Cruise Ships: Ways to Kill an Industry

You could blame the "greedy" passengers for making over-inflated claims and outrageous demands as set out in this lawsuit report, "Carnival cruise passengers sue seeking $5000 per month for life" from MarineLink:

A group of passengers suing Carnival cruise lines for damages after an engine fire left their ship adrift for days are asking the company to pay $5,000 a month for the rest of their lives for medical bills and mental anguish.

A lawsuit brought by 33 passengers of the ill-fated 2013 voyage could change how cruise lines insulate themselves from legal actions, according to maritime legal experts.

Or, if the fine print on the tickets they bought gets tossed as a "contract of adhesion" by sympathetic judges, then you could blame the cruise lines for overreach in attempting to avoid liability for most everything under the sun and above the sea.

You could blame the engineering of the cruise ships or perhaps their construction or maintenance.

You might expect lawsuits on such matters to be lined up end to end in the federal courts . . . and you would just be seeing the crowd chasing the visions of pots of money at the end of the cruise ship rainbow.

However it shakes out, if these cases succeed, I suspect that the cruise business will decline in capacity and increase in cost, which usually spells doom for an industry.

$5000 a month for life? Nice retirement plan. Could probably afford to take some cruises . . . oh, wait.

Friday Reading

CDR Salamander: Fullbore Friday with a short but too familiar note.

Been a busy week, but a GREAT way to start the weekend is to read Fred Fry's Maritime Monday 127 featuring the Maersk line and setting you up for next Monday - so you can now enjoy two working days of reading about maritime stuff!

Also at gCaptain- the M Ship Stiletto goes to war - the drug war. See also here:

The Pentagon’s high-speed, shallow-draft “Stiletto” ship, designed and built by M Ship Co., LLC, completed a successful 6,000 nautical-mile deployment on a drug interdiction and apprehension mission in the waters off Colombia, the Bahamas and the Florida Straits. The deployment was capped off by a dramatic, high-speed chase of a “go-fast” boat in shallow waters near the Florida coast that resulted in the apprehension of three suspected smugglers.
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The chase lasted more than two hours at speeds between 40 and 50 knots. When the smugglers realized they could not outrun the Stiletto, they headed for shallow sand bars and reefs, not realizing the draft of the intimidating-looking ship was just 2.5 feet.

Speaking of the drug war, the Navy/Coast Guard team snagged another semi-submersible drug runner, as noted here, and there are more photos available here. UPDATE: More photos here.

For those of you pondering naval strategy, Steeljaw presents the latest issue popping up (literally), the Russian SLBM Developments.

UPDATE: Add to your list of groups upset or "concerned" about Somali pirates: chemical shippers, Republic of the Philippines, shipowners and maritime unions...