Cruise Ship Captain Breaks Down 8 Cruise Disasters In Movies And TV | How Real Is It? | Insider
Cruise ship captain Wendy Williams rates eight cruise ship disasters in movies and television shows for realism.
Williams breaks down how cruise ships deal with hitting an iceberg, rogue waves, and tsunamis in "The Poseidon Adventure" (1972); the sinking scene in "Titanic" (1997), starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet; and the capsized vessel in "Poseidon" (2006). She explains how cruise ships address health issues and passenger safety on board in "The Simpsons" S23E19 (2012), the boat jail scene in "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" S11E9 and E10 (2016), and the cruise ship holiday nightmare in "Triangle of Sadness" (2022), with Woody Harrelson. Williams also looks at the plausibility of cruise ship systems being corrupted in "Deep Rising" (1998), and the shipwreck scene in "Speed 2: Cruise Control" (1997), with Willem Dafoe and Sandra Bullock. She compares fictional depictions to real-life cruise disasters, such as the Diamond Princess cruise ship, and shares tips for travelers.
Williams has been in the maritime industry for over 30 years, with her experience spanning from passenger vessels to the fishing industry. She has been a cruise ship captain for about five years, and she is the first Canadian woman to captain a major cruise ship brand, Virgin Voyages.
You can follow Wendy here:
/ wendy-williams-408a7923
/ captainwendywilliams
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Cruise Ship Captain Breaks Down 8 Cruise Disasters In Movies And TV
I love that she acknowledges that some of these films are fun to watch but not necessarily accurate. Posiden Adventure is a classic like towering inferno so it’s great when the experts enjoy them as much as us.
Oh we do enjoy movies... Only we see much more movie mistakes in them... For example in Speed 2 there was tons of mistakes from professional point of view but its still fun to watch 😅
Well, The Poseidon Adventure did establish that the ship was top heavy and needed to take on more ballast and there was an incident during WWII when the Queen Mary was only a few degrees off from completely rolling over so maybe it’s not entirely inaccurate.
The funny part? Cruise ships love to play these movies on the TVs in passenger staterooms during your cruise.
For her to say the Titanic was super a very accurate reenactment makes the distater so much scarier
It WAS a lot scarier, because it would've been pitch-black. The movie has this greenish light, even after Titanic went down, when in reality, people wouldn't have been able to see their own hands in the lifeboats. Just sit in the dark and hear the screams of a thousand dying souls & a bunch of metal screeching, puffing, breaking... before the final plunge.
@@Annielee825 don't forget the water was also FREEZING. The actors and actresses were probably dealing with swimming pool water levels of temp and comfort.
@@timothyhouse1622actually, the water was pretty cold from what I heard. Kate Winslet almost got hypothermia. Of course not as cold as in real life
Distater or Dattater?
Well, there's a few things to note about the accuracy of the film that the presenter probably wasn't aware of (after all, her expertise lies in Cruise Ships/Ocean Liners in general, not Titanic specifically). One is that, as the watertight doors were closing, the workers in the stokeholds did not need to go through the doors, as each compartment was fitted with escape ladders, which reached above the watertight divisions (also what she says about the watertight bulkheads not being entirely watertight isn't entirely true, as once all of the doors were shut, the bulkheads were completely watertight, and those doorways were 100% necessary for navigating the ship). The other is that, there were not locked gates all over the ship's interiors as depicted in the film. The main issue was that the escape routes for third class weren't as clearly labeled as they could've been (anyone that couldn't read English had no way of knowing where to go), and third class in general had no direct access to the uppermost deck which had all of the lifeboats (AKA the Boat Deck). The Boat Deck was divided into the Officer's Section, the First Class section, and the Second Class section. There was no Third Class section for this deck. Another issue is that the Boat Deck got so crowded with First and Second Class passengers during the sinking that Third Class had to wait by the Poop Deck until enough people had gotten off the ship (by which point, most of the boats were gone). They were not trapped inside the ship as the movie depicts, though, as they were able to freely access the exterior spaces that were dedicated to their class (which were at the forward and after ends of the ship), it's just that those spaces had no boats.
A note about the air pockets she mentioned... after the Pearl Harbor attacks when work was being done to drain and refloat the USS West Virginia, the bodies of three sailors were found in a room by salvage crews with food and fresh water. There were marks on the bulkhead wall indicating they had made it 16 days until air ran out.
Weren't recovery crews able to hear men banging inside a couple of the ships after Pearl Harbor? I seem to remember hearing about divers from recovery crews dealing with PTSD (or what we would know as PTSD today) after working on those wrecked ships because of that.
@adamolupin absolutely. And many of those men who were banging were never able to be saved. A layer of tragedy that tends to be a little less reported on from that Day of Infamy.
@@johnniemiec3286 Is it a less reported aspect? I remember hearing about that in middle school.
@@sithlordzach8418 You had an exceptional teacher, then. USS Oklahoma, USS West Virginia and USS Utah (which was a gunnery training ship at that point) all apparently had men trapped for several days before they asphyxiated. The Kursk also had men live about a week after it sank.
