

Cruise ships sinking is rare, thanks to modern safety features and strict regulations. Only 20 cruise ships have sunk in the past 100 years.

It is important to note that not all sinkings of these instances involved passengers onboard or resulted in significant casualties.

Cruise ship sinkings have become increasingly rare thanks to advancements in technology and navigation systems.

Can Cruise Ships Sink?

Yes, cruise ships can sink, but such instances are quite rare.

Modern cruise ships are equipped with advanced safety features that help minimize the risk of sinking. These features include advanced navigation systems, improved hull design, and watertight compartments preventing a ship from taking on too much water. In addition, cruise ship crews are trained in emergency procedures and undergo regular safety drills, ensuring they are prepared to respond to potential incidents.

Despite these safety measures, historical records show that 24 cruise ships and ocean liners have sunk since the RMS Titanic tragedy in 1912.

While the thought of a cruise ship sinking can be unsettling, it is essential to remember that safety remains a top priority for the cruise industry. Passengers can have peace of mind knowing they are on one of the safest modes of transportation available, with the frequency of sinking incidents being extremely low compared to other forms of travel.

When Was the Last Time a Cruise Ship Sank?

The last time a cruise ship sank with passengers on board was in 2012, when the Costa Concordia ran aground in Italy. The Italian cruise ship struck rocks and eventually capsized, resulting in the loss of 34 lives. The event was also notable for the charges brought against members of the ship’s crew, particularly Captain Francesco Schettino, who is serving a 16-year sentence for manslaughter.

In recent years, several safety measures and regulations have been implemented in the cruise industry to ensure maximum security for their passengers. These changes have significantly reduced the number of accidents and sinkings and contributed to the fact that we don’t often hear about such incidents.

What Keeps Ships Afloat?

Ships, especially cruise ships, can be incredibly massive structures, yet they are designed to float effortlessly on water. Cruise ships float thanks to the principle of buoyancy. Archimedes’ principle , the physical law of buoyancy, states that any object submerged in a fluid (like water) experiences an upward force equal to the weight of the fluid displaced by the object.

One crucial factor that contributes to a ship’s buoyancy is the shape of its hull. Ships have a broad, flat bottom, which allows them to displace a large volume of water. This displacement creates an upward force that counteracts the ship’s weight.

Cruise ships continue to float if the ship’s density is less than the water’s density.

Ships use strong, lightweight materials, such as steel and aluminum, which provide structural support while keeping the overall density low. Additionally, the hull is divided into watertight compartments, which prevents water from flooding the entire vessel in case of damage. This design helps maintain the ship’s buoyancy and prevents cruise ships from tipping over .

The stability of a ship is also essential in preventing it from capsizing. Ships are designed with a low center of gravity. The low center of gravity is achieved by placing heavy components, such as engines and fuel tanks, in the lower section of the ship. The design strategy ensures that the vessel remains upright and stable even in rough seas.

Historical Overview of Cruise Ship Sinkings

 rms titanic – 1912.

The RMS Titanic was a British passenger liner that sank in the North Atlantic Ocean on April 15, 1912. The vessel sank after colliding with an iceberg during her maiden voyage from Southampton, UK, to New York City. An estimated 1,517 of the estimated 2,224 passengers and crew died in the disaster.

At the time of her construction, the Titanic was the largest ship afloat and was considered an engineering marvel. She set sail with over 2,200 passengers and crew on board for her first transatlantic crossing. On April 14, the Titanic received several warnings of icebergs ahead but continued sailing at 22 knots.

Shortly before midnight, lookouts spotted an iceberg in the ship’s path. The Titanic could not turn fast enough and struck the iceberg on her starboard side, causing damage below the waterline.

As the ship took on water, it became clear she would sink. Due to a lack of lifeboats and cold water temperatures at the time of the Titanic’s disaster, there was a massive loss of life. The tragedy led to significant improvements in maritime safety regulations.

Empress of Ireland – 1914

The RMS Empress of Ireland was an ocean liner that sank in the St. Lawrence River in Canada after colliding with another ship in dense fog in the early morning of May 29, 1914.

The Empress was en route from Quebec City to Liverpool with 1,477 passengers and crew aboard. Upon colliding with the Norwegian collier Storstad, the Empress suffered severe damage and took on water rapidly. The ship sank in just 14 minutes despite quick efforts to evacuate passengers. Of those on board, 1,012 people perished in the disaster, making it the worst peacetime maritime disaster in Canadian history.

RMS Lusitania – 1915

The British ocean liner RMS Lusitania was sunk by a German U-boat torpedo on May 7, 1915, during World War I, killing 1,198 passengers and crew. The Cunard Line-owned Lusitania was sailing from New York to Liverpool on her 202 transatlantic crossing when the vessel was torpedoed off the coast of Ireland.

Moments after the torpedo strike, a second explosion erupted from the ship’s hull. The extensive damage and degree of listing meant that only six lifeboats could lower from the vessel’s starboard side.

Around 18 minutes after the torpedo strike, the ship sank. Of the 1,962 passengers and crew aboard the Lusitania, only 764 survived.

The German government claimed that RMS Lusitania carried 173 tons of munitions and ammunition. However, the British government denies that the ocean liner carried such war munitions aside from the small arms ammunition published on the vessel’s military cargo.

HMHS Britannic – 1916

HMHS Britannic was the third and largest vessel of the White Star Line’s Olympic-class ocean liners. The ship was built as a transatlantic passenger liner and launched just before the start of World War I.

After the outbreak of war, Britannic was requisitioned by the British Admiralty before she could enter passenger service and converted into a hospital ship renamed Britannic. In November 1916, while serving in the Aegean Sea, the Britannic struck a naval mine planted by a German U-boat.

The explosion caused significant damage and sank the ship in just 55 minutes. Despite the speed of the sinking, the quick evacuation saved 1,030 lives. Sadly, 30 people died during the sinking.

Principessa Mafalda – 1927

The SS Principessa Mafalda was an Italian transatlantic ocean liner that sank off the coast of Brazil in 1927. After a delay due to mechanical problems, the ship began on her 14-day sailing.

During the sailing, it became clear that the ship was in poor condition, as the vessel stopped several times in the ocean. On October 25, the starboard propeller shaft fractured, creating a series of gashes in the hull.

The vessel began to take on water, and issues with the watertight doors meant they could not be fully closed. The ship sank slowly, taking over four hours to submerge. But confusion, and 314 people lost their lives.

Georges Philippar – 1932

The Georges Philippar was a French passenger ship that caught fire and sank in the Gulf of Aden in 1932, resulting in 54 deaths. On May 16, while sailing on her maiden voyage off the coast of Italian Somaliland, a spark from a faulty light switch ignited wood paneling in a luxury cabin occupied by Mme Valentin.

There was a delay in reporting the fire, allowing it to spread rapidly. The situation deteriorated despite Captain Vicq’s efforts to fight the blaze and beach the ship.

With engine rooms evacuated, the Georges Philippar was left adrift. The captain ordered passengers and crew to abandon the ship and sent a distress call. Three nearby vessels came to the rescue – the Soviet tanker  Sovietskaïa Neft , the French ship  Andre Lebon , and two British cargo ships,  Mahsud  and  Contractor .

Rescuers saved 698 survivors. However, 54 people perished, some jumping overboard in desperation.

SS Morro Castle – 1934

The luxury ocean liner SS Morro Castle was sailing from Havana to New York City on September 7, 1934, when a fire broke out around 3:00 a.m. Fueled by high winds, the fire quickly spread out of control.

Despite efforts to fight the blaze and launch lifeboats, chaos ensued as panicked passengers faced the choice to remain on the burning ship or jump into the sea. After just 6 hours, the devastated Morro Castle ran aground near Asbury Park, New Jersey.

Of the 549 passengers and crew aboard, only 312 survived.

Later investigations found that a lack of training and fire safety preparedness contributed to the incredibly high casualty toll. The burnt wreck remained beached until dismantled in 1935, serving as a solemn reminder of the terror faced by those on board.

The tragic fire demonstrated the need to improve fireproofing, safety drills, and crew training on ocean liners.

Empress of Britain – 1940

The RMS Empress of Britain, an ocean liner owned by the Canadian Pacific Railway and operated by the Canadian Pacific Steamship Company, transported passengers and troops across the Atlantic during World War II.

In the early morning of October 26, 1940, while sailing about 450 miles west of Ireland, the Empress of Britain was struck by two torpedoes fired from the German submarine U-32. Despite efforts to prevent flooding, the damage was too extensive, severely causing the ship to list.

With the order to abandon ship, lifeboats were hurriedly lowered into the darkness, some capsizing in the chaos as flares lit up the sky. British naval ships rescued 1,259 survivors from the sinking liner, but 45 unfortunate souls were lost, either drowned or killed in the initial blasts.

By morning, the elegant Empress of Britain had slipped beneath the waves, demonstrating the vulnerability of civilian ships to Germany’s ruthless submarine warfare tactics.

Andrea Doria – 1956

The Italian ocean liner SS Andrea Doria was on a routine voyage from Italy to New York with over 1,700 passengers and crew in July 1956. On July 25, the Andrea Doria collided with the Swedish liner Stockholm in extremely foggy conditions off Nantucket, Massachusetts.

The Stockholm’s bow stabbed into Andrea Doria’s side, ripping open passenger cabins and causing catastrophic damage below the waterline. Despite efforts to control flooding, the mortally wounded Andrea Doria sank 10 hours later in over 200 feet of water.

Fortunately, 1,660 people survived in the lifeboats. However, the violent collision claimed 46 lives from impact injuries and drowning.

Bianca C – 1961

Bianca C is a unique ship because it actually sunk twice. The first sinking was in WWII when Germans sank the vessel operating as a passenger ferry.

The ship’s hull was raised and refitted into a cruise ship before it sank in 1961.

On September 22, 1961, the Italian cruise ship Bianca C departed Grenada on an overnight voyage to Italy with over 600 passengers and crew. Around midnight, an engine room explosion started a fire that quickly engulfed the ship.

As smoke-filled corridors, the captain ordered passengers and crew to evacuate the burning ship. Liferafts and lifeboats were lowered into the dark tropical waters as nearby ships rushed to assist. Most passengers managed to abandon the Bianca C safely; tragically, one crew member was killed during the explosion. But all other passengers and crew were evacuated safely.

Angelina Lauro – 1979

In March 1979, the aging Italian ocean liner Angelina Lauro was sold to Costa Lines. While chartering to the new cruise line, the vessel caught fire while berthed in Saint Thomas.

After several days of burning, the vessel was deemed a total loss. There were no casualties from the fire.

MS Mikhail Lermentov – 1986

On February 16, 1986, the Soviet cruise liner Mikhail Lermentov struck rocks and sank off New Zealand’s South Island, carrying over 1,000 passengers and crew. Though no passengers were lost, the chief electrical engineer tragically drowned during the chaotic evacuation.

Within hours, rescue ships and aircraft managed to evacuate everyone else safely from the stricken vessel before it slipped below the waves. An inquiry later blamed poor navigation for allowing the massive ship to stray dangerously close to the jagged reef in low visibility, tearing a massive gash in the hull and rapidly flooding the liner.

SS Admiral Nakhimov – 1986

SS Admiral Nakhimov has the most fascinating story on our list. The vessel has sunk a total of three times.

In WWII, the vessel operated as a hospital ship for Germany and was sunk during the war.

As part of reparations, the vessel was given to the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union attempted to recover the ship’s hull, but mines planted in the ship’s hull by the Germans exploded, causing the vessel to sink for a second time.

SS Admiral Nakhimov sank for the third and final time on August 31, 1986. The Soviet passenger liner collided with the bulk carrier Pyotr Vasev in the Black Sea near the Strait of Kerch. The collision tore a massive hole in Admiral Nakhimov’s hull, causing rapid flooding of the ship.

As the power failed, evacuation efforts turned chaotic, with insufficient lifeboats and poor leadership. Within 30 minutes, the Admiral Nakhimov had capsized and sank. Tragically, over 423 people lost their lives.

MV Jupiter – 1988

On June 21, 1975, the British roll-on/roll-off ferry MV Jupiter collided with the tanker Phoenix II midway through a crossing of the English Channel from Dover to Zeebrugge. The collision tore open MV Jupiter’s car deck, causing catastrophic flooding.

As the Jupiter dangerously listed, the crew sent distress calls and evacuated most of the 585 passengers and crew. Sadly, two crew members and two passengers (a teacher and a pupil) tragically lost their lives.

Achille Lauro – 1988

On November 30, 1994, a devastating engine room fire erupted on the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro as it sailed off Somalia, quickly raging out of control. During an urgent nighttime evacuation, two passengers tragically died.

Rescue ships and aircraft safely evacuated all other passengers and crew from the burning liner. After two days of intense fire, the vessel sank.

An investigation blamed an engine room explosion that disabled safety systems.

MTS Oceanos – 1991

On August 3, 1991, the Greek cruise ship Oceanos sank off South Africa after massive waves damaged caused a ventilation pipe to come loose. It’s believed that an insufficient repair left the pipe vulnerable to impacts.

The broken ventilation pipe caused excessive flooding. When the captain became aware that the ship was sinking, he and a handful of crew members abandoned the ship.

Remarkably, the entertainment staff took charge, helping passengers evacuate from the sinking liner. Nearby vessels rescued all 571 people over the next two days.

