A Brief History
On April 5, 2007, Hellenic Cruise Lines ship MS Sea Diamond struck a reef in the Aegean Sea and sank, taking the lives of two passengers. The Sea Diamond was 469 feet long, displaced 21,000 tons, and could carry 1,500 passengers. Some other recent cruise ship disasters may make you leery of taking a cruise, and include these incidents:
Digging Deeper
In 2010, luxury cruiser Celebrity Mercury was hit with a norovirus outbreak that left hundreds of passengers with severe vomiting and abdominal ailments.
In 2012, the Costa Concordia ran aground off Italy and sank, leaving 32 people dead and numerous injured.
In 2013, the Carnival Cruise ship Triumph suffered a fire that left the ship drifting without power, without air conditioning, and worst of all, without working toilets, leaving passengers to leave human waste in plastic bags outside their cabin doors for days.
Sinking, fires, illness, pirates, murder and what else can ruin a cruise?
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Kwak, Chaney. The Passenger: How a Travel Writer Learned to Love Cruises & Other Lies from a Sinking Ship. David R. Godine, 2021.
Smith, Benji. Abandoned Ship: An intimate account of the Costa Concordia shipwreck. Amazon KDP, 2013.
The featured image in this article, a photograph by Wikiphilip at the English Wikipedia of attempts to prevent the stricken cruise ship from sinking, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
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