Today was liferaft day. Once a month we have to put on our lifejackets and go to liferaft training. It’s in the morning, and invariably I find myself rushing up to deck 6, half-asleep, without my first morning coffee. So despite the many liferaft drills I’ve attended, I don’t feel like I’ve retained very much, and wouldn’t be particularly useful in a genuine emergency.
In a genuine emergency, the passengers get the lifeBOATS, crew gets the lifeRAFTS. LifeBOATS are a) easier to enter and exit, and have standing room b) are motor-driven you can get the hell out of the way of the sinking ship. The lifeRAFTS have two friggin paddles that are so short you could play pingpong with them.
The rafts initially are deflated and packed into a white plastic cylinder about the size of your average garbage can, along with the paddles, flares, K-rations, and a bunch of other survival needs I can’t think of right now. They are then suspended off the side of the ship not far from the lifeboats.
There’s a certain rope you pull that makes the plastic can “explode” and the raft automatically inflates. Then there’s series of procedures for getting the damn thing onto the ocean, with 25 crew-people inside.
Today they had a raft opened up and sitting on the floor in an open area, and my “Liferaft 15” cohorts and I piled into it. It was crowded and uncomfortable, and really made me dread the idea of a genuine emergency.
Speaking of which, I’m still trying to get recruited as a tour escort for an excursion in Halifax, Nova Scotia, called the “Titanic Tour”. Like millions of other people I have a morbid curiosity about the Titanic story. And this tour is as morbid as it gets. Many victims of the disaster were taken over to Halifax, which was the closest port to the spot where Titanic went down. So the tour includes a cheery visit to a graveyard.
The only “intact Titanic deck chair in the world” can be found in the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, also included in this tour. So this is a very in-demand tour, and I’m running out of chances to see it as a tour escort.
Ship musicians are intrigued and amused by the story of the noble classical quartet who were ordered to get up on the outside deck of the sinking Titanic, and play cheerful music to all the people who were freaking out. Apparently they did this as long as they could stand upright. I really can’t picture myself with a keyboard on the open deck of a sinking ship, playing “Runaround Sue” or whatever. Procedures have improved since 1912, and happily I’d be in
Liferaft 15.
Today is day 32, this gig is 1/3 over.
4 comments:
Well, I can understand you not singing "Run Around Sue" while the ship is sinking, but I can see you playing "The Unicorn Song". Come on, you know everyone would just jump in..... or off....
OK I promise if we are ever both on a sinking ship and you feel the desire to play the Unicorn song, I will personally lead the dance - at least until my life raft, er, I mean life BOAT, is called. No promises under other circumstances!
Keep writing!
why can't they just throw in a few more lifeBOATS?? MAN!
I'd "go down with the ship"
Throw in a few more lifeBOATS?
There’s an interesting scene in the Titanic movie, where the female star (Kate Winslet) is walking around the Boat Deck with the architect who designed the ship. He admitted, somewhat furtively, that there weren’t enough lifeboats for everybody on the ship.
He had originally provided for enough lifeboats in his design. But the financial powers-that-be decided that the extra boats hampered the walking space on the Boat Deck, the area was too crowded for the rich people who wanted to have a nice stroll. And of course these rich people must be pleased.
AND, since Titanic was considered “unsinkable”, the lifeboats “weren’t really necessary anyway“. So they made the inane decision to remove SOME of the lifeboats, and keep the rest a) for show and b) to placate paranoid people who actually thought the ship COULD sink.
And as we all know, 94 years ago the Upstairs Powers-That-Be decided to teach us all a Lesson about Unsinkable-ness.
A Maasdam lifeboat holds 150 guests, a lifeRAFT holds 25 crew. You’d only need another 4 lifeboats to hold the entire crew. This makes Joe’s question even more poignant, why can’t they provide the extra 4 friggin lifeboats? I don’t have the Maasdam architect to consult on this, but you can bet your ass it has something to do with money. Six of those garbage-can-sized raft containers take up a lot less space than a lifeboat, thus a) more space for living accommodations, therefore more passengers you can shoehorn into ship cabins and/or b) more strolling-around room/passenger comfort.
I can’t help but think that in an actual emergency, something would go wrong in the process of lowering and inflating and captaining 20-or-so rafts, being that the operation might hinge on a middle-aged-piano player, or ditzy young hairdressers or dancers or photographers, or Indonesian kids who doesn’t understand English very well, or……. aw I’m just being paranoid right?
Well, I’ve decided to be wide awake for future raft drills
Post a Comment