Sun Vista – 1999

On August 8, 1999, the Malaysian cruise ship Sun Vista sank in the Malacca Strait after an engine room fire knocked out power and caused severe listing. The well-trained crew immediately evacuated all passengers and crew into lifeboats and summoned help from nearby ships.

SeaBreeze – 2000

On December 17, 2000, the cruise ship Seabreeze I was sailing approximately 225 nautical miles off the coast of Virginia when it suffered a catastrophic mechanical failure and rapidly sank. Cruise Ventures III had just purchased the 21,000 GT, 9-deck passenger vessel and was transiting from Halifax to Charleston when disaster struck.

The boiler allegedly broke loose, severely damaging the vessel’s engine room and causing massive flooding. As the 40-year-old Seabreeze swiftly took on water, the captain called ‘abandon ship’ and requested immediate rescue for the 34 crew members aboard.

Suspicion swirled around the sinking, as some believed it was an intended sinking. The aged Seabreeze was likely only worth $5-6 million in scrap value yet carried a $20 million insurance policy.

The ship went down in international waters. As the vessel was a foreign-flagged ship under the Panama flag, the sinking in international waters put the investigation under Panamanian jurisdiction, much to the chagrin of maritime officials who doubted Panama’s diligence.

The captain’s wishes to abandon the vessel rather than salvage it also raised suspicion.

US Coast Guard rescuers believed it to be highly unlikely that the ship could sink so quickly. The Coast Guard was astonished that the captain demanded a complete evacuation rather than requesting salvage tugs.

Britanis – 2000

The Britanis was on her way to a scrapyard in India when the vessel developed a leak in the ship’s aft. The vessel’s owners decided repairing the leak was too costly and allowed the boat to sink.

No one was aboard the vessel as it was being towed by tug boats. And there were no casualties from the incident.

MS Sea Diamond – 2007

On April 5, 2007, the Greek cruise ship Sea Diamond sank near Santorini after straying off course and striking a reef, tearing open the hull. As the vessel lost power and listed, the crew hastily evacuated 1,195 passengers, rescuing nearly everyone.

Sadly, two passengers tragically died during the sinking. By afternoon, the crippled Sea Diamond had sunk in 500 feet of water.

An investigation initially blamed the captain for deviating dangerously close to shore—however, people later discovered that the sea charts for the area were inaccurate. The reef was marked on the map at 57 meters, while the vessel ran aground at 131 meters from shore.

MV Explorer – 2007

On November 23, 2007, the cruise ship MV Explorer sank off Antarctica after colliding with an iceberg in the early morning. The iceberg tore a hole in the ship’s hull, causing catastrophic flooding.

As the stricken ship lost power and listed dangerously near King George Island, the well-trained crew urgently evacuated all 154 passengers and crew into lifeboats. Thanks to an effective emergency response, not a single life was lost in the dramatic sinking in frigid Antarctic waters.

After five hours of drifting in the lift rafts, all 154 people were rescued by MS Nordnorge.

Costa Concordia – 2012

On January 13, 2012, the Costa Concordia cruise ship struck a reef and catastrophically capsized off the Italian island of Giglio, with over 4,252 passengers and crew aboard. The 951-foot cruise ship deviated off course, sailing dangerously close to shore.

The violent impact tore a 160-foot gash in the hull, causing severe listing and a partial sinking within hours.

While most people managed to evacuate via the ship’s lifeboats , helicopters, and ships, 34 people tragically perished in the chaotic aftermath.

Captain Francesco Schettino’s reckless course deviation was identified as the cause of the incident. He was subsequently found guilty of manslaughter and is currently serving a 16-year prison sentence.

Ocean Dream – 2016

The Ocean Dream was a cruise ship abandoned without crew or maintenance near Laem Chabang, Sri Racha, Thailand, in 2015 after the ship’s owner went bankrupt. The neglected ship capsized and sank in shallow water off the coast in February 2016.

Attempts were made to upright the sunken ship but failed. It was decided that the Ocean Dream would be dismantled and scrapped on-site rather than refloated. By the end of 2019, most of the remaining visible portions of the wreck had been dismantled and scrapped, leaving just the lower hull on the seafloor.

Orient Queen – 2020

The massive 2020 explosion that ripped through Beirut’s port inflicted tragic damage 1,000 feet away on the cruise ship Orient Queen. The powerful blast wave tore a massive hole in the Orient Queen’s hull, killing two crew members and injuring seven more as fires broke out.

Unable to be salvaged, the gutted cruise ship capsized over the next 48 hours where it was docked, ending its 40-year cruising career.

Marcello De Lio

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• Travel Guide

Antarctica's 10 Most Famous Shipwrecks

How many antarctica shipwrecks are there, the 10 most famous shipwrecks in antarctica, 1. the san telmo, 2. the halbrane, 3. the antarctic, 4. the fridtjof nansen, 5. the dundonald, 6. the endurance, 7. the governoren, 8. mv explorer, 9. my ady gill, 10. mar sem fim: the antarctica ghost ship, preservation of antarctic shipwrecks, the safety of modern antarctic travel.

From the notoriously tempestuous seas of the Drake Passage to the roving icebergs, shifting pack ice, stormy conditions, and sheer remoteness of the Southern Ocean, Antarctic waters have been a treacherous realm for mariners for centuries, wrecking ships since at least the 17th century, when wooden sailing vessels first began foraying into the Drake.

By the late 1700s and early 1800s, expanding maritime commerce and exploration, and the ever-questing voyages of sealers, meant more and more ships were foundering at the threshold of the Antarctic. Later in the 19th century, whalers began increasing their trade in the Southern Ocean, and thus whalecatchers and factory ships were added to the roster of storm-, ice-, and (amazingly) fire-wrecked vessels.

Since then, all sorts of vessels have been wrecked in one fashion or another in Antarctica over the years: from wooden clipper ships and fiberglass yachts, to trawlers and pontoons. Even a submarine has met its end in the region: the Argentine sub ARA Santa Fe , mortally damaged by a British helicopter near South Georgia in 1982 during the Falklands War and scuttled a few years later.

According to the Maritime Archaeology Sea Trust , better than 125 wrecks are documented in South Georgia, the South Sandwich Islands, and the Antarctic Peninsula, with the majority sealing and whaling vessels associated with operations in, and foundering near, South Georgia, the so-called “Southern Capital of Whaling”.

However it’s hard to say how many shipwrecks in total the broader Antarctic and Sub-Antarctic region harbors. More than 800 wrecks alone are thought to lie on the bottom of the Drake Passage, although it does have a longer and busier history of maritime traffic than most of the rest of the region.

Here we’ll spotlight a number of the most notable examples of ships to succumb to the Southern Ocean (in chronological order), including a couple associated with some of Antarctica’s most famous survival stories.

One of the better-known early Antarctic wrecks, the Spanish naval ship San Telmo set sail on an ill-fated voyage from Buenos Aires, Argentina, on July 9, 1819, bound for the Spanish colony of Montevideo, Uruguay. However, it never reached its destination, likely having been caught in a powerful cyclone in the Drake Passage.

She was last seen on September 2, 1819, near the easternmost point of the South Shetland Islands, off the coast of Antarctica, and thought to have sank soon after with all 644 crew members on board perishing in the frigid waters.

The fate of the San Telmo remained a mystery for many years, until 1960 when an Argentine expedition discovered the remains of a shipwreck on the coast of Livingston Island in the South Shetland Islands. While there is still debate among experts, many believe that these remains belong to the ill-fated San Telmo .

Ok, so this is a fictional Antarctic shipwreck but we thought we’d include it in our list given its renown! First published on 1 January 1897, Jules Verne’s science-fiction novel An Antarctic Mystery was an unofficial sequel to Edgar Allan Poe’s only novel, 1838’s “The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket”. The protagonist, Mr.Jeorling, believing that book to be factual, goes in search of the fictional Mr. Pym, as far as the sub-Antarctic Kerguelen Islands where he meets Captain Len Guy of the Halbrane whose brother has vanished in the vast southern seas.

Jeorling persuades him that his brother might still be alive and they embark upon a rescue mission aboard the Halbrane , sailing ever more southwards to the mysterious, frigid, and increasingly perilous Antarctic. Disaster strikes when the ship collides with an iceberg and is lost, but the crew survive…for now. We won’t spoil the rest of the book, but it’s well worth a read, providing a fascinating glimpse into the global excitement around polar exploration at the time—it could even be considered a precursor to the Heroic Age of exploration that followed.

The hard-working Antarctic was built in 1871 in Norway as a barque (it was later installed with a steam engine) and first came to the Southern Ocean as a whaling vessel. It then began a career as a wide-ranging expedition vessel. Its final voyage was as part of the 1901-1904 Swedish Antarctic Expedition led by Otto Nordenskjöld.

For this scientific expedition, the Antarctic was captained by C.A. Larsen, a Norwegian whaler who’d co-founded the Grytviken whaling station on South Georgia. As part of the expedition, Nordenskjöld and his party overwintered on Snow Hill Island along the Antarctic Peninsula, and in the austral summer of 1902-1903, the Antarctic headed for Snow Hill to pick them up. It became trapped by pack ice off the northeastern coast of the peninsula, then crushed and sunk: the first known example of a shipwreck resulting from ice entrapment and pulverization.

Remarkably, Larsen and the rest of the Antarctic crew all survived: They trekked over the ice to Paulet Island, where they spent a fierce winter sheltering in stone huts and living off seals and penguins. They were rescued in November 1903 by an Argentine ship, the Uruguay (which still exists as a museum ship anchored in Buenos Aires).

Built in 1885 in Newcastle-on-Tyne, England as the Garrick , a 2,563-ton cargo ship, she was sold in 1906 to the Sandefjord Hvalfangerselskab, converted to a floating factory ship and renamed Fridtjof Nansen , after the world renowned Arctic explorer who reached fame when his Fram expedition of 1893–1896 reached a record northern latitude of 86°14′.

The factory ship foundered off the Barff Peninsula on a voyage from Sandefjord to Jason Harbour, South Georgia on 10th November 1906 after hitting an uncharted reef. It sank within seven minutes, breaking into three. Nine of 58 crew sadly drowned, the remainder rescued by her accompanying whale catchers. The reef has been subsequently named “the Nansen banks” in her honor.

Among the early recorded Antarctic shipwrecks, the Dundonald was a four-masted sailing ship built in Belfast in 1891. In March of 1907, it foundered on the rocks of Disappointment Island in the Sub-Antarctic Auckland Islands during a storm. Only 17 of the 28 crew members escaped the barque alive to come ashore on the island, and two subsequently perished.

The survivors eked out an existence on barren Disappointment Island for months, eating the albatrosses known as mollymawks and eventually crafting makeshift boats to reach a supply depot on Auckland Island. Roughly seven months later, the castaways were rescued by the Hinemoa , which had come to Auckland Island’s Port Ross to re-up the depot and noticed the half-mast flag the shipwrecked men had lowered as a signal.

There’s no more famous Antarctic shipwreck than the Endurance , the barque that served Ernest Shackleton’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition launched in 1914. We’ve got a whole dedicated article to that saga , but here are the basic details on the vessel itself:

In early January of 1915, the Endurance became bogged down in Weddell Sea ice, and the crew abandoned ship—only to watch it, across months, become slowly, inexorably crushed. In November of that year, having drifted with the ice more than 550 miles, the squeezed and jolted ship finally went under. Its final resting place was only discovered, nearly 10,000 feet below the Weddell’s ice-choked surface, in 2022. Thanks to the particular conditions of the Antarctic Southern Ocean, the sunken vessel, so long sought-after, is well preserved to an almost unbelievable extent.

The discovery of the Endurance —achieved by underwater drones operated by the Endurance22 expedition—ranks among the greatest shipwreck finds ever, no question.

In one of those random twists of fate the universe seems to specialize in, the Norwegian ship Governoren ended up wrecked in the Antarctic within days of the better-known debacle that doomed Endurance amid the pack ice of the Weddell Sea. The Governoren was a factory ship: a “floating factory” for the whaling industry, specially designed to haul in and process huge whales on the water, without need of an onshore facility.

In January 1915, the Governoren crew was on board enjoying a party to celebrate the end of a successful whaling season. During the revelry, a lamp was knocked over and started a fire. We’re talking a factory ship loaded with gallon upon gallon of (flammable) whale oil. The captain and crew managed to ground the burning ship and escape, but needless to say the Governoren ’s whaling days were over.

You can still see the rusted, burned-out hulk of the Governoren in Foyn Harbor on Enterprise Island, which lies off the western coast of the Antarctic Peninsula and is commonly visited on cruises.

A lot of history went down with the ship (literally) on November 23, 2007, when the MV Explorer sank in the Bransfield Strait separating the South Shetlands and the Antarctic Peninsula. This was the first cruise ship to sink in the Antarctic, for one thing—though, and let’s get this out of the way first, all passengers and crew were rescued.

What’s more, this vessel that listed awhile, then submerged en route to a chilly undersea grave, also happened to be the first ever purpose-built for Antarctic sightseeing. The roughly 240-foot-long, ice-reinforced ship first launched in 1969 as the MV Lindblad , operated by Lindblad Travel, which had inaugurated modern Antarctic tourism only three years before. While it changed hands (and names) a number of times, the rechristened Lindblad was still going strong as an Antarctic tour vessel when it met its watery fate nearly 40 years later.

The sinking of the MV Explorer remains rather mystery-shrouded, given the improbability of such a ship, a Class 1A vessel designed to withstand reasonable contact with sea ice, going down in the 21st century. The cruise ship collided with something or other at about midnight local time, and then—as the crew sought to contain the problem—it drifted into a big iceberg and sustained further damage to the same, starboard side.