So sad!!!
Hello, naval engineer here. Please, bring this lady more often to the channel. I really enjoyed it, she explains everything very very well.
Great video! She mentioned that the Titanic didn’t know that there was ice, but they had actually received multiple warnings about an ice field, which included the fateful iceberg. Other ships in close proximity to the ice field slowed down, but the Titanic went full steam ahead into that ice field.
To be fair though, going full steam ahead through an ice field was standard procedure for the most part. Better to get out asap instead of wait around if it can be done.
@@Billzor991 Wasnt it because the captain wanted to be in New York in time for the new to run its arrival in the morning paper?
@@kilikus822 It's very much a hearsay thing, only one person ever confirmed that that conversation may have taken place. Really, you want to get across the ocean fast, but not like, a full day early because then you probably aren't going to get a berth.
@@kilikus822 Not likely. I know there's a scene in the movie to effect, loosley based on one person's testimony, but the ship wasn't even traveling at full speed and iirc one of the boilers wasn't even lit.
The ships that slowed down or stopped could actually see the ice, they didnt slowed down or stopped because of some radio messages. The first thing of ice that the titanic could see was the iceberg she collide with. And the Titanic wasnt the only ship that did go on cruise speed into the ice field, the Carpathia even turned the heating off to get more speed.
If I remember correctly, the Poseidon adventure was inspired by a real event that happened to the RMS Queen Mary, which actually got hit by a rogue wave. It caused heavy damages and caused the ship to list dangerously, but in the end it took balance back and was able to go back to port. An italian liner was involved in a similar incident that destroyed a good part of the bridge, but it did not capsized either.
Yes, that happened to Queen Mary in December 1942 while serving as a troop ship and carrying 15,000 soldiers across the Atlantic. She attained a list of 52 degrees before she began to right herself.
Lusitania drove straight into a roque wave, and just knifed through it rather than riding over it, to the point where the bridge was shifted back a few inches.
Back in before WWII, the Japanese Navy had what was called "4th Fleet Incident" where a fleet of warships encountered a proper typhoon and have superstructure damage due to strong rogue waves. Among the 41 ships participating, 19 ships were damaged one way of another, including two destroyers having severed bows, of which one (Hatsuyuki) have 24 enlisted dead due to being in the severed bow. and that was STILL not enough to sink or capsize any of these ships.
Yup I believe in the 60s the Italian liner SS Michelangelo was also hit with a rouge wave head on and crippled her front superstructure. I think there were some casualties as a result of their rooms being crushed from the wave and by the aluminum superstructure being crumpled by the wave. But yeah scary stuff.
Titanic's older sister ship Olympic was struck by a rogue wave February 1926 while crossing the North Atlantic.
Wendy was amazing! Kudos for finding so many interesting and talented people from every corner of society, and making them react to our favorite movies :)
Yes, she is pretty darn good! I'd be very happy to be a passenger on her cruise ship (if I could afford it!!).
The Poseidon was less of a purpose built cruise ship and more of a conversion. She was an ocean liner planned to be scrapped after the voyage when she was struck by the tsunami. The movie also made it clear that the ship was top heavy and the captain intended to take on ballast, but the cruise director overruled his request. Granted, the original book had specified the wave as a rogue wave.
Cruise Director is the head of entertainment, they have no ability to tell the captain what to do.
In the original movie as well, it was a rogue wave that basically knocked it over. She obviously just watched a few seconds of the movie, which is how they do these. Only weak point in the series, except for the way they always go for the woman or POC rather than look for the most expert. Still well worth watching.
@@ZanHecht Well, in the movie, the cruise director threatened to fire the captain once they hit land.
@@lucastrask2838 actually in the movie, it was a tsunami. They mentioned an earthquake off Greece that formed it. In the original 1974 book, it was indeed a rogue wave.
He wasn't a cruise director, he was a representative of the company that owned the posideon
The Noro Virus is no joke. We had a premie baby in 2012, and he was in the NICU for 8 weeks, which means we were there for 8 weeks. I caught the virus at the hospital and it nearly killed me. I lost 40 pounds, about 20 too much. Still dealing with the damage almost 12 years later.
Glad you made it through
Yeah I lost 10 pounds from it. It was way worse than any other virus I had
@@johndoe-sh6bi thanks man. What does not kill us.....ruins our immune systems for life. Lol
We had someone come into our ED, it went through our staff like wildfire, the entire hospital had it within 72hrs
@@heathergarnham9555 it's a rough virus for sure
It would have been good to clear the difference between a cruise ship (ships from nowadays that are purely for pleasure) and an ocean liner (older ships that existed before the planes and that were the only method to get to the USA or across any ocean, like the Titanic is)
Ocean liner werent the only method to cross the ocean, you could also cross the atlantic on a freighter. Ocean liners were just ships with a fix route and a shedule, like a bus.
