[BITList] Worries on a Passenger Ship !

[Michael Feltham]

Here is an article written my Michael Grey, ex Lloyds List, the article is from the Sept.'09 issue of the MER magazine for IMarEST

THE  GRASS  IS  ALWAYS  GREENER

There will have been enormous interest generated last month when the new 122,000grt cruise ship "Celebrity Equinox" arrived in Southampton, to be revealed to the world's press before her maiden voyage.  Each successive new cruise ship has some amazing attraction that renders the ship unique.  Climbing walls and flume rides being old hat these days, and every new cruise ship coming fully equiped  with a shopping mall and balconies, the designers must be at their wits end to come up with something new which will gain those vital column inches in the travel trade press.

In the case of the "Celebrity Equinox", which was the biggest ship ever to have been squeezes out of the world's biggest shed at Meyer Werft's shipyard in Papenberg, the designers were brilliantly succesful in equiping this monster ship with her own croquet lawn.  This is none of your bog-standard Astroturf - this is the real deal; an enormous expanse of genuine turf laid on the upper deck, to delight passengers of a certain age, for whom the shopping mall might pall and who would not thank you for the climbing wall (lest they fall).

I suppose this means that to the myriad of surprising trades found on these curious and all-encompassing mobile liesure complexes, will be added that of groundsman, (and possibly the groundsman mate).  Somebody has to sweep away the worm casts, murder thedaisies, look out for maritime moles, roll and mow this huge sward.  One shouldn't underestimate the complexities of this job, either.  Preventing some fashionable passenger staggering across this immaculate turf in 7inch heels will require a great deal of the sort of diplomacy more associated wih cruise ships than croquet lawns.  And heaven knows what will be the consequences if a great slew of salt spray comes hurtling across the deck from some unanticipated rogue wave.  I kept three tomatoes on one ship I sailed in and that's how they met their grisly end.

And if you market "Celebrity Equinox" as the only ship on the planet with a real live croquet lawn, it better be fit to play on.  Which means that in addition to the manifold responsibilities of the Chief Engineer and his staff, will now be added the terrible job of maintaining the ship's motor mower in a pristine state.  Experience of motor mowers suggests that the average groundsman knows enough about engineering to break the starter cord regularly and bung up the machinery with wet grass, so this small but significant addition to the Chief Engineer's vast list of mechanical responsibilities could well dominate his life aboard ship.  You might think about it as a sort of 'mission creep'.

If the grass is too long, the passengers will be demanding their money back.  It might be worth indenting for a couple of sheep or even a dozen rabbits as auxiliary greenkeepers.  And the Master needn't look smug at the Chief's dilemma.  A 2 degree roll and there will be croquet balls from the Balaerics to Belize and further demands for substantial refunds from customers well versed in the compensation culture and class action.

It is no joke, this issue of one small and seemingly insignificant item of equipment dominating the thinking of everyone aboard a ship, almost to the exclusion of all else.  A friend who is Chief Engineer of a large tanker trading regularly into the United States tells me he is approaching a state of paranoia about the ship's oily water separator, and has started to dream about being dragged ashore in a US port by men with guns.  It is a new, well equipped ship and the item in question is 'state of the art'.  But that doesn't stop a stream of instructions, advice regulations and orders about the wretched separator and its use aboard practically every day.

This deep concern from ashore has now, he tells me, afflicted the ship, and his staff now regard it like a ticking time-bomb, with a team of about three people, each checking on the others, standing around every time the separator is used.Now he has started to dream of some frightful calamity afflicting the main engine, because everyone is focussed upon the need to ensure that not an ounce of oil ever enters the sea, and that vast quantities of documentation are completed by all hands, which may well cause that tell-tale first warnings of something really bad happening to be overlooked.

I suppose the recurent nightmare of mechanical failure or regulatory horror may well be replicated elsewhere.  Just lately, we are told, there has been a rash of machinery breakdowns, inevitably in places where they cause the maximum amount of embaressment, such as the middle of a Bosporus transit, or half way through the Suez Canal, or off a lee shore in a full gale and with poor holding ground.  The usual reasons are trotted out, ranging from people unfamiliar with their equipment, all this changing around of fuels, or the fact that all spare parts which were once carried are now left ashore.  But it could just be the 'preoccupation factor', of an insufficient number of engineers spending their waking hours trying to ensure that the purifier, or the donkey boiler, or the emergency fire pump is in working order.  On "Celebrity Equinox" it could well be the lawn mower.  One man went to mow.....
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