An investigation into the incident concluded that human error—namely, mistaking hard land ice for more yielding first-year ice—was likely to blame, though it also commended the Explorer ’s captain and crew for evacuating passengers.

Among the more unique vessels in the Southern Ocean’s Antarctic graveyard is the Ady Gill , which met its end in a high-seas skirmish. This sleek fiberglass trimaran, boasting a decidedly futuristic look, was built in 2005 as Earthrace to attempt a new world record for powered circumnavigation of the globe.

After achieving that feat in 2008, Earthrace was repainted Batman-esque black and joined the environmental organization Sea Shepherd’s Waltzing Matilda campaign against Japanese whaling operations in the Southern Ocean. The Southern Ocean is a designated whale sanctuary, but at the time (2009-2010), Japan made an annual harvest of minke whales there under the auspices of legal “scientific,” as opposed to commercial, whaling. (Japan phased out its Antarctic whaling completely in 2018. You can read up on the history of whaling in Antarctica here .)

At the start of 2010, the Ady Gill and other Sea Shepherd boats were squaring off against a Japanese whaling fleet in Antarctic waters. On January 6th, after its crew had been lobbing stinkbombs onto the whaling fleet’s mothership, the Ady Gill was rammed—Sea Shepherd said intentionally, the whalers claimed accidentally—by one of the fleet’s security vessels, the Shonan Maru 2 . A large chunk of the Ady Gill ’s bow broke off in the collision, and all crew members—one of whom sustained minor injuries—were rescued.

Two days later, as another Sea Shepherd vessel was towing the stricken trimaran toward the French Antarctic research base of Dumont d’Urville Station, the towrope snapped, and the Ady Gill sank under the Southern Ocean, some 180 miles north of Commonwealth Bay.

In April 2012, a yacht owned by Brazilian journalist João Lara Mesquita—the Mar Sem Fim , aka “Endless Sea”—was in the South Shetland Islands, its four-person crew engaged in filming a documentary about the Antarctic. Fierce winds—a defining feature of the Southern Ocean and much of the White Continent—began knocking the yacht about in Ardley Cove off King George Island and shoving it against ice. The crew issued a distress call, and the Chilean Navy ended up responding; the rescue effort was a bit harrowing, given the rough conditions, but all the crew were successfully evacuated.

The yacht was not so fortunate. Overwashed water ended up freezing and splitting its hull, and the Mar Sem Fim sank into the shallow bay, coming to rest about 30 feet or so below the surface. It remained there, a frozen yacht visible with ghostly clarity, for nearly a year before Mesquita managed to arrange a recovery effort. In early 2013, inflatable buoys were used to raise the “ghost yacht” to the surface for removal and salvage.

Somewhat ironically, the very sea conditions that brought the majority of these ships to their fateful end have helped preserve them in their new-found subaqueous home. The cold temperatures of the Southern Ocean, combined with the fact that the immensely powerful Antarctic Circumpolar Current appears to have prevented the infiltration of Antarctic waters by wood-eating shipworms, means many historic shipwrecks here at the bottom of the world have been kept in remarkably good condition. Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance , among history’s most famous shipwrecks, being Exhibit A.

Lest all this talk of ice-trapped and storm-pummeled ships give you the wrong idea, rest assured that modern-day travel to Antarctica is exceedingly safe, and tourists need not overly worry about rough seas, howling winds, and iceberg collisions.

Sightseeing season is well-timed for the balmiest conditions, cruise vessels are reinforced against ice and piloted by highly experienced, safety-conscious captains and crew, and today’s state-of-the-art navigational technology, safety regulations, and well-established tourist routes make for (relatively) smooth sailing.

Do shipwrecks still happen in Antarctica? Well, sure, as we’ve spotlighted in the latter examples above. But these days most moderns wrecks are fishing vessels which are more exposed to the worst of Southern Ocean seas and less specialized for withstanding icy waters.

That’s not to say you might not encounter an Antarctic shipwreck or two on your travels though—depending on your sightseeing route, you may well get to eyeball one of Antarctica’s historic wrecks!

You May Also Be Interested In

Scott’s, shackleton’s & mawson’s huts in antarctica & their amazing contents, top 9 historical places & monuments in antarctica to visit, little america in antarctica, admiral richard e. byrd & operation highjump, the antarctic snow cruiser & other lost antarctic vehicles, antarctica’s bay of whales & its place in history, shackleton endurance expedition & voyage of the james caird, amundsen & scott: the race to the south pole & its discovery, a history of fur & elephant seal hunting in antarctica, antarctica’s whaling history & abandoned whaling stations.

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Antarctica Cruises cannot and will not accept responsibility for any omissions or inaccuracies, or for any consequences arising therefrom, including any losses, injuries, or damages resulting from the display or use of this information.

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How Many Cruise Ships Have Sunk in the Past 100 Years?

Home » How Many Cruise Ships Have Sunk in the Past 100 Years?

Last updated on January 11th, 2024 at 10:24 am

Cruises are one of the safest options for vacations, but in the past 100 years there have been some incidents with cruise ships sinking . Here are some notable ones in the past 100 years.

Titanic (1912)  The most famous cruise ship sinking in history, the Titanic sank after colliding with an iceberg.

Empress of Ireland (1914) This large passenger liner sank after colliding with a Norwegian cargo ship, the Storstad, during foggy weather. 

Lusitania (1915)   For a few months before her sinking, the Lusitania was the largest passenger ship in the world. A casualty of WWI, she was hit by a torpedo from a German U-boat off the south coast of Ireland. 

Britannic (1916) Sister ship of the Titanic, during WWI she struck a German naval mine off the coast of a Greek island and sank in less than an hour.  

Princess Mafalda (1927) When a propeller shaft broke and damaged the hull of the ship, the Princess Mafalda sank off the coast of Brazil. 

Saint Philibert (1931) A smaller cruise ship, the Saint Philibert sailed mainly in the Loire River and the French coastline. She sank in bad weather, but was also overloaded with twice her capacity on board. 

Georges Philippar (1932) Unfortuanlety, this ocean liner sank on her maiden voyage. There was an electrical fault that sparked and set wood paneling on fire causing her to sink near Italian Somaliland. 

SS Morro Castle (1934) A fire on board would disable the ship as it burned through the electrical cables and hydraulic lines that steered the ship. Her captain had died the evening before of an apparent heart attack. The burning ship drifted ashore in the shallow waters off Asbury Park in New Jersy, USA. 

Empress of Britian (1940)  Another victim of war, The ship was bombed from above in WWII when she was off the coast of Ireland. She was hit by two 550lb bombs.

Andrea Doria (1956) Struck by another ship, the Stockholm, the Andrea Doria began to list at once. This made most of the lifeboats inaccessible. However, because the ship sank slowly there were fourty six people killed, but 1660 passengers and crew were saved by rescue ships. 

Bianca C (1961) The Bianca has the dubious distinction of being sunk twice. As a passenger ferry, it was scuttled by the Germans in WWII. When she was sold to Costa Lines and refitted as a cruise ship, she sank for the second time when there was an explosion in the engine room. 

Angelina Lauro (1979) This ship caught fire in port at Saint Thomas. The ship burned for several days and was a total loss. While being towed to a scrapyard later that year, the Angelina Lauro sank.

MS Mikhail Lermentov (1986)  On a cruise from Sydney that was on a two-week itinerary to New Zealand, the ship hit some rocks while sailing past Cape Jackson.

SS Admiral Nakhimov (1986) While operating cruises in the Black Sea, this ship collided with a freighter. They had communicated with the freighter’s captain who had assured the SS Nakhimov that they would be able to avoid a collision.

MV Jupiter  (1988)  This Greek-registered ship conducted cruises around the Mediterranean. She sank just 40 minutes after leaving Piraeus with a study cruise. There were 391 British schoolchildren and 84 adults on the ship, along with 110 crew. One child, one teacher and two crew died.

Achille Lauro  (1988)  The Achille Lauro had several unfortunate events including a hijacking, two collisions with other ships and four onboard fires. The last fire sank the ship off the coast of Somalia.

MTS Oceanos  (1991)  This ship, sailing from Greece, sank from excessive flooding that was caused by freak waves. It is believed that the waves broke a ventilation pipe that had not been correctly repaired and caused the flooding to be severe. To their shame, the captain and some crew abandoned the ship. It was the entertainers on the ship who gave alarm and guided passengers to safety. The captain and crew members were later convicted.

Sun Vista  (1999) The sun set on this ship due to an engine room fire. The fire cut all power to the ship’s operating mechanisms and she sank in the Strait of Malacca.

SeaBreeze  (2000)  The boiler in the ship broke off and damaged the ship. This happened in 30-foot seas, which caused the ship to take on water and capsize. The ship had no passengers on board as she was headed into port for engine repairs.

Britanis  (2000)  While being towards a scrapyard in India, this ship began to take on water and list. As there was no one on board, the list was not corrected. The tugboat towing Britianis cut the ship free and it capzied and sank off the coast of Cape Town.

MV Explorer  (2007)  A small cruise ship, the MV Explorer was the first cruise ship that was specifically used for cruises to the Antarctic Ocean. She struck an iceberg and sank. Her passengers and crew made it to the lifeboats and were rescued after drifting for five hours.

MS Sea Diamond  (2007)  Striking a reef 430 feet from shore, the Captain was blamed and jailed for this sinking. The sea charts he was using were incorrect, and had stated that the reefs were 187 feet from shore off the island of Santorini in the Aegean Sea. 

Costa Concordia  (2012)  In modern history, the Costa Concordia is the most famous cruise ship that has sunk. It struck an underwater rock off the coast of Tuscany. The Captain was also blamed for taking the ship off course and too close to the shore line. He was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to 16 years in prison.

Eastern Star  (2015)  This Chinese river cruise ship was caught in a storm as she was sailing to Chongqing. The ship sank in just 50 feet of water, but only 12 people of the 456 onboard survived.

Ocean Dream  (2016)  This ship has many owners and about half a dozen names. After having been abandoned in Thailand for over a year, she sank when she capsized. 

Orient Queen  (2020)  The Orient Queen would sail from Beirut to the eastern Mediterranean. While in port, with no passengers on board, the ship sank after there was a huge ammonium nitrate explosion at the port. Other ships also in port were damaged, but the Orient Queen was the only one to sink. 

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Tragic List: Discover How Many Cruise Ships Have Sunk Throughout History

How Many Cruise Ships Have Sunk: Millions of people choose cruise ships for their vacations every year because they provide opulent amenities, thrilling activities, and the chance to see several places in one journey. But sometimes people doubt these enormous floating hotels’ safety, especially when you consider that they might sink.

There have been very few cruise ships that have sunk in the past century. Because of the safety procedures followed by the cruise liner industry, most or all of the passengers and crew survive when a cruise ship sinks.

How Many Cruise Ships Have Sunk

Only twenty-four cruise ships—both river and ocean liners—have sunk since 1912. It’s important to remember that some cruise ship capsizings happen while the ship was being towed or berthed.

Because cruise ships are built sturdy and have current safety mechanisms, we can explain why there aren’t many cruise ship sinkings.

Today’s cruise ships are extremely resistant to sinking because of their emphasis on safety throughout construction. Modern cruise ships are outfitted with a plethora of safety precautions to preserve as many lives as possible in the event of an unfortunate disaster.

Consequently, the death toll from these kinds of incidents is usually rather low.

Sadly, several people lost their lives in some of the first sinkings.

Since 1912, a cruise ship has sunk an average of once every 4.5 years, underscoring how uncommon these incidents are. However, as safety and technology advance and we continue to learn from past tragedies, the number of cruise ship disasters is declining.

While cruise ship sinkings are uncommon, there have been a few famous cases, like the Titanic and the Costa Concordia catastrophe. However, despite these high-profile incidents, the cruise industry does have a remarkable overall safety record.

What percentage of cruise ships sink?

It’s critical to realize that cruise ship sinkings are quite uncommon. There have only been 22 cruise ship sinkings in the last 100 years.

Still, a number of shipwrecks happened while docked or being towed. Given the quantity of cruise ships that are in operation all year round, cruise ship sinkings are quite unusual.

Many safety precautions included into contemporary cruise ships reduce the possibility of a sinking. Strict rules and inspections also contribute to the high standard of safety that is maintained on these boats. Cruise ship sinkings are uncommon, which is partly due to these efforts and technological developments.

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In contrast to this total, cruise ships in particular have an even lower frequency of sinking. Although it is difficult to pinpoint the exact number of cruise ship sinkings in the recent past, it is widely accepted that these incidents are uncommon and do not pose a serious threat to passengers.

In conclusion, the rarity of cruise ship sinkings can be attributed to stringent safety rules and contemporary technology. Travelers may relax knowing that their cruise ship experiences will be stable and safe.

Do Cruise Ships Sink Frequently?

Because of stringent restrictions and advanced safety systems, cruise ships seldom sink. In the last century, there have only been 20 cruise ship sinkings.

It is noteworthy that not all of these sinkings contained passengers or caused a sizable number of casualties.

The frequency of cruise ship sinkings has decreased due to advances in navigation technology.

Are Cruise Ships Capable of Sinking?

Cruise ships do occasionally sink, but this is extremely uncommon.