That's true, however is doesn't change how people see those old ships in the same way as nowadays ships @@wolf310ii
Titanic was very accurate. Very minor interior flaws, and the ship would have sunk a bit differently but she’s right. I’d actually give Titanic a 9/10 considering they put real life passengers at certain points where they were have claimed to have been on the real ship.
When you say it would have sunk differently, what differences are you thinking of? Not critiquing you at all just genuinely curious, I love the movie
Love that they included Titanic even though she technically wasn't a cruise ship but an ocean liner.
@@the_wrong_alice The Poseidon Adventure and the remake where also ocean liner
i think the chef on the top of the ship at the end hanging on, i think that was real which was cool
@@jada7109 In real life Titanic had a ~2-degree port list when she struck the iceberg. That became a ~5-degree starboard list within the first ten minutes post-collision, and between 1 and 1:30 am developed back into a ~9-degree list to port. Once the bridge went under the list almost completely vanished as the plunge began. Funnels 1 and 2 fell to starboard. Funnel 3 befell forward during the break and funnel 4 likely remained standing. The break happened just a couple minutes later just forward of the third funnel, though the funnel sat over the forward tower section which was essentially ripped away as the bow detached from the stern. The stern would not have made a large splash, and perhaps “gently” (a relative term, of course) settled after the break. The stern then went vertical and pivoted in the port direction to face the opposite direction as it slid under the surface. And throughout the sinking the lights got progressively dimmer to the point of being a very dim, ominous red glow when the plunge began, until finally going out at the breakup. The ship also only reached a maximum angle of about 25-ish degrees before she broke in half. The film shows the ship on an even keel, fully lit until the power failed, funnel 1 falling to port (or starboard if you use Fabrizio as reference-it’s inconsistent), breaking aft of the third funnel, funnel 4 falling after the break, the stern making a large splash as it violently crashed down into the water and not pivoting as it sank. When the plunge began in the film it did not show the ship suddenly accelerate as witnesses claimed, rather it was just a gradual acceleration based on the rest of the sinking beforehand. And the break happened at a steep 45+ degrees (I don’t know the actual angle used on the set) In the end, these differences are mostly non-issues except to those who know about them, and they hardly detract from the film’s quality. 26 years later it’s still the best live action depiction of the sinking despite its several historical inaccuracies and artistic license.
The crew of Titanic were expecting ice, they'd had numerous warnings and told lookouts to keep an extra close eye out for them. Unfortunately, they didn’t think it was necessary to slow down.
This was because it was protocol of the era to maintain speed, with the intentions of getting past the danger as quickly as possible. They felt they'd have sufficient time to spot and outmanoeuvre any ice and, should the ship take damage, nearby ships would be there to assist. It was NOT, however, believed that she couldn't sink and therefore no caution was needed. People do misconcept this often, so I'm leaving this here in case others in the comments see this, not saying you were saying it.
The lookouts didn't have the right equipment. What I read an officer forgot the key for the cabinet with the strong binoculars at home (or he didn't even make it to the ship?). In another video I saw a theory about a mirage covered up the iceberg till it was too late.
There were lots of factors in the striking of the iceberg. The first was how fast the ship was going, yes. But as someone else pointed out it was a standard practice to maintain speed. The second was that the lookouts did not have the right binoculars. And lastly it was unbelievably calm that night meaning there was no waves breaking on the ice so it was even harder to see.
@@foolsgold9993 No, thats not true, there were 2 sets of binoculars on board but those were for officials, not for the lookouts. Why? well because binoculars are ment to indentify distant objects not to locate them. The lookours had to locate an object quickly and sound the alarm, for the officers to take action or identify the object if necessary. Not to mention that binoculars dont work that well at night, and not to mention binoculars have a narrow field of vision. Thats another reason why lookouts didnt had them. You cant scan the horizon quickly with a set of binoculars, much less in the middle of a moonless night.
No, thats not true. They had an average cruise speed, they were not at full speed, there was nice weather, no wind, no clouds, there was no reason for them to slow. Not to mention they were already on a souther route precisely to avoid posible Icebergs. The Titanic didnt find an Iceberg but an Icefield, there were many scattered all around them, the survivors came to be aware of them when the sun was rising in the morning.
1:04 The crew of the Titanic WERE expecting ice and were warned by other ships multiple times before their journey and during their journey from other ships which had passed through earlier. The tragedy of the Titanic was due to a number of complications all adding up. The binoculars that the crew used to spot ice bergs were locked away due to a personal change and the person who had the key took it with him. So, spotters were using their naked eye to look for icebergs. When they finally did spot the iceberg, they were going too fast to stop in time and couldn't avoid it. Then the closest ship to them (the California if I remember correctly) did not receive their transmissions as early as they should have because the telegraph operator had gone to sleep. So boats had to come from farther away to help rescue passengers and crew. 2:08 Those drills were actually put in place BECAUSE of the Titanic's sinking. Prior to this event, there were no safety briefings to passengers or even enough lifeboats on the boat. The Titanic Museum in Belfast is an amazing display and a great place to learn if anyone is interested.
