Word: prinsendam
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...well as news. Stewart MacKenzie, who heads the American Shortwave Listeners Club, loves the swaying music he hears from Radio Tahiti in the South Pacific. Others simply like to be on top of things. Short-wave fans were among the first to learn of the fire that destroyed the Prinsendam in the Gulf of Alaska last October and were able to follow rescue attempts, as other craft radioed their moves...
...story on the Prinsendam [Oct. 20] overlooks the excellent safety record of cruise ships over the past quarter-century. Cars, buses, trains and planes should have such a history...
...tragedies of the Morro Castle in 1934 and the Yarmouth Castle in 1965 taught valuable lessons that were well learned. The success of the Prinsendam rescue attests the fact. Let us all salute the disciplined and courageous men and women who followed the procedures in this great sea rescue...
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...
...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...