Contemporary cruise ships come with cutting-edge safety technologies that reduce the chance of capsizing. In addition, watertight compartments and improved hull construction keep a ship from absorbing too much water. Cruise ship crew members are also regularly trained in safety exercises and emergency procedures.

Despite these safety precautions, 24 cruise ships and ocean liners have sunk since the RMS Titanic disaster in 1912.

In spite of the disconcerting prospect of a cruise ship sinking, safety remains the cruise industry’s top priority. Compared to other means of transportation, passengers may travel with peace of mind on one of the safest modes.

When Did a Cruise Ship Most Recently Sink?

The last time a cruise ship capsized while carrying people on board was the Costa Concordia, which grounded in Italy in 2012. Thirty-four people perished when the Italian cruise liner struck rocks and subsequently capsized. The accusations made against the ship’s crew, especially Captain Francesco Schettino, who is currently serving a 16-year manslaughter term, made the incident noteworthy as well.

To provide the highest level of security for its patrons, the cruise industry has enacted a number of safety rules and procedures in recent years. These modifications have greatly decreased the quantity of mishaps and sinkings, which has helped to explain why we don’t hear about them as frequently.

Why Do Ships Stay Afloat?

Even while cruise ships, in particular, might be extraordinarily large buildings, their purpose is to float on water with ease. It is because of the buoyancy principle that cruise ships may float. Any object submerged in a fluid (such as water) experiences an upward force equal to the weight of the fluid the object has displaced. This is known as Archimedes’ principle, or the physical law of buoyancy.

The hull form of a ship is a major component that affects its buoyancy. Because of their wide, flat bottoms, ships are able to move a lot of water. This displacement produces an upward force that balances the ship’s weight.

If the density of the cruise ship is lower than that of the water, it will still float.

Steel and aluminum are two examples of strong, lightweight materials used in ships that offer structural support while maintaining a low overall density. In addition, the hull is separated into waterproof sections so that, in the event of damage, water does not flood the entire ship. This design keeps cruise ships from toppling over and aids in maintaining the ship’s buoyancy.

Preventing a ship from capsizing also depends on its stability. A low center of gravity is a feature of ship design. Heavy parts of the ship, including engines and fuel tanks, are located in the lowermost part of the structure to provide a low center of gravity. Even in choppy waters, the ship will stay upright and steady thanks to the design philosophy.

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Overview of How Many Cruise Ships Have Sunk Throughout History

1912’s rms titanic.

On April 15, 1912, the British passenger ship RMS Titanic sank in the North Atlantic Ocean. When the ship struck an iceberg on its first trip from Southampton, UK, to New York City, it sank. Out of the estimated 2,224 passengers and crew, 1,517 are thought to have perished in the accident.

The Titanic was regarded as an engineering wonder when it was built and was the largest ship ever to sail. With more than 2,200 passengers and crew members on board, she sailed for her maiden transatlantic voyage. Despite multiple alerts of icebergs up ahead on April 14, the Titanic proceeded to travel at a speed of 22 knots.

Lookouts noticed an iceberg on the ship’s course just before midnight. The Titanic suffered damage below the waterline when she met the iceberg on her starboard side due to her inability to turn quickly enough.

It was obvious the ship would sink when water began to fill it. There was a significant death toll from the Titanic accident because there were not enough lifeboats and the water was quite cold. Laws about maritime safety have significantly improved as a result of the disaster.

Empress of Ireland in 1914

Early on May 29, 1914, in the thick fog, the ocean liner RMS Empress of Ireland collided with another ship and sank in Canada’s St. Lawrence River.

There were 1,477 passengers and staff members on board the Empress as it traveled from Quebec City to Liverpool. The Norwegian collier Storstad struck the Empress, causing significant damage and rapid submersion. Despite hasty attempts to evacuate passengers, the ship sank in about fourteen minutes. The accident claimed 1,012 lives from those on board, making it the deadliest marine accident to occur in Canadian history during a peacetime.

1915’s RMS Lusitania

On May 7, 1915, during World War I, a German U-boat torpedo sank the British ocean liner RMS Lusitania, killing 1,198 people—passengers and crew. The Cunard Line-owned Lusitania was torpedoed off the coast of Ireland when it was making her 202 transatlantic voyage from New York to Liverpool.

A second explosion burst from the ship’s hull shortly after the torpedo hit. Due to the significant damage and degree of listing, only six lifeboats were able to descend from the starboard side of the ship.

The ship sank around eighteen minutes after the torpedo hit. Seventy-six out of the 1,962 passengers and crew on board the Lusitania made it out alive.

The RMS Lusitania was allegedly carrying 173 tons of weapons and ammunition, according to the German authorities. Apart from the small arms ammunition listed on the ship’s military cargo, the British government disputes that the ocean liner carried any war weaponry.

1916’s HMHS Britannic

HMHS Britannic was the third and largest Olympic-class ocean liner that White Star Line operated. Constructed as a transatlantic passenger liner, the ship was launched shortly before the outbreak of World War I.

Before Britannic could be used for passenger travel following the start of the war, the British Admiralty seized her and renamed her Britannic as a hospital ship. The Britannic ran into a naval mine that a German U-boat had planted while it was in the Aegean Sea in November 1916.

In approximately 55 minutes, the explosion destroyed much of the ship and caused serious damage. Despite the sinking’s rapid pace, the prompt evacuation saved 1,030 lives. 30 persons sadly lost their lives in the sinking.

1927’s Principessa Mafalda

Off the coast of Brazil in 1927, the Italian transatlantic liner SS Principessa Mafalda sank. The ship departed on her 14-day voyage after a technical delay.

The ship made multiple stops in the ocean during the voyage, indicating that it was not in good shape. The breakage of the starboard propeller shaft on October 25 resulted in numerous hull gashes.

The ship started to absorb water, and the watertight doors could not be closed all the way. It took the ship more than four hours to sink completely. However, miscommunication resulted in 314 fatalities.

1932-Georges Philippar

In 1932, the French passenger liner Georges Philippar caught fire and sank in the Gulf of Aden, killing fifty-four people. On May 16, during her inaugural journey off the coast of Italian Somaliland, Mme Valentin’s opulent cabin’s wood paneling caught fire due to a malfunctioning light switch.

The fire was allowed to spread quickly since there was a delay in reporting it. Captain Vicq tried to put out the fire and beach the ship, but things worsened.

The engine rooms were evacuated, leaving the Georges Philippar adrift. The captain issued a distress call and told the crew and passengers to get off the ship. The French ship Andre Lebon, the two British cargo ships Mahsud and Contractor, and the Soviet tanker Sovietskaïa Neft were the three neighboring vessels that came to the rescue.

Rescuers were able to save 698 people. 54 people died, nevertheless, some of them from desperate jumps overboard.

1934’s SS Morro Castle

On September 7, 1934, at around three in the morning, a fire broke out on board the opulent ocean liner SS Morro Castle, which was traveling from Havana to New York City. Strong winds contributed to the fire’s rapid out-of-control spread.

Chaos broke out as terrified passengers had to decide whether to leap into the sea or stay on the blazing ship, even as efforts were made to put out the fire and launch lifeboats. The ruined Morro Castle ran aground close to Asbury Park, New Jersey, after only six hours.

Only 312 of the 549 occupants, including the crew, made it out alive.

Following investigations, it became clear that a lack of training and preparation for fire safety contributed to the shockingly high death toll. The burned-out wreck, which served as a somber reminder of the horror everyone on board had to endure, remained on the beach until 1935.

The fatal incident made it clear that ocean liners need to strengthen their fireproofing, safety exercises, and crew training.

Empress of Britain – 1940

The Canadian Pacific Steamship Company, which the Canadian Pacific Railway and the RMS Empress of Britain owned, transported people and soldiers across the Atlantic during World War II.

The German submarine U-32 fired two torpedoes at the Empress of Britain early on October 26, 1940, as it was cruising roughly 450 miles west of Ireland. The damage was too great, leading the ship to list badly in spite of efforts to prevent flooding.

Lifeboats were hastily lowered into the darkness after the order to evacuate the ship, with some capsizing in the confusion as flares lit up the sky. British navy ships saved 1,259 people from the sinking liner, but 45 unfortunate people perished in the early explosions or drowned.

The graceful British Empress had disappeared under the seas by sunrise, exposing civilian ships to Germany’s merciless submarine warfare techniques.

Andrea Doria – 1956

In July 1956, the Italian ocean liner SS Andrea Doria carried more than 1,700 passengers and crew members on a normal trip from Italy to New York. In extremely foggy conditions, the Andrea Doria and the Swedish ship Stockholm collided on July 25, off the coast of Nantucket, Massachusetts.

Below the waterline, the Stockholm’s bow caused catastrophic damage by severing passenger compartments and stabbing into Andrea Doria’s side. Ten hours later, in excess of 200 feet of water, the mortally damaged Andrea Doria sank in spite of attempts to contain flooding.

Thankfully, 1,660 individuals made it out of the lifeboats. Nevertheless, 46 people died as a result of impact injuries and drowned during the intense crash.

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1961’s Bianca C

The ship Bianca C is special since it sank twice. The first sinking occurred during World War II when a German-operated passenger ferry was sunk.

Before it sank in 1961, the ship’s hull was lifted and converted into a cruise liner.

With more than 600 passengers and crew, the Italian cruise liner Bianca C sailed from Grenada to Italy overnight on September 22, 1961. An explosion in the engine room at midnight caused a fire that swiftly spread throughout the ship.

The captain gave the order for the staff and passengers to leave the burning ship as smoke filled the halls. As other ships raced to help, liferafts and lifeboats were lowered into the murky tropical waters. While the majority of passengers safely evacuated the Bianca C, one staff member unfortunately perished in the explosion. However, the crew and all other passengers made it out safely.

1979 Angelina Lauro

In March 1979, Costa Lines acquired the aging Italian ocean liner Angelina Lauro. When the new cruise line was chartering the ship, it caught fire while berthed in Saint Thomas.

After burning for a few days, the ship was declared completely destroyed. The fire did not claim any lives.

1986’s MS Mikhail Lermentov

Around 1,000 guests and crew perished when the Soviet cruise ship Mikhail Lermentov struck rocks and sank off the coast of New Zealand on February 16, 1986. During the frantic evacuation, the chief electrical engineer sadly drowned, although no passengers were lost.

In a matter of hours, rescue ships and aircraft safely evacuated everyone else on board the sinking ship before it submerged beneath the water. A subsequent investigation found that inadequate navigation had caused the enormous ship to veer dangerously near the rocky reef in low light, rupturing a huge hole in the hull and quickly flooding the liner.

1986’s SS Admiral Nakhimov

On our list, SS Admiral Nakhimov has the most intriguing tale. The ship has sunk three times in total.

It served as a hospital ship for Germany during World War II before being lost.

The ship was turned up to the Soviet Union as payment for reparations. The Germans had hidden mines in the ship’s hull, which detonated and caused the ship to sink a second time, despite Soviet attempts to retrieve its hull.

On August 31, 1986, the SS Admiral Nakhimov sank for the third and last time. In the Black Sea, close to the Strait of Kerch, the Soviet passenger liner and the bulk freighter Pyotr Vasev collided. Admiral Nakhimov’s hull sustained a huge hole from the accident, which quickly caused the ship to flood.

When the electricity went out, the evacuation process became disorganized due to a lack of lifeboats and inadequate leadership. The Admiral Nakhimov sank after capizing in thirty minutes. Sadly, more than 423 people perished.

1988’s MV Jupiter

The British roll-on/roll-off ferry MV Jupiter and the tanker Phoenix II collided on June 21, 1975, as the two were traveling from Dover to Zeebrugge across the English Channel. The accident caused catastrophic flooding by rupturing open the car deck of the MV Jupiter.

The majority of the 585 passengers and crew were evacuated as the Jupiter began to list alarmingly. Tragically, two passengers—a teacher and a student—as well as two crew members perished.

1988 Achille Lauro

As the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro sailed off Somalia on November 30, 1994, a destructive engine room fire broke out and swiftly got out of control. Tragically, during a nocturnal emergency evacuation, two passengers perished.

Rescue ships and aircraft were able to successfully evacuate all remaining passengers and crew from the burning liner. The ship sank following two days of fierce firefighting.

An engine room explosion was found to be the cause of the safety systems’ deactivation.

MTS Oceanos – 1991

The Greek cruise liner Oceanos sank off the coast of South Africa on August 3, 1991, as a result of severe waves that broke a ventilation pipe. It’s thought that a poor repair made the pipe susceptible to impacts.

A broken ventilation pipe was to blame for the severe flooding. The captain and a few other crew members left the ship as soon as they realized it was sinking.

Amazingly, the entertainment crew stepped up and assisted guests in getting off the sinking ship. Over the following two days, nearby vessels saved all 571 people.

Sun Vista (1999)

The Sun Vista, a cruise liner from Malaysia, capsized in the Malacca Strait on August 8, 1999, due to extreme listing caused by an engine room fire that took off power. The well-trained crew quickly boarded lifeboats with all of the passengers and crew after making a call for assistance from nearby ships.

SeaBreeze (2000)

A catastrophic mechanical failure caused the cruise ship Seabreeze I to swiftly sink on December 17, 2000, when it was sailing about 225 nautical miles off the coast of Virginia. The 21,000 GT, 9-deck passenger ship had just been purchased by Cruise Ventures III, who was traveling from Halifax to Charleston when the catastrophe occurred.