Key take away...only go on cruises in areas of calm waters. Also, avoid hurricane season. Also, don't try and sneak into the crew areas, and/or the crew bar to try to party with the crew. You will be caught eventually (ask me how I know...). Though it might be worth it, cause the best party on a cruise is at the crew bar, apparently.
Surprised she didn't mention the Carnival Triumph "poop cruise", which happened less than a year after that Simpsons episode aired.
So the best portrayal of cruise ship disasters was the one that wasn't even a cruise ship :)
finally someone else who noticed that
Hi James Cameron!!! I know with his titanic obsession, he’s gonna watch this! 😂
Please direct a movie about squirrels.
@@byever1 Did you know that Squirrel Stew used to be a common dish in America?
Diamond Princess probably wasn't the worst case scenario actually, it's sister ship the Ruby Princess probably tops it. Diamond Princess made a lot of people on that ship sick, but quarantine stopped it going further. Crew members at the start of the Ruby Princess' voyage it turned out had just flown in from high risk countries & were infected. Cruise left Sydney Australia, travelled to New Zealand & then back to Australia, both being virus free at the time, so the obvious signs of the virus spreading onboard were missed until a week after 1000+ passengers had disembarked & flown to every state in Australia, plus to the US, Canada & a range of European countries, spreading the virus from the ship to all those locations, as well as having already spread it into New Zealand during the shore trips there during the cruise. Ruby Princess just got less attention outside Australia/New Zealand, cause it happened slightly later in the pandemic, so more was going on by then, taking the attention off that one
To be fair, the tables and chairs onboard the Poseidon being fixed to the floor isn't all that unbelievable, she's supposed to be a former ocean liner on her last cruise before being taken out of service, so she might still have had tables that were bolted to the floor. Granted, since she's modeled after the Queen Mary, which was launched in 1934, it's not very likely, since bolted down tables were already not a common thing anymore during that time, but there's still a slight possibility she might've been an exception.
Lol idk if I can sit in a chair that's bolted down unless it's on a slide so you can slide back in forth i would have fun with that
@@Heavymetalstonie420 Some old ships actually used to have chairs like that, but most back in the old days only had fixed chairs that couldn't move. By the time the Titanic was built, fixed chairs were no longer built onto newer ships
Inside the Titanic's bow section, there are table stands that can still be seen bolted to the floor in various sections of the ship, including what little section that remains of the First Class Dining Saloon. The table tops themselves stayed in place during the sinking and only got flipped off and over by the force of the bow's impact into the seafloor.
Queen Mary's dining room tables were bolted to the floor while she was in service. They were all removed after she got to Long Beach. The chairs were also attached to the floor with a decorative rope so that they could be moved enough to use. Unlike cruise ships, ocean liners were designed for, and often encountered, rough seas. They had a schedule to keep, and couldn't avoid storms. Even the QE2, which entered service in 1969, originally had furniture attached to the floor.
@@Heavymetalstonie420 have you never been to a bar with bolted down chairs?
This woman is like the real life captain Janeway from Star Trek lol I’ve worked under a female chief of engineering, nobody ever said anything like oh she’s too emotional lol or other s&xist things. Happy to see them represent in more online content.
It's because really it's us men who are emotional and illogical more often. I've seen it anecdotally, but also there's been studies that show men assign different weight to their own tendencies even when they're performing the same actions.
There's coffee in that iceberg 😂
@@ChargeQM hope she sees this, buddy.
Can't make it past her saying the crew of the Titanic weren't expecting ice. They had numerous warnings from other ships and Captain Smith ordered a more southern course than usual specifically to avoid the biggest part of the ice fields. The crew knew there was ice.
Yeah she immediately got something wrong.
I took it to mean they weren't expecting ice before the voyage, it wasn't part of their sailing plan
They were warned seven times about iceberg sightings in their voyage path. @@stillfoufou
I swear, so many people are overly biased for Titanic. I mean I like James Cameron but COME ON! Don't sacrifice facts for mere entertainment ffs
@Ks-101 Yeah, I don't know how she missed/overlooked that
Congratulations Ms. Williams on your Captain's post!
I take slight issue with her A) calling Titanic a cruise ship (she was an ocean liner, there is a difference) and B) saying that the crew of the Titanic weren't even expecting icebergs. MOST of the crew may not have been, given it was slightly late in the year for icebergs that far south, and worked in roles that had nothing to do with the actual sailing of the ship. However, the Titanic had received numerous reports of ice from other ships throughout the voyage, including 7 on the very day she hit the berg.
yup, that name calling is certainly not going to happen in reverse is it! No ocean liner captain is going to treat a cruise ship as being it's equal!
And if I recall the information correctly, it's been said that the lookouts saw up to three icebergs in their vicinity (but not path) that night before the one they collided with appeared out of the darkness.
Ah, another Titanic Person and Ocean Liner Snob! I was literally about to comment the same thing.
