Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The North West passage is an infamous graveyard of ships, where the weather can turn deadly without warning, and floating ice is an ever-present peril. But this arctic track record of disaster is not deterring the owners of the Crystal Serenity, and passengers reportedly paying a staggering $22,000 + per berth, from attempting a daring journey from Alaska to New York starting on August 16th this year.
A new Titanic? US and Canada prepare for worst as luxury Arctic cruise sets sail
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The loss of Arctic sea ice cover, due to climate change, has spurred a sharp rise in shipping traffic – as well as coast guard rescue missions – and increased the risks of oil spills, shipping accidents, and pollution, much to the apprehension of native communities who make their living on the ice.
It’s into these turbulent waters that the luxury cruise ship Crystal Serenity will set sail next August, departing from Seward, Alaska, and transiting the Bering Strait and Northwest Passage, before docking in New York City 32 days later.
The scale of the Crystal – 1,700 passengers and crew – and the potential for higher-volume traffic in the Arctic has commanded the attention of the coast guard, government officials and local communities, all trying to navigate an Arctic without year-round ice.
“If something were to go wrong it would be very, very bad,” said Richard Beneville, the mayor of the coastal town of Nome, which the Crystal is due to visit. “Most cruise ships that get here have passenger manifests of 100, maybe 150. This is a very different ship.”
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Prices for the journey aboard the 14-deck luxury liner start at nearly $22,000 rising to $120,000 for a deluxe stateroom – and this year’s cruise is sold out, according to the company.
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You know what? I wish I had a berth. I can completely understand why the ship is fully booked, despite the risk. The Arctic is beautiful, and utterly alien, compared to more temperate regions. I only visited the Arctic once in my life, a week in Bodø in April. The snow covered mountains, the familiar seaside sights, mixed with the utterly unfamiliar, the sun which hangs just above the horizon for 18 hours, before dipping into a brief twilight, the people, the strange landscape. I would love to see places like Nome, one of the stops on the planned route.
If it all ends badly, as seems a real possibility, at least everyone is embarking on this adventure with their eyes open – unlike the ridiculous ship of fools, the Crystal Serenity owners appear to be taking the safety of the passengers seriously.
If they get stuck we can release the emergency CO2 tanks
Here is my timeline for the cruise. Starting in June, we will begin to observe multiple op-eds and letters to the editor in major newspapers complaining about the amount of carbon pollution this trip will create. Towards the end of the month, the New York Times and the Washington Post will have lead stories condemning the trip. CNN and MSNBC will get on band wagon In July. By August, you will observe increasing number of people who have signed up for the trip, asking for their money back. Finally, the cruise organizers will issue a statement that they had decided to cancel the journey to avoid polluting the pristine arctic. You will have the usual anti-prosperity groups, such as Greenpeace and WWF, clapping in the background. No one will mention the ice was too thick to complete the cruise.
One assumes this vessel is rated for travel in polar waters, but I can not find trace of its classification currently.
Not to worry!
The cruise’s FAQs include this tidbit:
Each passenger is required to provide their own ‘rescue’ costs and by simple analysis, their own rescue service.
Paging our,canadian, pretty boy Prime Minister.
Will this vessel be allowed to sail, before they have an environmental assessment of their downstream Carbon dioxide emissions?
If imposing such a requirement on canadian pipelines after their approval is fine, surely a pleasure cruise will be held to the same standard?
Does the cruise ship company have a calculation for how much their ship and passengers CO2 emissions will warm the Arctic?
Sarc Off.
And what about the obesity problem amongst polar bears?
Offerring up such a buffet to starving bears, is cruelty to animals.
Of course if the passengers are Sierra Club Lawyers,they are probably safe from bears.
For at least one Eastern Arctic bear refused to eat the Sierra Club Lawyer he had caught, probably indigestible, even to polar bears.
Again, in the cruise’s FAQs:
So the passenger group sizes will be limited to ensure proper Polar Bear diet control? And non-lethal deterrents first, e.g. pepper spray, air horns?
Is our dear Susan Crockford getting to go on this cruise?
Perhaps we should take up a collection to send her to the Bahamas studying migratory fisheries and whatnot during next August?