According to reports, the boiler broke away, seriously injuring the engine room of the ship and resulting in significant flooding. The captain yelled “abandon ship” as the 40-year-old Seabreeze quickly began to take on water, requesting that the 34 crew members be rescued right away.

There was a lot of suspicion surrounding the sinking since some people thought it was intentional. The old Seabreeze had a $20 million insurance policy even though its scrap value was probably about $5–6 million.

The vessel capsized in international seas. Maritime authorities questioned Panama’s thoroughness and were dismayed when the ship, which was flying the flag of another country, sank in international waters. This placed Panamanian jurisdiction over the probe.

The captain’s decision to abandon the ship rather than try to salvage it also raised suspicion.

Rescuers from the US Coast Guard thought it was extremely unusual that the ship could sink that quickly. The captain insisted on a full evacuation instead of asking for salvage tugs, which shocked the Coast Guard.

Britannis (2000)

The Britanis experienced a leak in the ship’s rear while en route to an Indian scrapyard. The boat’s owners let it sink after determining that fixing the leak would be too expensive.

The boat was being pulled by tug boats with no one on board. Additionally, no one was hurt in the incident.

2007’s MS Sea Diamond

Sea Diamond sank on April 5, 2007, after going off course and hitting coral near Santorini. When the ship lost power and listed, the crew quickly rescued nearly all 1,195 passengers.

Tragically, two passengers perished in the sinking. The damaged Sea Diamond had submerged in 500 feet of water by the afternoon.

The captain was first accused of veering dangerously near to shore during the investigation; however, it was later found that the area’s maritime charts were erroneous. The boat came aground 131 meters from shore, while the reef was shown on the map as 57 meters.

2007’s MV Explorer

The cruise ship MV Explorer struck an iceberg early on November 23, 2007, causing it to sink off the coast of Antarctica. The iceberg tore open the ship’s hull, resulting in catastrophic flooding.

The well-trained crew quickly evacuated all 154 passengers and crew members onto lifeboats as the crippled ship lost power and leaned precariously close to King George Island. A great emergency reaction saved every life in the dramatic sinking in icy Antarctic waters.

After a five-hour drift on the lift rafts, MS Nordnorge recovered all 154 survivors.

2012’s Costa Concordia

On January 13, 2012, the Costa Concordia cruise ship was wrecked off Giglio Island, Italy. Leaving Civitavecchia in Lazio, the ship, carrying 4,252 people from all over the world, struck a reef during an unofficial salute to local islanders. The Costa Concordia crashed off the Italian island of Giglio on January 13, 2012, killing around 4,252 passengers and crew. A 951-foot cruise liner veered off course and approached too closely.

The impact that ripped a 160-foot gash in the hull led to significant listing and partial sinking.

Despite the ship’s lifeboats, helicopters, and ships, 34 people died in the chaotic aftermath.

Captain Francesco Schettino caused the incident by carelessly deviating from the course. Authorities convicted him of manslaughter and he is currently serving a 16-year prison sentence.

2016’s Ocean Dream

After the owner of the cruise ship went bankrupt in 2015, the Ocean Dream was abandoned without a crew or maintenance personnel at Laem Chabang, Sri Racha, Thailand. In February 2016, the abandoned ship overturned and sank in shallow waters off the coast.

There were unsuccessful attempts to raise the sunken ship. The authorities decided to disassemble and demolish the Ocean Dream on location instead of refloating it. By the end of 2019, the disaster’s visible remnants had been disassembled and salvaged, leaving only the bottom hull of the wreck on the seafloor.

2020’s Orient Queen

The cruise ship Orient Queen suffered terrible damage 1,000 feet away from the big 2020 explosion that tore through Beirut’s dock. The strong blast wave severely damaged the Orient Queen’s hull, which also caused fires to spread, killing two crew members and injuring seven others.

The abandoned cruise ship capsized where it was parked, terminating its 40-year cruise career over the following 48 hours. It was not possible to salvage it.

Related Posts

Royal Caribbean Cruises, History, Destinations and Itineraries

Ambassador Cruise Line: Ownership and History

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Survivors of Antarctica shipwreck heading home

The last group of survivors from the Antarctic cruise ship that struck an iceberg and sunk into the icy sea have been flown back to the...

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PUNTA ARENAS, Chile — The last group of survivors from the Antarctic cruise ship that struck an iceberg and sunk into the icy sea have been flown back to the South American mainland Sunday.

A Chilean military transport plane ferried the final 77 of the 154 passengers and crew to Punta Arenas, Chile’s southernmost city and a jumping-off point for Antarctica travel on Sunday. All had been rescued from the sinking MS Explorer on Friday.

“Everything is fine, very fine,” said Argentine crew member Andrea Salas as she climbed from the plane. Sunday’s airlift was composed of 11 passengers and 65 crew members, most of whom declined to comment on advice from lawyers.

A Chilean air force plane flew the ship’s first 77 survivors back from the King George Island air base, 660 miles south of this remote tip of South America, on Saturday.

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The MS Explorer, operated by the Canadian tour company G.A.P. Adventures, smashed into submerged sea ice in Antarctic waters before dawn on Friday. The ship took on water and sank about 15 hours later.

All on board made it into lifeboats and were rescued by a passing Norwegian cruise ship.

On Sunday, many still toted the life vests they wore while shivering for hours in the bobbing rafts while awaiting rescue. Some carried plastic bags with a few belongings, heading for medical checkups and visits with consular officials from a host of countries on hand to help them get home.

The Explorer’s captain, Bengt Wiman, walked past shouting journalists and gave a thumbs-up sign to crowds who welcomed the plane.

The ship’s 91 passengers came from more than a dozen nations, including 24 Britons, 17 Dutch, 14 Americans, 12 Canadians and 10 Australians. Nine expedition staff members and a crew of 54 were also aboard the ship, operators said.

The Explorer had been on a 19-day tour of Antarctica and the Falkland Islands, bringing passengers to observe penguins, whales and other wildlife.

Survivors on Saturday told reporters they were overjoyed to have been swiftly rescued.

While bobbing in a life raft on the frigid sea, Danish citizen, Jan Heikel, 42, and his girlfriend Mette Larsen, 29, said they decided to speed up wedding plans.

“There were some very frightening moments but the crew was very professional and the captain very good and had everything under control,” Heikel said.

The Explorer sank in 3,300 feet of water in an area about 40 nautical miles from Chile’s Presidente Eduardo Frei air force base.

My Family Saw the A23a Iceberg While Cruising in Antarctica & it Was EPIC!

We witnessed the A23a Iceberg in Antarctica: the largest iceberg on Earth. The first tourists ever to do so. And it was breathtaking !

Over Christmas 2023 my family and I took the adventure of a lifetime – a mindblowing cruise to Antarctica aboard the Sapphire Princess.

We saw majestic landscapes, penguins, seals, whales, and glaciers during our 12-day voyage. But the absolute highlight was seeing the largest iceberg in the world, known as the A23a Iceberg.

An Epic Itinerary Change

Due to the world’s biggest iceberg’s proximity to Elephant Island on December 26th, the captain announced that we were cutting short our visit there to detour to see the A23a Iceberg. It was so exciting!

That evening, we were enjoying dinner when an urgent announcement came over the loudspeakers. The ship was approaching the infamous iceberg and all passengers needed to hurry to the outer decks immediately.

We abandoned our half-eaten meal and raced outside into the freezing winds. Far in the distance, an ominous shape emerged from the gloomy mist.

Far in the distance, a massive white shape materialized out of the gloom. As we drew nearer, the true enormous A23a Iceberg size became apparent. This towering tabular iceberg was a floating island, with cliffs higher than skyscrapers.

A23a Iceberg Statistics

As we sailed nearer, its staggering size became clear. The A23a Iceberg is colossal, dwarfing our cruise ship. At 3,900 square kilometers (over twice the size of London!), it’s the largest iceberg in the world.

Taller than the Empire State Building and weighing over 3 trillion tons, this icy behemoth had broken off from Antarctica’s Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf back in 1986.

The ice shelf is where Russia had its old research station, and one of the Antarctica experts aboard told us they had to move it when they realized that the A23a Iceberg was going to calve off from Antarctica!

After being stuck in place for years, it suddenly began drifting through the Southern Ocean in 2020. Now it’s heading toward the South Georgia Islands.

Experiencing the World’s Largest Iceberg

We were all awestruck as we passed seemingly dangerously close to this floating island of ice.

Jagged cliffs lined its edges, some over 100 feet high, formed from centuries of accumulation. Violent waves crashed against them, sending spray high into the air.

Our large ship pitched and rolled in the swelling sea, despite the seasoned skill of the captain and crew.

The immense scale was hard to comprehend, even seeing it with my own eyes. Our vessel looked puny and insignificant next to the vast expanse of the iceberg.

I alternated between snapping photos furiously with trembling hands and simply staring in wonder. Of course, we captured as many photos and selfies as possible with this once-in-a-lifetime backdrop.

But I’ll never forget standing on the deck in person, bundled in my warmest gear, watching house-sized chunks of ice calve off into the sea with a crash.

Making History

Adding an extra layer of drama was the knowledge that we were making history. We were aboard the first civilian ship to ever reach the A23a Iceberg. Only a single research vessel had managed to visit it previously. We felt amazed!

My son was one of just a large handful of children to EVER see the biggest iceberg on Earth! We were all humbled to witness this remote place so few have seen.

Originally, we were going to take a pass of the A23a Iceberg from both the port and starboard side. However, the largest iceberg in the world was churning up a pretty decent snowstorm, so we had to settle for a single pass by.

It Ended Too Quickly

As quickly as it materialized, the epic iceberg was lost again to the mist. I’m incredibly grateful we detoured our Antarctic cruise to behold such a monumental sight.

I can now officially say I’ve glimpsed one of the modern wonders of the natural world! This unplanned excursion easily became the highlight of our entire two-week odyssey to the White Continent.

Seeing the largest iceberg on Earth with my family is a travel memory I’ll forever cherish.

When you’re traveling abroad, always be sure to buy travel insurance! We love Safety Wing because we think it has reasonable rates for all ages.

The post My Family Saw the A23a Iceberg While Cruising in Antarctica & it Was EPIC! appeared first on Our Offbeat Life .

Crying Myself to Sleep on the Biggest Cruise Ship Ever

Seven agonizing nights aboard the Icon of the Seas

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Updated at 2:44 p.m. ET on April 6, 2024.

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MY FIRST GLIMPSE of Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas, from the window of an approaching Miami cab, brings on a feeling of vertigo, nausea, amazement, and distress. I shut my eyes in defense, as my brain tells my optic nerve to try again.

The ship makes no sense, vertically or horizontally. It makes no sense on sea, or on land, or in outer space. It looks like a hodgepodge of domes and minarets, tubes and canopies, like Istanbul had it been designed by idiots. Vibrant, oversignifying colors are stacked upon other such colors, decks perched over still more decks; the only comfort is a row of lifeboats ringing its perimeter. There is no imposed order, no cogent thought, and, for those who do not harbor a totalitarian sense of gigantomania, no visual mercy. This is the biggest cruise ship ever built, and I have been tasked with witnessing its inaugural voyage.

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“Author embarks on their first cruise-ship voyage” has been a staple of American essay writing for almost three decades, beginning with David Foster Wallace’s “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again,” which was first published in 1996 under the title “Shipping Out.” Since then, many admirable writers have widened and diversified the genre. Usually the essayist commissioned to take to the sea is in their first or second flush of youth and is ready to sharpen their wit against the hull of the offending vessel. I am 51, old and tired, having seen much of the world as a former travel journalist, and mostly what I do in both life and prose is shrug while muttering to my imaginary dachshund, “This too shall pass.” But the Icon of the Seas will not countenance a shrug. The Icon of the Seas is the Linda Loman of cruise ships, exclaiming that attention must be paid. And here I am in late January with my one piece of luggage and useless gray winter jacket and passport, zipping through the Port of Miami en route to the gangway that will separate me from the bulk of North America for more than seven days, ready to pay it in full.

The aforementioned gangway opens up directly onto a thriving mall (I will soon learn it is imperiously called the “Royal Promenade”), presently filled with yapping passengers beneath a ceiling studded with balloons ready to drop. Crew members from every part of the global South, as well as a few Balkans, are shepherding us along while pressing flutes of champagne into our hands. By a humming Starbucks, I drink as many of these as I can and prepare to find my cabin. I show my blue Suite Sky SeaPass Card (more on this later, much more) to a smiling woman from the Philippines, and she tells me to go “aft.” Which is where, now? As someone who has rarely sailed on a vessel grander than the Staten Island Ferry, I am confused. It turns out that the aft is the stern of the ship, or, for those of us who don’t know what a stern or an aft are, its ass. The nose of the ship, responsible for separating the waves before it, is also called a bow, and is marked for passengers as the FWD , or forward. The part of the contemporary sailing vessel where the malls are clustered is called the midship. I trust that you have enjoyed this nautical lesson.

I ascend via elevator to my suite on Deck 11. This is where I encounter my first terrible surprise. My suite windows and balcony do not face the ocean. Instead, they look out onto another shopping mall. This mall is the one that’s called Central Park, perhaps in homage to the Olmsted-designed bit of greenery in the middle of my hometown. Although on land I would be delighted to own a suite with Central Park views, here I am deeply depressed. To sail on a ship and not wake up to a vast blue carpet of ocean? Unthinkable.