True Titanic wasn’t a cruise ship but how can you make a video about maritime disasters without mentioning Titanic
She said "nowadays we train for ice, back then they weren't expecting it", as in "the crew got no special training to handle ice before setting sail". Context matters.
Great cruise ship stability my front side. Them floating apartments center of gravity is just under the waterline. I’d say it’s takes the force of a feather to capsize it.
actually, a small correction, the doors on the Titanic were watertight, but the compartments were not sealed from the top, they were just there to slow or stop the flow of water trough the ship on water level
Let's be for real. The Simpsons usually get the based off real events fairly accurately. Almost too accurately...makes you wonder who is feeding them information.
In the movie Deep Rising, the Argonautica was sabotage personally by its owner, so its assume he also sabotage all of its backups.
She's Canadian, so I wonder if she is familiar with the "MV Queen Of The North" sinking. That was more of a long-range ferry than a full cruise ship, but what a debacle. The bridge crew were conspicuously absent from the bridge, so distracted they missed a course change point, and the ship (on auto-pilot) struck a seamount/rock, and sank. Not Canada's worst nautical disaster, but fairly recent and infamous.
I was surprised and happy they covered Deep Rising. Really good horror/action movie
Omg!! I love this!! What a great idea to bring experts to react to these scenes!!! Love it!!! .)
If I remember correctly, one of the first documented (video) of a Rogue Wave happened on a Deadliest Catch boat, Aleutian Ballad in 2005. It turned the boat 90 degrees before it self righted.
Really enjoyed this! You are very knowledgeable!
Thank you captain . Great commentary
Triangle of sadness is so haunting!
Interesting video as usual! Missed opportunity for an Avenue 5 clip though :)
Really good stuff, both reassuring and entertaining.
This was fun. Thanks for the knowledge, Captain.
Thank you for the info. Capt. Wendy!
The Sewol Ferry was an example of how long a capsize can take.
EDIT: It turns out I'm wrong! Most of the gates were not locked and even some of the locked ones could easily be hopped. Original comment below for context. The locked gates on the Titanic that are shown in the movie ABSOLUTELY happened. Cameron proved that with one of his submersible dives. They literally locked the third class off.
No they didn't. There were a few gates that were locked, but many of the gates could be stepped over, and there were also emergency doors leading from third class into first and second class and even directly to the boat deck.
@@ChrisCooper312 You are correct! I tried to find the documentary where I swear I saw Cameron talk about this and couldn't find it; all further googling yielded "there *WERE* gates to 3rd class, but the main one was open and most other gates were hip height and could easily be jumped". So there might have been the occasional full height gate the crew didn't have time to unlock, but mostly the gates were open. Just what you said. Thanks for correcting me!
Man I love these videos.
I love Deep Rising. It's such a campy, truly 90s action horror movie.
"Is it advisable to go up or down?" "I mean the ship is sinking" Gem
10:46 That, looks terrifying. Being locked in an enclosed space on a ship in the ocean.
Although it's not a dramatic as the ones covered here, I've always wondered about the scene in 2012 where the bigger incoming wave moved the ocean liner and slammed into the dock. Maybe it's assumed they did inspect it and deem it safe, but they didn't show it for the movie's runtime sake, but it appears they continued to board the ship and have it depart like nothing happened. Would they still let a ship go out after an impact like that? It seems to me that they would take it out of service to do a thorough check of the damage.
I remember watching "Poseidon Adventure". I was probably 5-6 years old, I was sick at the time, the ambulance arrived at night, and I was watching a movie in bed, wrapped in a blanket. I remember that the doctor was very nice. And for me it was all one big adventure. Years later, my parents told me that they almost turned gray because of me when I was so seriously ill, even though for me it was nothing more than hmmm... not a very serious illness. A great movie, but I'm writing this out of sentiment. :3
Watching the Poseidon Adventure is one of my first memories from when I was 3 or 4
There was a salvage crew recently that sent divers into a capsized ship several days after she capsized and they found a guy still alive.
I love how she's like, "nah, this is just dumb"
How many times do we have to say this. Titanic was NOT A CRUISE SHIP
I highly recommend the channel Ocean liner Designs for any inquiry towards TITANIC and ships of that Vintage 1:33 minor correction : The watertight doors did their job perfectly, what allowed flooding to progress aft of the points of impact was the fact that the compartments were not closed watertight at the top. It gets even mentioned within the movie that the Bulkhead only went up as high as E-Deck, some went up higher, when they should have been reaching up to at least B-Deck with a firm connection to make the compartment as watertight as possible.
I enjoyed listening to this lady!
LOL...In the Simpson's case, the ship was called "Royalty Valhalla!" Hilarious!
I would feel super Comfy wiht Captain WIlliams at the helm of any ship. Super informative, and lovely Lady indeed!
I love cruise ships, it's amazing they got a captain for the video
As we know, Captain Smith cancelled the lifeboat drill that was scheduled for the morning of April 14, 1912, for unknown reasons. After the Titanic disaster, drills are mandatory.
