A Morning to Remember

By James Kelly

The Prinsendam fire kindles concern about safety at sea

"Every day is a day of joy aboard the M.S. Prinsendam. Six passenger decks are devoted to the luxurious vacation life you expect, with an ambience of intimacy and charm." So begins a lavish illustrated brochure touting the pleasures of cruising to Alaska and the Orient aboard the Holland America Line's gleaming 426-ft. Prinsendam. Notes the pamphlet: "Your Dutch officers are dedicated to making every moment memorable."

For 320 passengers and about 200 crew members, the final moments of the Prinsendam's latest cruise were all too memorable. As the ship steamed through the Gulf of Alaska on a scheduled month-long voyage from Vancouver to Singapore, fire broke out. All of the people aboard clambered into lifeboats and were rescued, but not before some of them were tossed about in lifeboats by stormy 25-ft. waves for as long as 13 hours. At week's end, eight days after the fire first broke out, the still burning hulk of the Prinsendam sank, leaving behind a lifeboat to mark its place and several unsettling questions about the safety of the 65 ships that take hundreds of thousands of Americans on luxury cruises each year.

Most disturbing of all is the fact that the Prinsendam, built in 1973 at a cost of $27 million, conformed to the safety standards of the 1974 International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea. The ship also met all Dutch standards, which are stricter than the international regulations on some matters. Just last May the Prinsendam passed a U.S. Coast Guard safety inspection.

Exactly what went wrong aboard the Prinsendam is to be determined by a Dutch investigation. Preliminary accounts indicate that a fuel line may have broken, causing diesel oil to spurt on hot pipes and burst into flames. The fire knocked out the electrical system, shutting down the fire-fighting pumps. Crewmen sprayed carbon dioxide from handheld extinguishers, but could not keep the flames from spreading to other parts of the ship through an air shaft.

The ship's passengers were rousted out of their rooms and onto the open decks at 1:30 a.m., most of them wearing only bathrobes and slippers. Under the shimmering northern lights, they listened to rousing renditions by the ship's chorus of Oklahoma! and other Rodgers and Hammerstein hits. Suddenly, around 6 a.m. bells rang, and Captain Cornelius Wabeke ordered: "Abandon ship!" With few exceptions, passengers and crew members went in an orderly fashion to their assigned lifeboats, as they had done during a practice drill three days earlier.

By the time the lifeboats dropped into the sea, three Coast Guard cutters and the 1,000-ft. U.S. supertanker Williamsburgh were headed for the Prinsendam, which by now was listing and billowing smoke. Cold and soaked with sea spray, some passengers kept up their spirits by singing Row, Row, Row Your Boat and Show Me the Way to Go Home. Recalled John Courtney, 69, a retired college art professor: "A lot of people were seasick, but there was no hysteria." By 9:30 a.m., helicopters began hoisting people from the lifeboats in baskets and ferrying them to the rescue vessels. Only a handful of passengers suffered any ill effects from the cold. Said Master Sergeant E.L. Nardi, an Air Force medic: "Eight hours later, we would have lost half of them."

Still, the success of the rescue did nothing to allay the concerns of experienced seamen. Said a U.S. maritime safety expert: "Something went wrong aboard that ship, something unnecessarily wrong." The Prinsendam was not equipped with a sprinkler system, but none was required because the ship was constructed with as few combustible materials as possible. It also had fire-resistant doors and insulated steel bulkheads. Maintained Gerrit Van Veen, technical director for Holland America Lines: "Even if the Prinsendam had a sprinkler system, I doubt whether this could have prevented the fire from spreading." Holland America officials contended that as the fire raged out of control, the Prinsendam performed superbly. The doors and bulkheads contained the blaze long enough to allow passengers to abandon ship. But the most disturbing question remains. If a fire can rage out of control on a ship supposedly as safe as the Prinsendam, is any cruise ship safe?

Of the 65 or so luxury liners that call at U.S. ports, few were built to standards as strict as those that governed the construction of the Prinsendam. The others were designed to meet earlier, less rigorous safety specifications and are registered in flag-of-convenience countries, such as Liberia and Panama, whose shipping regulations are not as stringent as those of The Netherlands and the U.S. Said a U.S. maritime official: "Their paint is fresh and they look nice, but a lot of them are floating firetraps."

By coincidence, the Federal National Transportation Safety Board last week issued a long-awaited report urging the Coast Guard to increase efforts "to improve fire safety on foreign cruise ships embarking American citizens at U.S. ports." The report was prepared as the result of a fire last year that destroyed the Italian ship Angelina Laura while it was docked at St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands. But some experts are calling for more decisive action. Said a U.S. maritime safety expert: "Somebody ought to force these foreign flag ships to meet at least the minimal fire safety standards of the U.S. The loophole that exempts them could cost hundreds of lives. --By James Kelly. Reported by Jerry Hannifin/Washington and Gavin Scott/San Francisco

With reporting by Jerry Hannifin, Gavin Scott

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