Allow me a brief preamble here. The story you are reading was commissioned at a moment when most staterooms on the Icon were sold out. In fact, so enthralled by the prospect of this voyage were hard-core mariners that the ship’s entire inventory of guest rooms (the Icon can accommodate up to 7,600 passengers, but its inaugural journey was reduced to 5,000 or so for a less crowded experience) was almost immediately sold out. Hence, this publication was faced with the shocking prospect of paying nearly $19,000 to procure for this solitary passenger an entire suite—not including drinking expenses—all for the privilege of bringing you this article. But the suite in question doesn’t even have a view of the ocean! I sit down hard on my soft bed. Nineteen thousand dollars for this .

The viewless suite does have its pluses. In addition to all the Malin+Goetz products in my dual bathrooms, I am granted use of a dedicated Suite Deck lounge; access to Coastal Kitchen, a superior restaurant for Suites passengers; complimentary VOOM SM Surf & Stream (“the fastest Internet at Sea”) “for one device per person for the whole cruise duration”; a pair of bathrobes (one of which comes prestained with what looks like a large expectoration by the greenest lizard on Earth); and use of the Grove Suite Sun, an area on Decks 18 and 19 with food and deck chairs reserved exclusively for Suite passengers. I also get reserved seating for a performance of The Wizard of Oz , an ice-skating tribute to the periodic table, and similar provocations. The very color of my Suite Sky SeaPass Card, an oceanic blue as opposed to the cloying royal purple of the standard non-Suite passenger, will soon provoke envy and admiration. But as high as my status may be, there are those on board who have much higher status still, and I will soon learn to bow before them.

In preparation for sailing, I have “priced in,” as they say on Wall Street, the possibility that I may come from a somewhat different monde than many of the other cruisers. Without falling into stereotypes or preconceptions, I prepare myself for a friendly outspokenness on the part of my fellow seafarers that may not comply with modern DEI standards. I believe in meeting people halfway, and so the day before flying down to Miami, I visited what remains of Little Italy to purchase a popular T-shirt that reads DADDY’S LITTLE MEATBALL across the breast in the colors of the Italian flag. My wife recommended that I bring one of my many T-shirts featuring Snoopy and the Peanuts gang, as all Americans love the beagle and his friends. But I naively thought that my meatball T-shirt would be more suitable for conversation-starting. “Oh, and who is your ‘daddy’?” some might ask upon seeing it. “And how long have you been his ‘little meatball’?” And so on.

I put on my meatball T-shirt and head for one of the dining rooms to get a late lunch. In the elevator, I stick out my chest for all to read the funny legend upon it, but soon I realize that despite its burnished tricolor letters, no one takes note. More to the point, no one takes note of me. Despite my attempts at bridge building, the very sight of me (small, ethnic, without a cap bearing the name of a football team) elicits no reaction from other passengers. Most often, they will small-talk over me as if I don’t exist. This brings to mind the travails of David Foster Wallace , who felt so ostracized by his fellow passengers that he retreated to his cabin for much of his voyage. And Wallace was raised primarily in the Midwest and was a much larger, more American-looking meatball than I am. If he couldn’t talk to these people, how will I? What if I leave this ship without making any friends at all, despite my T-shirt? I am a social creature, and the prospect of seven days alone and apart is saddening. Wallace’s stateroom, at least, had a view of the ocean, a kind of cheap eternity.

Worse awaits me in the dining room. This is a large, multichandeliered room where I attended my safety training (I was shown how to put on a flotation vest; it is a very simple procedure). But the maître d’ politely refuses me entry in an English that seems to verge on another language. “I’m sorry, this is only for pendejos ,” he seems to be saying. I push back politely and he repeats himself. Pendejos ? Piranhas? There’s some kind of P-word to which I am not attuned. Meanwhile elderly passengers stream right past, powered by their limbs, walkers, and electric wheelchairs. “It is only pendejo dining today, sir.” “But I have a suite!” I say, already starting to catch on to the ship’s class system. He examines my card again. “But you are not a pendejo ,” he confirms. I am wearing a DADDY’S LITTLE MEATBALL T-shirt, I want to say to him. I am the essence of pendejo .

Eventually, I give up and head to the plebeian buffet on Deck 15, which has an aquatic-styled name I have now forgotten. Before gaining entry to this endless cornucopia of reheated food, one passes a washing station of many sinks and soap dispensers, and perhaps the most intriguing character on the entire ship. He is Mr. Washy Washy—or, according to his name tag, Nielbert of the Philippines—and he is dressed as a taco (on other occasions, I’ll see him dressed as a burger). Mr. Washy Washy performs an eponymous song in spirited, indeed flamboyant English: “Washy, washy, wash your hands, WASHY WASHY!” The dangers of norovirus and COVID on a cruise ship this size (a giant fellow ship was stricken with the former right after my voyage) makes Mr. Washy Washy an essential member of the crew. The problem lies with the food at the end of Washy’s rainbow. The buffet is groaning with what sounds like sophisticated dishes—marinated octopus, boiled egg with anchovy, chorizo, lobster claws—but every animal tastes tragically the same, as if there was only one creature available at the market, a “cruisipus” bred specifically for Royal Caribbean dining. The “vegetables” are no better. I pick up a tomato slice and look right through it. It tastes like cellophane. I sit alone, apart from the couples and parents with gaggles of children, as “We Are Family” echoes across the buffet space.

I may have failed to mention that all this time, the Icon of the Seas has not left port. As the fiery mango of the subtropical setting sun makes Miami’s condo skyline even more apocalyptic, the ship shoves off beneath a perfunctory display of fireworks. After the sun sets, in the far, dark distance, another circus-lit cruise ship ruptures the waves before us. We glance at it with pity, because it is by definition a smaller ship than our own. I am on Deck 15, outside the buffet and overlooking a bunch of pools (the Icon has seven of them), drinking a frilly drink that I got from one of the bars (the Icon has 15 of them), still too shy to speak to anyone, despite Sister Sledge’s assertion that all on the ship are somehow related.

Kim Brooks: On failing the family vacation

The ship’s passage away from Ron DeSantis’s Florida provides no frisson, no sense of developing “sea legs,” as the ship is too large to register the presence of waves unless a mighty wind adds significant chop. It is time for me to register the presence of the 5,000 passengers around me, even if they refuse to register mine. My fellow travelers have prepared for this trip with personally decorated T-shirts celebrating the importance of this voyage. The simplest ones say ICON INAUGURAL ’24 on the back and the family name on the front. Others attest to an over-the-top love of cruise ships: WARNING! MAY START TALKING ABOUT CRUISING . Still others are artisanally designed and celebrate lifetimes spent married while cruising (on ships, of course). A couple possibly in their 90s are wearing shirts whose backs feature a drawing of a cruise liner, two flamingos with ostensibly male and female characteristics, and the legend “ HUSBAND AND WIFE Cruising Partners FOR LIFE WE MAY NOT HAVE IT All Together BUT TOGETHER WE HAVE IT ALL .” (The words not in all caps have been written in cursive.) A real journalist or a more intrepid conversationalist would have gone up to the couple and asked them to explain the longevity of their marriage vis-à-vis their love of cruising. But instead I head to my mall suite, take off my meatball T-shirt, and allow the first tears of the cruise to roll down my cheeks slowly enough that I briefly fall asleep amid the moisture and salt.

I WAKE UP with a hangover. Oh God. Right. I cannot believe all of that happened last night. A name floats into my cobwebbed, nauseated brain: “Ayn Rand.” Jesus Christ.

I breakfast alone at the Coastal Kitchen. The coffee tastes fine and the eggs came out of a bird. The ship rolls slightly this morning; I can feel it in my thighs and my schlong, the parts of me that are most receptive to danger.

I had a dangerous conversation last night. After the sun set and we were at least 50 miles from shore (most modern cruise ships sail at about 23 miles an hour), I lay in bed softly hiccupping, my arms stretched out exactly like Jesus on the cross, the sound of the distant waves missing from my mall-facing suite, replaced by the hum of air-conditioning and children shouting in Spanish through the vents of my two bathrooms. I decided this passivity was unacceptable. As an immigrant, I feel duty-bound to complete the tasks I am paid for, which means reaching out and trying to understand my fellow cruisers. So I put on a normal James Perse T-shirt and headed for one of the bars on the Royal Promenade—the Schooner Bar, it was called, if memory serves correctly.

I sat at the bar for a martini and two Negronis. An old man with thick, hairy forearms drank next to me, very silent and Hemingwaylike, while a dreadlocked piano player tinkled out a series of excellent Elton John covers. To my right, a young white couple—he in floral shorts, she in a light, summery miniskirt with a fearsome diamond ring, neither of them in football regalia—chatted with an elderly couple. Do it , I commanded myself. Open your mouth. Speak! Speak without being spoken to. Initiate. A sentence fragment caught my ear from the young woman, “Cherry Hill.” This is a suburb of Philadelphia in New Jersey, and I had once been there for a reading at a synagogue. “Excuse me,” I said gently to her. “Did you just mention Cherry Hill? It’s a lovely place.”

As it turned out, the couple now lived in Fort Lauderdale (the number of Floridians on the cruise surprised me, given that Southern Florida is itself a kind of cruise ship, albeit one slowly sinking), but soon they were talking with me exclusively—the man potbellied, with a chin like a hard-boiled egg; the woman as svelte as if she were one of the many Ukrainian members of the crew—the elderly couple next to them forgotten. This felt as groundbreaking as the first time I dared to address an American in his native tongue, as a child on a bus in Queens (“On my foot you are standing, Mister”).

“I don’t want to talk politics,” the man said. “But they’re going to eighty-six Biden and put Michelle in.”

I considered the contradictions of his opening conversational gambit, but decided to play along. “People like Michelle,” I said, testing the waters. The husband sneered, but the wife charitably put forward that the former first lady was “more personable” than Joe Biden. “They’re gonna eighty-six Biden,” the husband repeated. “He can’t put a sentence together.”

After I mentioned that I was a writer—though I presented myself as a writer of teleplays instead of novels and articles such as this one—the husband told me his favorite writer was Ayn Rand. “Ayn Rand, she came here with nothing,” the husband said. “I work with a lot of Cubans, so …” I wondered if I should mention what I usually do to ingratiate myself with Republicans or libertarians: the fact that my finances improved after pass-through corporations were taxed differently under Donald Trump. Instead, I ordered another drink and the couple did the same, and I told him that Rand and I were born in the same city, St. Petersburg/Leningrad, and that my family also came here with nothing. Now the bonding and drinking began in earnest, and several more rounds appeared. Until it all fell apart.

Read: Gary Shteyngart on watching Russian television for five days straight

My new friend, whom I will refer to as Ayn, called out to a buddy of his across the bar, and suddenly a young couple, both covered in tattoos, appeared next to us. “He fucking punked me,” Ayn’s frat-boy-like friend called out as he put his arm around Ayn, while his sizable partner sizzled up to Mrs. Rand. Both of them had a look I have never seen on land—their eyes projecting absence and enmity in equal measure. In the ’90s, I drank with Russian soldiers fresh from Chechnya and wandered the streets of wartime Zagreb, but I have never seen such undisguised hostility toward both me and perhaps the universe at large. I was briefly introduced to this psychopathic pair, but neither of them wanted to have anything to do with me, and the tattooed woman would not even reveal her Christian name to me (she pretended to have the same first name as Mrs. Rand). To impress his tattooed friends, Ayn made fun of the fact that as a television writer, I’d worked on the series Succession (which, it would turn out, practically nobody on the ship had watched), instead of the far more palatable, in his eyes, zombie drama of last year. And then my new friends drifted away from me into an angry private conversation—“He punked me!”—as I ordered another drink for myself, scared of the dead-eyed arrivals whose gaze never registered in the dim wattage of the Schooner Bar, whose terrifying voices and hollow laughs grated like unoiled gears against the crooning of “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.”

But today is a new day for me and my hangover. After breakfast, I explore the ship’s so-called neighborhoods . There’s the AquaDome, where one can find a food hall and an acrobatic sound-and-light aquatic show. Central Park has a premium steak house, a sushi joint, and a used Rolex that can be bought for $8,000 on land here proudly offered at $17,000. There’s the aforementioned Royal Promenade, where I had drunk with the Rands, and where a pair of dueling pianos duel well into the night. There’s Surfside, a kids’ neighborhood full of sugary garbage, which looks out onto the frothy trail that the behemoth leaves behind itself. Thrill Island refers to the collection of tubes that clutter the ass of the ship and offer passengers six waterslides and a surfing simulation. There’s the Hideaway, an adult zone that plays music from a vomit-slathered, Brit-filled Alicante nightclub circa 1996 and proves a big favorite with groups of young Latin American customers. And, most hurtfully, there’s the Suite Neighborhood.

I say hurtfully because as a Suite passenger I should be here, though my particular suite is far from the others. Whereas I am stuck amid the riffraff of Deck 11, this section is on the highborn Decks 16 and 17, and in passing, I peek into the spacious, tall-ceilinged staterooms from the hallway, dazzled by the glint of the waves and sun. For $75,000, one multifloor suite even comes with its own slide between floors, so that a family may enjoy this particular terror in private. There is a quiet splendor to the Suite Neighborhood. I see fewer stickers and signs and drawings than in my own neighborhood—for example, MIKE AND DIANA PROUDLY SERVED U.S. MARINE CORPS RETIRED . No one here needs to announce their branch of service or rank; they are simply Suites, and this is where they belong. Once again, despite my hard work and perseverance, I have been disallowed from the true American elite. Once again, I am “Not our class, dear.” I am reminded of watching The Love Boat on my grandmother’s Zenith, which either was given to her or we found in the trash (I get our many malfunctioning Zeniths confused) and whose tube got so hot, I would put little chunks of government cheese on a thin tissue atop it to give our welfare treat a pleasant, Reagan-era gooeyness. I could not understand English well enough then to catch the nuances of that seafaring program, but I knew that there were differences in the status of the passengers, and that sometimes those differences made them sad. Still, this ship, this plenty—every few steps, there are complimentary nachos or milkshakes or gyros on offer—was the fatty fuel of my childhood dreams. If only I had remained a child.