I heard he cancelled it because he wanted one more church service before they arrived.
There had already been three lifeboat drills prior to that. One at Belfast as part of the Board of Trade certification, then one at Southampton a few hours before sailing, and finally a third as part of swinging out the two emergency cutter boats 1 and 2 on the starboard and port sides.
@@mikedicenso2778 Yeah, the first drill was the most extensive of the three where all 16 of the clinker built boats were lowered down and at least six where brought all the way down to the water. And a number of the men had served on Titanic's sister Olympic, in particular, Chief Officer Wilde, so they had some experience with these types of davits and boats. But it is a HUGE myth that Titanic's crew never had any lifeboat drills or the crew any experience whatsoever with them.
I love these videos, look forward to the next one. Wendy was great.
Agreed.
Amazing captain
What's in common with many big cruise ship catastrophes has been staff that DOESN'T know or follow the safety/emergency protocol. Luckily learning from past mistakes does occure.
On ships having pockets of air where crew or passengers could survive: When the USS Arizona was sunk during the attack on Pearl Harbor many sailors reported hearing the sound of knocking from inside the hull and believed it to be crew trapped inside. The question for them wasn't if they were alive but how soon they could cut through the armor of one of the most powerful battleships of its era to rescue them. In the end I don't think any of the crew retrieved were still alive by the time they got inside but one heartbreaking story was a group of 3-4 sailors trapped inside a supply room with a calender where they'd crossed out all the days they'd been trapped with December 24th, two and a half weeks after the attack, being the last day they crossed out.
That wasn't Arizona, that was USS West Virginia (BB-48) who were trapped for 16 days before their air ran out. USS Oklahoma (BB-37) also had trapped men when that ship capsized, but 32 were eventually rescued.
So cool to see “It’s Always Sunny”
What an awesome guest to have on and hear her thoughts about nightmare fuel!
The only 1 they left off I wanted to see her rate is The Last Voyage from 1960.
An AED is not a “super medical procedure”. While I am trained the machine talks you through it. I think they need to be anywhere a lot of people congregate.
Yup, exactly! and anyone that needs one needs one immediately, it would be inappropriate to transport them to a medical bay before using it! Presumably in that scenario, that 1 doctor & nurse she talks about being onboard are going to be rather busy too, so it's more than believable if there is an AED on the wall that anyone that's learnt to use it in the past would know to grab it off the wall & use it in that situation. There are a LOT of them attached to walls in various places where people gather in my city. From my understanding, they are always alarmed, so if anyone pulls one off a wall, it effectively, automatically alerts security & anyone else that can assist & is in the area as to the medical emergency - all while preventing theft of them :)
She was very interesting to listen to. Thank you Captian Wendy Williams 🙂
The ship that was exploded by pirates, isn’t actually a cruise ship but a Greek yacht named Christina O My great grandmother was the accountant when it was owned by Aristotle Onassis.
02:10-ish. If I recall it correctly the gate was actually closed, to keep the third class passengers away from second and first class because of lice I think. Ocean Liner Designs has some really really good and well researched videos about the Titanic and other marine vessels.
it wasn't locked tho
I have seen the 3D designs by similar folks as Oceanliner designs, and 3rd class had their own access to the rear outside decks (from which it would have been easy to climb stairs and over short gates to get to higher outside decks (unless those were guarded). Some of the inside gates were to allow reconfiguratio of areas to grow one class and shrink another.
The problem with the Titanic is they were just starting to have our modern notions of how to do things. The 3 different classes was partially social distinction and partially because of requirements avoiding outbreaks. This is 1912, and the previous times there was no large ocean vessels carrying people across with such distinction. In Pirates of the Caribbean a certain chunk of your people were almost guaranteed to not make the voyage.
There were no gates. Let alone locked ones. The design of Titanic itself prohibited that, as some cabins could be converted to the next higher or lower class depending on bookings. Imagine having to rearrange doors & corridors on every voyage. Third Class passengers had access to their decks at all times, unfortunately, those were not the ones with life boats. Signage was bad & English only, so by the time they would've found their way to the right deck (which was possible, just not encouraged, let alone signposted), a lot of boats were gone.
Yep, these gates locking people in just simply did not exist onboard Titanic. Some gates did exist, but only very few of them, and not in places where you could keep the whole of third class locked away.
The Titanic had received multiple ice warnings. And there were even warnings received by the radio room guys that never reach the bridge.
She said "nowadays we train for ice, back then they weren't expecting it", as in "the crew got no special training to handle ice before setting sail". Context matters.
But titanic was an ocean liner. Not a cruise ship
yup, Its sole purpose was as a transport link
What’s interesting is that a rogue wave almost sank both Lusitania and Queen Mary.
