It’s that time of year where lists of made. The above picture made Reuter’s Pictures of the Year 2007.
The M/S Explorer cruise ship sinks hours after hitting an iceberg off the coast of the Antarctic, in this photo released by the Chilean Army November 23, 2007. (REUTERS/Chilean Navy)
Technorati tags: MV Explorer, Reuters
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Sea-Fever blog 
Interesting,
I wonder if this case is a thermometer to the future of double hull integrity? The industry is now finding itself with aging double hulls and we may be finding out they are not the end all to overall ship safety and preventing spills. As these ships age, have a lack of maintenance in the double hull compartments, rusting, become metal fatiqued with long time useage, mostly built with thinner metal to safe weight, we might just being see an increase in double hull accidents like this one. Did the initial knee jerk congressional legislation that forced double hull reguirments truly take into consideration input from the industry to make the safest ships possible that were strong? time will tell.
Thanks Capt!
John talked about this in our first episode of Messing About in Ships podcast; suspected double hull could have exasperated the problem. She was also an old boat in heavy service which obviously impacted her watertight integrity.
But you are right, we’ll never learn the rest of the story. Sad and too bad.
Thanks for pointing people to the podcast today! :-)
Happy New Year!
It’s too bad we’ll never learn the rest of the story. A hole the size of a fist should not have scuttled this ship.