I walk around the outdoor decks looking for company. There is a middle-aged African American couple who always seem to be asleep in each other’s arms, probably exhausted from the late capitalism they regularly encounter on land. There is far more diversity on this ship than I expected. Many couples are a testament to Loving v. Virginia , and there is a large group of folks whose T-shirts read MELANIN AT SEA / IT’S THE MELANIN FOR ME . I smile when I see them, but then some young kids from the group makes Mr. Washy Washy do a cruel, caricatured “Burger Dance” (today he is in his burger getup), and I think, Well, so much for intersectionality .

At the infinity pool on Deck 17, I spot some elderly women who could be ethnic and from my part of the world, and so I jump in. I am proved correct! Many of them seem to be originally from Queens (“Corona was still great when it was all Italian”), though they are now spread across the tristate area. We bond over the way “Ron-kon-koma” sounds when announced in Penn Station.

“Everyone is here for a different reason,” one of them tells me. She and her ex-husband last sailed together four years ago to prove to themselves that their marriage was truly over. Her 15-year-old son lost his virginity to “an Irish young lady” while their ship was moored in Ravenna, Italy. The gaggle of old-timers competes to tell me their favorite cruising stories and tips. “A guy proposed in Central Park a couple of years ago”—many Royal Caribbean ships apparently have this ridiculous communal area—“and she ran away screaming!” “If you’re diamond-class, you get four drinks for free.” “A different kind of passenger sails out of Bayonne.” (This, perhaps, is racially coded.) “Sometimes, if you tip the bartender $5, your next drink will be free.”

“Everyone’s here for a different reason,” the woman whose marriage ended on a cruise tells me again. “Some people are here for bad reasons—the drinkers and the gamblers. Some people are here for medical reasons.” I have seen more than a few oxygen tanks and at least one woman clearly undergoing very serious chemo. Some T-shirts celebrate good news about a cancer diagnosis. This might be someone’s last cruise or week on Earth. For these women, who have spent months, if not years, at sea, cruising is a ritual as well as a life cycle: first love, last love, marriage, divorce, death.

Read: The last place on Earth any tourist should go

I have talked with these women for so long, tonight I promise myself that after a sad solitary dinner I will not try to seek out company at the bars in the mall or the adult-themed Hideaway. I have enough material to fulfill my duties to this publication. As I approach my orphaned suite, I run into the aggro young people who stole Mr. and Mrs. Rand away from me the night before. The tattooed apparitions pass me without a glance. She is singing something violent about “Stuttering Stanley” (a character in a popular horror movie, as I discover with my complimentary VOOM SM Surf & Stream Internet at Sea) and he’s loudly shouting about “all the money I’ve lost,” presumably at the casino in the bowels of the ship.

So these bent psychos out of a Cormac McCarthy novel are angrily inhabiting my deck. As I mewl myself to sleep, I envision a limited series for HBO or some other streamer, a kind of low-rent White Lotus , where several aggressive couples conspire to throw a shy intellectual interloper overboard. I type the scenario into my phone. As I fall asleep, I think of what the woman who recently divorced her husband and whose son became a man through the good offices of the Irish Republic told me while I was hoisting myself out of the infinity pool. “I’m here because I’m an explorer. I’m here because I’m trying something new.” What if I allowed myself to believe in her fantasy?

“YOU REALLY STARTED AT THE TOP,” they tell me. I’m at the Coastal Kitchen for my eggs and corned-beef hash, and the maître d’ has slotted me in between two couples. Fueled by coffee or perhaps intrigued by my relative youth, they strike up a conversation with me. As always, people are shocked that this is my first cruise. They contrast the Icon favorably with all the preceding liners in the Royal Caribbean fleet, usually commenting on the efficiency of the elevators that hurl us from deck to deck (as in many large corporate buildings, the elevators ask you to choose a floor and then direct you to one of many lifts). The couple to my right, from Palo Alto—he refers to his “porn mustache” and calls his wife “my cougar” because she is two years older—tell me they are “Pandemic Pinnacles.”

This is the day that my eyes will be opened. Pinnacles , it is explained to me over translucent cantaloupe, have sailed with Royal Caribbean for 700 ungodly nights. Pandemic Pinnacles took advantage of the two-for-one accrual rate of Pinnacle points during the pandemic, when sailing on a cruise ship was even more ill-advised, to catapult themselves into Pinnacle status.

Because of the importance of the inaugural voyage of the world’s largest cruise liner, more than 200 Pinnacles are on this ship, a startling number, it seems. Mrs. Palo Alto takes out a golden badge that I have seen affixed over many a breast, which reads CROWN AND ANCHOR SOCIETY along with her name. This is the coveted badge of the Pinnacle. “You should hear all the whining in Guest Services,” her husband tells me. Apparently, the Pinnacles who are not also Suites like us are all trying to use their status to get into Coastal Kitchen, our elite restaurant. Even a Pinnacle needs to be a Suite to access this level of corned-beef hash.

“We’re just baby Pinnacles,” Mrs. Palo Alto tells me, describing a kind of internal class struggle among the Pinnacle elite for ever higher status.

And now I understand what the maître d’ was saying to me on the first day of my cruise. He wasn’t saying “ pendejo .” He was saying “Pinnacle.” The dining room was for Pinnacles only, all those older people rolling in like the tide on their motorized scooters.

And now I understand something else: This whole thing is a cult. And like most cults, it can’t help but mirror the endless American fight for status. Like Keith Raniere’s NXIVM, where different-colored sashes were given out to connote rank among Raniere’s branded acolytes, this is an endless competition among Pinnacles, Suites, Diamond-Plusers, and facing-the-mall, no-balcony purple SeaPass Card peasants, not to mention the many distinctions within each category. The more you cruise, the higher your status. No wonder a section of the Royal Promenade is devoted to getting passengers to book their next cruise during the one they should be enjoying now. No wonder desperate Royal Caribbean offers (“FINAL HOURS”) crowded my email account weeks before I set sail. No wonder the ship’s jewelry store, the Royal Bling, is selling a $100,000 golden chalice that will entitle its owner to drink free on Royal Caribbean cruises for life. (One passenger was already gaming out whether her 28-year-old son was young enough to “just about earn out” on the chalice or if that ship had sailed.) No wonder this ship was sold out months before departure , and we had to pay $19,000 for a horrid suite away from the Suite Neighborhood. No wonder the most mythical hero of Royal Caribbean lore is someone named Super Mario, who has cruised so often, he now has his own working desk on many ships. This whole experience is part cult, part nautical pyramid scheme.

From the June 2014 issue: Ship of wonks

“The toilets are amazing,” the Palo Altos are telling me. “One flush and you’re done.” “They don’t understand how energy-efficient these ships are,” the husband of the other couple is telling me. “They got the LNG”—liquefied natural gas, which is supposed to make the Icon a boon to the environment (a concept widely disputed and sometimes ridiculed by environmentalists).

But I’m thinking along a different line of attack as I spear my last pallid slice of melon. For my streaming limited series, a Pinnacle would have to get killed by either an outright peasant or a Suite without an ocean view. I tell my breakfast companions my idea.

“Oh, for sure a Pinnacle would have to be killed,” Mr. Palo Alto, the Pandemic Pinnacle, says, touching his porn mustache thoughtfully as his wife nods.

“THAT’S RIGHT, IT’S your time, buddy!” Hubert, my fun-loving Panamanian cabin attendant, shouts as I step out of my suite in a robe. “Take it easy, buddy!”

I have come up with a new dressing strategy. Instead of trying to impress with my choice of T-shirts, I have decided to start wearing a robe, as one does at a resort property on land, with a proper spa and hammam. The response among my fellow cruisers has been ecstatic. “Look at you in the robe!” Mr. Rand cries out as we pass each other by the Thrill Island aqua park. “You’re living the cruise life! You know, you really drank me under the table that night.” I laugh as we part ways, but my soul cries out, Please spend more time with me, Mr. and Mrs. Rand; I so need the company .

In my white robe, I am a stately presence, a refugee from a better limited series, a one-man crossover episode. (Only Suites are granted these robes to begin with.) Today, I will try many of the activities these ships have on offer to provide their clientele with a sense of never-ceasing motion. Because I am already at Thrill Island, I decide to climb the staircase to what looks like a mast on an old-fashioned ship (terrified, because I am afraid of heights) to try a ride called “Storm Chasers,” which is part of the “Category 6” water park, named in honor of one of the storms that may someday do away with the Port of Miami entirely. Storm Chasers consists of falling from the “mast” down a long, twisting neon tube filled with water, like being the camera inside your own colonoscopy, as you hold on to the handles of a mat, hoping not to die. The tube then flops you down headfirst into a trough of water, a Royal Caribbean baptism. It both knocks my breath out and makes me sad.

In keeping with the aquatic theme, I attend a show at the AquaDome. To the sound of “Live and Let Die,” a man in a harness gyrates to and fro in the sultry air. I saw something very similar in the back rooms of the famed Berghain club in early-aughts Berlin. Soon another harnessed man is gyrating next to the first. Ja , I think to myself, I know how this ends. Now will come the fisting , natürlich . But the show soon devolves into the usual Marvel-film-grade nonsense, with too much light and sound signifying nichts . If any fisting is happening, it is probably in the Suite Neighborhood, inside a cabin marked with an upside-down pineapple, which I understand means a couple are ready to swing, and I will see none of it.

I go to the ice show, which is a kind of homage—if that’s possible—to the periodic table, done with the style and pomp and masterful precision that would please the likes of Kim Jong Un, if only he could afford Royal Caribbean talent. At one point, the dancers skate to the theme song of Succession . “See that!” I want to say to my fellow Suites—at “cultural” events, we have a special section reserved for us away from the commoners—“ Succession ! It’s even better than the zombie show! Open your minds!”

Finally, I visit a comedy revue in an enormous and too brightly lit version of an “intimate,” per Royal Caribbean literature, “Manhattan comedy club.” Many of the jokes are about the cruising life. “I’ve lived on ships for 20 years,” one of the middle-aged comedians says. “I can only see so many Filipino homosexuals dressed as a taco.” He pauses while the audience laughs. “I am so fired tonight,” he says. He segues into a Trump impression and then Biden falling asleep at the microphone, which gets the most laughs. “Anyone here from Fort Leonard Wood?” another comedian asks. Half the crowd seems to cheer. As I fall asleep that night, I realize another connection I have failed to make, and one that may explain some of the diversity on this vessel—many of its passengers have served in the military.

As a coddled passenger with a suite, I feel like I am starting to understand what it means to have a rank and be constantly reminded of it. There are many espresso makers , I think as I look across the expanse of my officer-grade quarters before closing my eyes, but this one is mine .

A shocking sight greets me beyond the pools of Deck 17 as I saunter over to the Coastal Kitchen for my morning intake of slightly sour Americanos. A tiny city beneath a series of perfectly pressed green mountains. Land! We have docked for a brief respite in Basseterre, the capital of St. Kitts and Nevis. I wolf down my egg scramble to be one of the first passengers off the ship. Once past the gangway, I barely refrain from kissing the ground. I rush into the sights and sounds of this scruffy island city, sampling incredible conch curry and buckets of non-Starbucks coffee. How wonderful it is to be where God intended humans to be: on land. After all, I am neither a fish nor a mall rat. This is my natural environment. Basseterre may not be Havana, but there are signs of human ingenuity and desire everywhere you look. The Black Table Grill Has been Relocated to Soho Village, Market Street, Directly Behind of, Gary’s Fruits and Flower Shop. Signed. THE PORK MAN reads a sign stuck to a wall. Now, that is how you write a sign. A real sign, not the come-ons for overpriced Rolexes that blink across the screens of the Royal Promenade.

“Hey, tie your shoestring!” a pair of laughing ladies shout to me across the street.

“Thank you!” I shout back. Shoestring! “Thank you very much.”

A man in Independence Square Park comes by and asks if I want to play with his monkey. I haven’t heard that pickup line since the Penn Station of the 1980s. But then he pulls a real monkey out of a bag. The monkey is wearing a diaper and looks insane. Wonderful , I think, just wonderful! There is so much life here. I email my editor asking if I can remain on St. Kitts and allow the Icon to sail off into the horizon without me. I have even priced a flight home at less than $300, and I have enough material from the first four days on the cruise to write the entire story. “It would be funny …” my editor replies. “Now get on the boat.”

As I slink back to the ship after my brief jailbreak, the locals stand under umbrellas to gaze at and photograph the boat that towers over their small capital city. The limousines of the prime minister and his lackeys are parked beside the gangway. St. Kitts, I’ve been told, is one of the few islands that would allow a ship of this size to dock.

“We hear about all the waterslides,” a sweet young server in one of the cafés told me. “We wish we could go on the ship, but we have to work.”

“I want to stay on your island,” I replied. “I love it here.”

But she didn’t understand how I could possibly mean that.