There are so many amazing videos about the Titanic Disaster. Oceanliner Designs has a few of these videos. There was one that said that one of the reasons why the Titanic didn't sink faster was because the captain was so experienced, that he "drifted", making the damage far less. He also has a video detailing the Carpathia, that came to the aid of the Titanic, in the captain's journal it said that when the sun came up he was shocked that somehow the Carpathia avoided striking an iceberg, since they were in an ice field surrounded by icebergs. Also Ask a Mortician has an interesting video about the tragedy of the SS Eastland, that capsized in Chicago, and how it was caused by a lack of safety procedures and inspections.
*Carpathia :v
@@zammich3649 Thanks. Brain where are you? 😄
In with Titanic there was a lot of factor events that caused the tragedy and a lot of misinformation as well...The Titanic was equipped with more life boats than what was actually acquired at the time...The role of life boat was different than what is today. The life boat was designed to ferry passengers from one ship to another not to wait on another ship in open ocean. The day before the ship struck the iceberg there was a evacuation drill that was scheduled however for unknown reasons it was canceled would have made a difference I doubt it. The binoculars were missing as well however the lookouts would not have been using them at night to look for icebergs at the time in calm waters anyways. it was easier to spot water breaking against the iceberg at night with the naked eye...They also received several reports about icebergs from several ships including one just hours before midnight from the SS. Calfornian that had stopped just outside of the iceberg field and was only an hour or so away from the Titanic...It was common practice to speed through a iceberg field and not uncommon in 1912
The binoculars weren't missing. They were in a locker and the guy who had the key was taken off the ship and he forgot to hand over the key, meaning the lookouts couldn't use the binoculars.
The binoculars WERE there and were on the bridge. Standard practice was to use your eyes to spot obstacles and use the binoculars to CONFIRM the obstacle. Binoculars have a smaller perspective than our eyes hence why lookouts always used their eyes to spot anything because they could see something out the corner of their eye and notice it while the binoculars would blind the person from that side until they scanned in that direction. Even if they used binoculars, it wouldn't be helpful anyways as it was nearly pitch black and the lookouts barely spotted the berg in time to react to it at all.
so how long was the sinking ship supposed to stay afloat for, so as to ferry all the passengers to another ship & then return & be hoisted up again to fill with another load of passengers to do the same? The last 2 lifeboats were NOT launched from Titanic, because the ship sank before there was time to launch them, so this nonsense justifying the lifeboat ferrying is just that, total nonsense, since it would have taken much longer to do that than to launch all lifeboats once & there wasn't even time for that with the set up titanic had. Additionally, there was no reason the lifeboats couldn't form their own "rescue ship", no reason why they couldn't move a safe distance form the ship & tie to each other & even transfer passengers from half empty lifeboats to put all into one to fill it & then send the then empty lifeboat back to be hoisted up again to collect a fresh batch of passengers - well no reason other than there not being enough time ot do that before the ship sank!
@@mehere8038 There was a ship that sank before Titanic, I forget the name, that stayed afloat for over 9 hours thanks to the water tight compartments. The lifeboats around Titanic had some consolation happen so the empty ones could go back to rescue more people, but the water temperature killed people too fast for them to rescue all that many from the water. The Titanic was designed to withstand a ludicrous amount of damage, but what happened went beyond what they thought could happen at the time. Maybe do some research before judging the situation so harshly
@@fnaffoxy1987 The S.S. Republic is the ship you're thinking of. It was rammed by another liner off Massachusetts, but its compartments and watertight doors kept it afloat long enough for all lifeboats to be filled and launched. Not to mention it was the first ship to send out a distress call and other ships were on the scene, using their lifeboats to rescue Republic's passengers. The only ones who died were from the collision. Republic's sinking is what gave those aboard Titanic a false sense of security.
I love that they added the Sunny Episode in this 😂
Captain Wendy has one badass job!
She has a lot of faith that staff would not block guests from using exits… because they’re not supposed to… I guess? Nevermind that it happens in practice.
I like how she's saying "oh no, that couldn't happen like that, we have checklists!" We know what happened to costa concordia, lady! 😂
Oh, she mentioned it
Finally someone who is doing what we are here for, information. She isn't condescending or over dramatic. The bots in the comments seems to be mellow too.
She kinda is actually, when she treats Titanic as if it's a cruise ship. It most certainly was NOT & that's really condescending to say it was
@@mehere8038 Not at all. But you said “actually kinda” so you instantly killed the weight of your words anyway. She was objective and informative, not biased at all. Just because people died for being stupid, it doesn’t change facts. It was made for entertainment and was literally a commercial ships riddled with class divisions and sexism. Tired of people treating it like a sacred thing just due to deaths, it’s sickening how bias can make delusions.
@@Gnossiene369 Well that's an ignorant comment isn't it. I suggest you research the differences between an ocean liner & cruise ship. She effectively compared car accidents, being an experienced uber driver, but then threw in a scenario where a military tank hit a regular car & commented on that as if the tank was just another model of regular car that any uber driver would be driving on public roads. She's not the captain of the Queen Mary 2 is she & never has been, therefore, she has no experience in ocean liners - since the QM2 is the ONLY ocean liner still in operation in the world today & therefore the ONLY modern passenger carrying ship on par with Titanic. QM1 showed the difference very clearly when it survived a rogue wave, saving over 11000 souls that would have perished had they been onboard a cruise ship instead of an ocean liner
I saw Poseidon Adventure when it was released. I was in junior high school, it played in a double feature with Evel Kneivel. Those were the days of fun movies.
