Collisions and Groundings

The final score today: under-water rocks – 2; cruise ships – 0.

Cruise Critic reports that a Hurtigruten cruise ship ran aground and took on water in a Norwegian fjord north of the Arctic Circle.  The 490 passenger Kong Harald had to wait for the tide to lift the cruise ship off a rock at

Costa Concordia Cruise ShipNewspapers in Europe are reporting on the contents of the legal submissions made by the Italian prosecutors who have been collecting evidence regarding the Costa Concordia disaster.

Sky News has an interesting video which you can watch here

You can hear about 5 year old Dayana Arlotti who drown along with her father after

A commuter ferry slammed into a dock in lower Manhattan this morning during rush hour, injuring more than 50 people commuting into New York City. Newspapers report that at least two of the ferry passengers were critically injured.

CBS News states that the accident involved the Seastreak Wall Street. The New York Times states

Costa is back in the news with a widely reported incident where the Costa Pacifica cruise ship violently struck a piling in the Port of Marseille this morning. The cruise ship sustained a gash of around 8 meters long, which luckily is above the waterline. 

Costa down-played the incident stating that the damage was just

Yesterday I blogged about a near collision which allegedly occurred between Royal Caribbean’s Liberty of the Seas and a small Italian fishing boat, the Angela II, which is based in Civitavecchia.   

You can read my article: Royal Caribbean’s Liberty of the Seas Nearly Runs Over Italian Fishing Boat. The article was based on

CNN iReport contains a first hand account from a passenger describing a collision between Silversea Cruises’ Silver Shadow cruise ship and what is being described as a Vietnamese container ship near Halong bay, Vietnam. The report indicates damage to both the cruise ship and the container ship.   The passenger’s account and a photograph of

Cruise Ship Disasters - MSC Poesia Following the spectacle of the Costa Concordia disaster, the cruise industry is starting its campaign to convince the public that cruising is safe notwithstanding the terrifying and grotesque images of the stricken ship.

Pro-cruise trade organizations line the Cruise Line International Association ("CLIA") will claim that incidents like this are "rare" and will characterize the Costa Concordia

Cruise Ship - Whale Strike - Speed LimitThe Mercury News in San Jose California reports that four environmental groups filed a petition with the federal government today seeking to force cruise ships and other large vessels to slow down in waters between San Francisco and Los Angeles in order to reduce the chances of whale strikes.

A San Francisco environmental group, Pacific Environment

The U.S. Coast Guard has issued a press release indicating that it is investigating an allision between Holland America Lines’ cruise ship Westerdam and ice in the vicinity of Yakutat Bay today.

The Westerdam was reportedly maneuvering through ice near Hubbard Glacier Tuesday evening when it sustained damage approximately 15 feet below the cruise ship’s waterline. The

My Brazilian friend, Alexandre Gonçalves da Rocha, alerted me today to an accident which recently occurred at the port in Buenos Aires when the MSC Opera struck the dock. 

Alexandre is a Brazilian who works as a maritime pilot at the port of Itajai since 1998 (no, he was not piloting this cruise ship!).  He writes a great maritime blog

A video has been circulating on the internet which shows the new Disney Dream cruise ship coming perilously close to colliding with Royal Caribbean’s Monarch of the Seas, just days before the Dream was christened in Port Canaveral.

A passenger’s YouTube video shows the Dream drifting very close to the Royal Caribbean cruise ship.