“WASHY, WASHY, so you don’t get stinky, stinky!” kids are singing outside the AquaDome, while their adult minders look on in disapproval, perhaps worried that Mr. Washy Washy is grooming them into a life of gayness. I heard a southern couple skip the buffet entirely out of fear of Mr. Washy Washy.

Meanwhile, I have found a new watering hole for myself, the Swim & Tonic, the biggest swim-up bar on any cruise ship in the world. Drinking next to full-size, nearly naked Americans takes away one’s own self-consciousness. The men have curvaceous mom bodies. The women are equally un-shy about their sprawling physiques.

Today I’ve befriended a bald man with many children who tells me that all of the little trinkets that Royal Caribbean has left us in our staterooms and suites are worth a fortune on eBay. “Eighty dollars for the water bottle, 60 for the lanyard,” the man says. “This is a cult.”

“Tell me about it,” I say. There is, however, a clientele for whom this cruise makes perfect sense. For a large middle-class family (he works in “supply chains”), seven days in a lower-tier cabin—which starts at $1,800 a person—allow the parents to drop off their children in Surfside, where I imagine many young Filipina crew members will take care of them, while the parents are free to get drunk at a swim-up bar and maybe even get intimate in their cabin. Cruise ships have become, for a certain kind of hardworking family, a form of subsidized child care.

There is another man I would like to befriend at the Swim & Tonic, a tall, bald fellow who is perpetually inebriated and who wears a necklace studded with little rubber duckies in sunglasses, which, I am told, is a sort of secret handshake for cruise aficionados. Tomorrow, I will spend more time with him, but first the ship docks at St. Thomas, in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Charlotte Amalie, the capital, is more charming in name than in presence, but I still all but jump off the ship to score a juicy oxtail and plantains at the well-known Petite Pump Room, overlooking the harbor. From one of the highest points in the small city, the Icon of the Seas appears bigger than the surrounding hills.

I usually tan very evenly, but something about the discombobulation of life at sea makes me forget the regular application of sunscreen. As I walk down the streets of Charlotte Amalie in my fluorescent Icon of the Seas cap, an old Rastafarian stares me down. “Redneck,” he hisses.

“No,” I want to tell him, as I bring a hand up to my red neck, “that’s not who I am at all. On my island, Mannahatta, as Whitman would have it, I am an interesting person living within an engaging artistic milieu. I do not wish to use the Caribbean as a dumping ground for the cruise-ship industry. I love the work of Derek Walcott. You don’t understand. I am not a redneck. And if I am, they did this to me.” They meaning Royal Caribbean? Its passengers? The Rands?

“They did this to me!”

Back on the Icon, some older matrons are muttering about a run-in with passengers from the Celebrity cruise ship docked next to us, the Celebrity Apex. Although Celebrity Cruises is also owned by Royal Caribbean, I am made to understand that there is a deep fratricidal beef between passengers of the two lines. “We met a woman from the Apex,” one matron says, “and she says it was a small ship and there was nothing to do. Her face was as tight as a 19-year-old’s, she had so much surgery.” With those words, and beneath a cloudy sky, humidity shrouding our weathered faces and red necks, we set sail once again, hopefully in the direction of home.

THERE ARE BARELY 48 HOURS LEFT to the cruise, and the Icon of the Seas’ passengers are salty. They know how to work the elevators. They know the Washy Washy song by heart. They understand that the chicken gyro at “Feta Mediterranean,” in the AquaDome Market, is the least problematic form of chicken on the ship.

The passengers have shed their INAUGURAL CRUISE T-shirts and are now starting to evince political opinions. There are caps pledging to make America great again and T-shirts that celebrate words sometimes attributed to Patrick Henry: “The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people; it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government.” With their preponderance of FAMILY FLAG FAITH FRIENDS FIREARMS T-shirts, the tables by the crepe station sometimes resemble the Capitol Rotunda on January 6. The Real Anthony Fauci , by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., appears to be a popular form of literature, especially among young men with very complicated versions of the American flag on their T-shirts. Other opinions blend the personal and the political. “Someone needs to kill Washy guy, right?” a well-dressed man in the elevator tells me, his gray eyes radiating nothing. “Just beat him to death. Am I right?” I overhear the male member of a young couple whisper, “There goes that freak” as I saunter by in my white spa robe, and I decide to retire it for the rest of the cruise.

I visit the Royal Bling to see up close the $100,000 golden chalice that entitles you to free drinks on Royal Caribbean forever. The pleasant Serbian saleslady explains that the chalice is actually gold-plated and covered in white zirconia instead of diamonds, as it would otherwise cost $1 million. “If you already have everything,” she explains, “this is one more thing you can get.”

I believe that anyone who works for Royal Caribbean should be entitled to immediate American citizenship. They already speak English better than most of the passengers and, per the Serbian lady’s sales pitch above, better understand what America is as well. Crew members like my Panamanian cabin attendant seem to work 24 hours a day. A waiter from New Delhi tells me that his contract is six months and three weeks long. After a cruise ends, he says, “in a few hours, we start again for the next cruise.” At the end of the half a year at sea, he is allowed a two-to-three-month stay at home with his family. As of 2019, the median income for crew members was somewhere in the vicinity of $20,000, according to a major business publication. Royal Caribbean would not share the current median salary for its crew members, but I am certain that it amounts to a fraction of the cost of a Royal Bling gold-plated, zirconia-studded chalice.

And because most of the Icon’s hyper-sanitized spaces are just a frittata away from being a Delta lounge, one forgets that there are actual sailors on this ship, charged with the herculean task of docking it in port. “Having driven 100,000-ton aircraft carriers throughout my career,” retired Admiral James G. Stavridis, the former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe, writes to me, “I’m not sure I would even know where to begin with trying to control a sea monster like this one nearly three times the size.” (I first met Stavridis while touring Army bases in Germany more than a decade ago.)

Today, I decide to head to the hot tub near Swim & Tonic, where some of the ship’s drunkest reprobates seem to gather (the other tubs are filled with families and couples). The talk here, like everywhere else on the ship, concerns football, a sport about which I know nothing. It is apparent that four teams have recently competed in some kind of finals for the year, and that two of them will now face off in the championship. Often when people on the Icon speak, I will try to repeat the last thing they said with a laugh or a nod of disbelief. “Yes, 20-yard line! Ha!” “Oh my God, of course, scrimmage.”

Soon we are joined in the hot tub by the late-middle-age drunk guy with the duck necklace. He is wearing a bucket hat with the legend HAWKEYES , which, I soon gather, is yet another football team. “All right, who turned me in?” Duck Necklace says as he plops into the tub beside us. “I get a call in the morning,” he says. “It’s security. Can you come down to the dining room by 10 a.m.? You need to stay away from the members of this religious family.” Apparently, the gregarious Duck Necklace had photobombed the wrong people. There are several families who present as evangelical Christians or practicing Muslims on the ship. One man, evidently, was not happy that Duck Necklace had made contact with his relatives. “It’s because of religious stuff; he was offended. I put my arm around 20 people a day.”

Everyone laughs. “They asked me three times if I needed medication,” he says of the security people who apparently interrogated him in full view of others having breakfast.

Another hot-tub denizen suggests that he should have asked for fentanyl. After a few more drinks, Duck Necklace begins to muse about what it would be like to fall off the ship. “I’m 62 and I’m ready to go,” he says. “I just don’t want a shark to eat me. I’m a huge God guy. I’m a Bible guy. There’s some Mayan theory squaring science stuff with religion. There is so much more to life on Earth.” We all nod into our Red Stripes.

“I never get off the ship when we dock,” he says. He tells us he lost $6,000 in the casino the other day. Later, I look him up, and it appears that on land, he’s a financial adviser in a crisp gray suit, probably a pillar of his North Chicago community.

THE OCEAN IS TEEMING with fascinating life, but on the surface it has little to teach us. The waves come and go. The horizon remains ever far away.

I am constantly told by my fellow passengers that “everybody here has a story.” Yes, I want to reply, but everybody everywhere has a story. You, the reader of this essay, have a story, and yet you’re not inclined to jump on a cruise ship and, like Duck Necklace, tell your story to others at great pitch and volume. Maybe what they’re saying is that everybody on this ship wants to have a bigger, more coherent, more interesting story than the one they’ve been given. Maybe that’s why there’s so much signage on the doors around me attesting to marriages spent on the sea. Maybe that’s why the Royal Caribbean newsletter slipped under my door tells me that “this isn’t a vacation day spent—it’s bragging rights earned.” Maybe that’s why I’m so lonely.

Today is a big day for Icon passengers. Today the ship docks at Royal Caribbean’s own Bahamian island, the Perfect Day at CocoCay. (This appears to be the actual name of the island.) A comedian at the nightclub opined on what his perfect day at CocoCay would look like—receiving oral sex while learning that his ex-wife had been killed in a car crash (big laughter). But the reality of the island is far less humorous than that.

One of the ethnic tristate ladies in the infinity pool told me that she loved CocoCay because it had exactly the same things that could be found on the ship itself. This proves to be correct. It is like the Icon, but with sand. The same tired burgers, the same colorful tubes conveying children and water from Point A to B. The same swim-up bar at its Hideaway ($140 for admittance, no children allowed; Royal Caribbean must be printing money off its clientele). “There was almost a fight at The Wizard of Oz ,” I overhear an elderly woman tell her companion on a chaise lounge. Apparently one of the passengers began recording Royal Caribbean’s intellectual property and “three guys came after him.”

I walk down a pathway to the center of the island, where a sign reads DO NOT ENTER: YOU HAVE REACHED THE BOUNDARY OF ADVENTURE . I hear an animal scampering in the bushes. A Royal Caribbean worker in an enormous golf cart soon chases me down and takes me back to the Hideaway, where I run into Mrs. Rand in a bikini. She becomes livid telling me about an altercation she had the other day with a woman over a towel and a deck chair. We Suites have special towel privileges; we do not have to hand over our SeaPass Card to score a towel. But the Rands are not Suites. “People are so entitled here,” Mrs. Rand says. “It’s like the airport with all its classes.” “You see,” I want to say, “this is where your husband’s love of Ayn Rand runs into the cruelties and arbitrary indignities of unbridled capitalism.” Instead we make plans to meet for a final drink in the Schooner Bar tonight (the Rands will stand me up).

Back on the ship, I try to do laps, but the pool (the largest on any cruise ship, naturally) is fully trashed with the detritus of American life: candy wrappers, a slowly dissolving tortilla chip, napkins. I take an extra-long shower in my suite, then walk around the perimeter of the ship on a kind of exercise track, past all the alluring lifeboats in their yellow-and-white livery. Maybe there is a dystopian angle to the HBO series that I will surely end up pitching, one with shades of WALL-E or Snowpiercer . In a collapsed world, a Royal Caribbean–like cruise liner sails from port to port, collecting new shipmates and supplies in exchange for the precious energy it has on board. (The actual Icon features a new technology that converts passengers’ poop into enough energy to power the waterslides . In the series, this shitty technology would be greatly expanded.) A very young woman (18? 19?), smart and lonely, who has only known life on the ship, walks along the same track as I do now, contemplating jumping off into the surf left by its wake. I picture reusing Duck Necklace’s words in the opening shot of the pilot. The girl is walking around the track, her eyes on the horizon; maybe she’s highborn—a Suite—and we hear the voice-over: “I’m 19 and I’m ready to go. I just don’t want a shark to eat me.”

Before the cruise is finished, I talk to Mr. Washy Washy, or Nielbert of the Philippines. He is a sweet, gentle man, and I thank him for the earworm of a song he has given me and for keeping us safe from the dreaded norovirus. “This is very important to me, getting people to wash their hands,” he tells me in his burger getup. He has dreams, as an artist and a performer, but they are limited in scope. One day he wants to dress up as a piece of bacon for the morning shift.

THE MAIDEN VOYAGE OF THE TITANIC (the Icon of the Seas is five times as large as that doomed vessel) at least offered its passengers an exciting ending to their cruise, but when I wake up on the eighth day, all I see are the gray ghosts that populate Miami’s condo skyline. Throughout my voyage, my writer friends wrote in to commiserate with me. Sloane Crosley, who once covered a three-day spa mini-cruise for Vogue , tells me she felt “so very alone … I found it very untethering.” Gideon Lewis-Kraus writes in an Instagram comment: “When Gary is done I think it’s time this genre was taken out back and shot.” And he is right. To badly paraphrase Adorno: After this, no more cruise stories. It is unfair to put a thinking person on a cruise ship. Writers typically have difficult childhoods, and it is cruel to remind them of the inherent loneliness that drove them to writing in the first place. It is also unseemly to write about the kind of people who go on cruises. Our country does not provide the education and upbringing that allow its citizens an interior life. For the creative class to point fingers at the large, breasty gentlemen adrift in tortilla-chip-laden pools of water is to gather a sour harvest of low-hanging fruit.

A day or two before I got off the ship, I decided to make use of my balcony, which I had avoided because I thought the view would only depress me further. What I found shocked me. My suite did not look out on Central Park after all. This entire time, I had been living in the ship’s Disneyland, Surfside, the neighborhood full of screaming toddlers consuming milkshakes and candy. And as I leaned out over my balcony, I beheld a slight vista of the sea and surf that I thought I had been missing. It had been there all along. The sea was frothy and infinite and blue-green beneath the span of a seagull’s wing. And though it had been trod hard by the world’s largest cruise ship, it remained.

This article appears in the May 2024 print edition with the headline “A Meatball at Sea.” When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.