Win-win for caGWers. If it makes it, it’s because of “Global Warming”. If it doesn’t make it, it’s because “Global Warming” has caused more “Climate Change” than the models predicted.
PS Sounds like it might be a fun cruise but I doubt I’d spend much time on the deck in the Arctic. 😎
The Captain of the Grey Goose and keeper of the NorthwestPassage201x BlogSpot unloads….
http://arcticnorthwestpassage.blogspot.com/2016/03/perilous-arctic-passage-to-be-opened-up.html?view=sidebar
News from 2014:
“What many did not appreciate so far is that the Crystal Serenity, although built in France, was actually completed to Ice Class 1C.”
http://www.latecruisenews.com/2014/07/21/crystal-discovers-the-northwest-passage-other-cruise-news-more-beakaway-plus-orders-shipping-activity-by-royal-caribbean-shareholders/
Wikipedia on Finnish-Swedish ice classes:
In addition, the ice strengthening of the ship’s hull must be adequate to allow safe operation in the presence of ice with a thickness of 1.0 m (3.3 ft) for ice class 1A Super,
0.8 m (2.6 ft) for 1A,
0.6 m (2.0 ft) for 1B and
0.4 m (1.3 ft) for 1C.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish-Swedish_ice_class
Ice Class IC isn’t very impressive. As of this date (March 31) only ships of Ice Class IA are cleared for northern Swedish and Finnish ports. With icebreaker assistance of course. And this was a quite mild winter.
So by that standard, the ship would barely be fit to sail in the waters of Ontario’s cottage country in the winter, if some open water could be found…
If ice gets them, life boats are pointless. Walking off the ship would work better.
Surviving arctic weather and bears without even a tent would be, er, unlikely, though…
IMHO, they have near zero odds of rescue in less than weeks, and near zero odds of lasting that long… they are 100% dependent on hull integrity, without the hull for it…
Images of 1000+ passengers standing like penguins in blowing snow, those on the edge angling for a spot in the middle, come to mind… voyage of the Penguin People…
They may succeed, or go to their doom, or be rescued by heroes. I just want to see the video clip of the Bearing Straight transit from the perspective of Little Diomede. It would be one of those great contradictions that come along only every so often.
These cruise ships look top-heavy, but apparently they aren’t because all the heavy stuff is below the water line. But the very large area above the water line must act as a bloody great “sail”. I have the impression that on the typical cruises in warm waters, they manage to avoid storms by having good weather information (well everyone does these days) and running for a port if there’s a storm coming up.
If a serious storm arrives when they’re in the middle of the NWP, though, it could get nasty. Even turning into the wind could be somewhere between difficult and impossible once the ice starts jamming up. I wonder if a high wind on the beam could overturn a cruise ship?
I hope they have good weather forecasts. Rather them than me.
Bet dollars to doughnuts that when that cruise ship finally makes the passage, the media (much of it under the Rockefeller and Ford funded International Press Institute) will be all over it as another harbinger sign of global warming.
Last I checked, modern cruise ships don’t carry dogsleds, seal-hunting gear, ice tents, packed preserved food, or any of the other survival amenities that allowed 19th century polar explorers to live for a year or more on the ice when their ships became stranded, until the following summer loosened the pack and they could proceed. Good luck to them, I guess.
If any eco-yuppies on board ask their Apple tablets about Arctic survival, I hope Siri replies “Why the f*** are you in the Arctic?”
On a positive note, the polar bears will feast for months on the remains.
The cruise could succeed or end badly. Either way, the company and its passengers figure they’ll end up in the history books. If a winter cold front comes early and traps them in the ice, they could come to know what the ship’s name, “Crystal Serenity,” really means.
I sailed on the Crystal Serenity a few years ago from Montreal to NYC the last trip of that year in November. The ship is the epitomy of luxury. It is not fitted for hardship. Even that trip became uncomfortable from the weather. This is not a good idea. I wonder if they still require male passengers to bring a tux? Perhaps a required parka and dried food will replace that requirement.
It would make a great UN IPCC Love Boat, or harassment boat maybe.
Why is everyone so worried? Mr Gore assured us that the Arctic would be ice free by 2013. Relax everybody
It’s good news for the Polar Bears. Lunch being provided now that they can’t find their nosh on the melted ice.