Icy Rescue as Seas Claim a Cruise Ship

[jon1856]

November 24, 2007

Icy Rescue as Seas Claim a Cruise Ship

By GRAHAM BOWLEY and ANDREW C. REVKIN
They were modern adventure travelers, following the doomed route of Sir Ernest Shackleton to the frozen ends of the earth. They paid $7,000 to $16,000 to cruise on a ship that had proudly plowed the Antarctic for 40 years.
But sometime early yesterday, the Explorer, fondly known in the maritime world as “the little red ship,” quietly struck ice.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/24/wo...hp&oref=slogin

[DeltAlum]

I guess those lifeboat drills can come in handy.

[ASUADPi]

Okay I just heard about this on the news and seriously it reminded me of Titanic. But then I thought, how the hell did it happen, hitting an iceberg! I mean in 1914 when Titanic sailed and there was no technology and there were just TONS of mistakes, it was almost inevitable that something would happen to the ship. But I mean, come on, with today's technology how the hell did the captain and his crew not know an iceberg was there! That honestly makes no sense to me.

Here's a picture of the ship sinking and the stupid iceberg is in the picture. How the hell could they not "see" (via technology or hell someone looking outside) not see it. I mean it was the middle of the day.

[RACooper]

Ummm they knew the ice was around - that's the point of touring through the ice flows.

Anyways icebergs aren't always the pretty white things floating along the surface, and they got caught at dawn in grey waters with grey ice and got hit by a sub-surface small iceberg - basically they got smacked by 10000 year-old ice that's so dense it doesn't really break the surface... and alot this type of ice is floating around after the Larsen Ice Shelf started falling apart over the last five years.

[AGDee]

I think she's wondering like I am.. aren't there depth finders and radars and things that let you know where those are? Or, do they not work with ice?