Cruise Ships

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. -- The sudden lurch of the Crown Princess cruise ship last week that sent 94 passengers to the hospital was caused by a bridge officer's mistake, Princess Cruises said yesterday. But in an open letter to passengers posted on the Web site of Los Angeles-based Princess Cruises, President Alan Buckelew said human error was the cause and "the appropriate personnel changes have been made." Princess, declining to specify those changes, said the error was not made by the ship's captain, who continues to command the $500 million vessel, but by another officer who is no longer on active duty.

The photos from Emanuel and Janice Perlman's latest vacation are a little different from shots they took during other cruises. Along with photos of them smiling in tropical ports of call, they've got images of the medical triage area outside their stateroom and vans lined up to whisk passengers to the airport when the cruise was cut short. "We couldn't believe what we were seeing outside our window," Emanuel Perlman said at his Pikesville home yesterday. The couple were among about 240 passengers who were injured aboard the Crown Princess when the cruise ship suddenly tilted to starboard Tuesday afternoon, about an hour and a half after leaving Port Canaveral, Fla., on the last leg of a nine-day trip.

GLACIER BAY, Alaska -- I am aboard a cruise ship gliding slowly between snow-capped mountains that remind me of the art my parents hung on our living room wall back in Minnesota in the '50s. It was a large, translucent picture of snow-capped mountains, lit by an electric bulb behind it, and when guests came we made sure to turn it on. We were all quite proud of it, and I guess it was considered inspirational, in the sense of, "How can you look at this and say there is no God?" It occupied a place of prominence over the couch.

WASHINGTON -- In what could become the largest evacuation by sea in modern history, about 10,000 Americans and tens of thousands of European and other civilians are expected to begin boarding ships from Beirut today amid the escalating fighting between Israel and Hezbollah forces. The American evacuees are to be ferried to the eastern Mediterranean island of Cyprus on charter ships, watched over by U.S. Marine and Navy jets and warships that will escort the vessels through an Israeli blockade of Lebanon and guard against other threats, according to U.S. military and civilian officials.

With clockwork precision, every major cruise line dispatches vessels to ports in New England and Eastern Canada in fall. These annual pilgrimages enable cruisers to gawk at landscapes aglow in gold, red and amber. And now is the time to plan your autumn outing. Options abound for cruising to the region's seaside hamlets and historic cities, but keep in mind that these itineraries are popular and fill up fast, especially for sailings at the height of leaf-peeping season. A number of lines sail these waters for an extended period -- typically starting in May, when travelers still will get the cultural flavor of the region, albeit without the blazing colors that cruises in September and October bring.

While other cruise ship passengers lounge in deck chairs, Douglas Ward is peering under his bed, running a finger along a deck to check for dirt, making a mental note at lunch that -- horrors -- the butter is in packets, not in "proper little iced dishes." "I'm not really snooping," he says during a phone interview from his home near Southampton, England. "I'm observing." That's his job. Ward is author of the Berlitz Complete Guide to Cruising & Cruise Ships 2006, which evaluates 269 ships, large and small, budget and luxury.

Royal Caribbean International has put to rest the skeptic's question: "What's there to do on a cruise ship?" If the line's new Freedom of the Seas is any indicator, the answer is "everything." The 160,000-ton vessel, which debuted last month and nudged out the Queen Mary 2 as the largest ship afloat, brings with it an ever-widening world of whiz-bang amenities. Frankly, there's so much to do onboard this behemoth, it could stay put and not sail anywhere at all. Freedom -- huge and jam-packed with options -- really mimics a city at sea. (If you include its elevators, you could say it even has a local transportation system.

Passengers boarding cruise ships in Baltimore used to have to make their way past tractors and boxes of cargo and had to use makeshift bathrooms in trailers. But that's now a shabby memory: State officials unveiled a new $13 million cruise ship terminal along the South Locust Point shoreline yesterday. "Our customers will no longer have to drive around Dundalk Marine Terminal dodging trucks and loading materials," Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. said during a ribbon-cutting ceremony that included onlookers wearing Hawaiian leis and a steel drum band playing Bob Marley and other Caribbean-inspired tunes.

Cruise ships may be glamorous, but many cruise terminals aren't. Stashed next to freight docks and container vessels, they have all the ambience of warehouses, which, in fact, some once were. "Cold and sterile" is how Douglas Ward, author of the Berlitz Complete Guide to Cruising & Cruise Ships, describes a typical passenger terminal. That may be changing. Cruise terminals, one-time stepsisters of industrial ports, are turning into Cinderellas. Their benefactors, the cruise lines, are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to rejuvenate old facilities and build new ones as the lines ride a wave of growth.

A cruise ship fire March 23 that killed one person and injured 11 has prompted an investigation that could bring about changes affecting consumers and the cruise industry. The 3 a.m. blaze aboard Princess Cruises' Star Princess, sailing from Grand Cayman to Montego Bay, Jamaica, swept through 100 cabins on the four-year-old vessel, melting balconies along three upper decks, charring interiors and leaving a large blackened section on the port side of the 18-deck mega-ship. Now officials are asking how this could have happened on a comparatively new cruise ship, built to the highest international safety standards designed to prevent such a disaster.