By Barry Meier and John Schwartz
In the Triumph’s case, the Coast Guard has said that the ship’s safety equipment contained the blaze. And both the Triumph and the Splendor returned from their aborted voyages without serious injuries to passengers or crew.
But those successes also underscore what most travelers do not realize when they book cruises: nearly all ships lack backup systems to help them return to port should power fail because to install them would have cost operators more money.
The results are repeated episodes involving dead ships, with all the discomforts and potential dangers such situations can bring. In another case, in late 2012, the Costa Allegra cruise ship, a sister ship of the Concordia, lost power after a fire in the generator room and it had to be towed under guard from its location in the Indian Ocean.
In many ways, passengers aboard boats like the Triumph and Splendor were lucky because their ships were disabled in calm weather, when instead they could have been knocked out during storms, or when they were far out at sea or in pirate-infested waters, experts said.
Anything that knocks a ship dead in the water is serious, said Mark Gaouette, a safety expert and former Navy officer.