I totally understand the complete implausibility of The Poseidon Adventure, but….. I still absolutely love that movie. I just suspend disbelief (as you have to in order to enjoy many, ms y movies). Also, how can you not love Maureen McGovern - There;s Got to be a Morning After…
In terms of air pockets... some members of the crew of USS West Virginia survived inside an air pocket for 16 days after Pearl Harbor.
I like her. She gave interesting explanations.
I was waiting to see if she would give an expert opinion on whether or not Rose should have let Jack stay on the door.
The gates on titanic would have been locked like they were in the movie, jack and rose were coming from what wouldve been the lower class of the ship where they would have locked the gates to keep lower class people in to give high class the priority. Also, guests likely would not have had the typical safety walk through, as well as the fact that they took far less precautions then. Many of the modern day safety precautions were derived from the Titanic tragedy.
this is pure myth. There were no high gates on Titanic, let alone high, lockable ones. In fact some passengers did encounter "gates" on titanic during the sinking, they just stepped over them. We're talking the sort of gates that people today use to keep puppies out of certain areas of their house, no higher
@@mehere8038 that's...not true.
@@laylahutcheson3859 reputable citation required please. You need to do your research, it is absolutely true & that is VERY easy for you to verify! Back then the lower class didn't DARE break the rules & try to get into areas they were prohibited from, so there was simply no need to cage them in! They were, after all, the majority of the income for ships like Titanic, so they weren't going to be abused
That was phenomenal! Please can you come back and do more! 👏👏👏👏💅💅💅
I like her. She is very smart yet very charming. No doubt a great captain ☺️
At 4:00 that was a heck of a hand grenade. Unless they ignited some fuel storage that just wouldn't happen.
love how they put ocean liners on a video that clearly says cruise ships in the title
The scene of Triangle of Sadness had nothing to do with food poisoning or norovirus - it was mass sea sickness from being in a massive storm. It was a relatively small luxury ship
Never name your ship unsinkable.
Triangle of Sadness wasn't food illness, it was extreme motion sickness.
It was also food illness. It is very subtle but mentioned/hinted by one of the cook that the food will go bad, when the woman insists that every staff member have to go into the water.
10:00. The Carnival Triumph poop cruise of Feb 2013 would beg to differ.
Should of showed her the movie “the perfect storm” I would of love to hear her take on it
True, Titanic's compartment were not exactly watertigh, I mean they were between each other. But on top they were not, that was not a mistake, thats why we hear in the movie that the ship was designed to remain afloat with 4 compartments open to the sea, we hear in the movie that 5 got open but actually, Titanic got 6 of its compartments damaged, the problem with that is that with tha many compartments damaged the water level outside the ship at some point would be higher than the lowest bulkhead meaning that water was just going to keep rising. With 4 compartments that wouldnt have happened. And even with 6 damaged compartments it took the ship 2hs 40min to sink. And all that drama in the movie between the moment the water reached the Bridge, the ship split in half and finally sinking completely, all that happened in the last 15min of those 2hs 40min.
In speed 2 cruise control, the tanker had given orders for the anchors to raise, im not sure how long it takes for the anchor to be fully raise. When the cruise ship collided with the oil tanker, the anchor might've been halfway raised and thus, it swinged over and tore through the ship. (I might be wrong bcs as i said before, i have no idea how fast the anchors raise)
So cool but was the censoring at 13:45 intentional or AI mistake?
I’m so glad they bleeped out “heck”. Wouldn’t want any children to be scarred for life after hearing that word.
There’s a major difference between a cruise ship and ocean liner, in terms of form, design, function, areas of operation, patrons etc. Both are cool in their own right, but I feel ocean liners are historic and get unfairly overshadowed by cruise ships, hence this comment lol
I can't believe she gave a higher score to the Simpsons scene than Titanic! Mr. Cameron would very upset! Lol
So great to see someone who isn't just American! Congrats captain Michelle - we love your stuff. Keep it up
I think it's fair to note that while the large cruise liners cannot quickly roll over in the way depicted, certain other ships can. Roll on/roll off ferries are vulnerable to an effect where a relatively low amount of water on the car deck will slosh back and forth as the ferry sways normally, gradually gaining momentum until it has enough energy to turn the ship over. We know this because of one such ferry, I believe called The Spirit if Commerce or something similar, that rapidly capsized just barely after leaving port in Belgium because the ship had a low freeboard and the crew failed to secure the car deck doors quickly enough.
It's the MS Herald of Free Enterprise, which capsized near Zeebruge because the idiotic crew forgot to close the cargo doors.
But even then, ferries don't totally capsize when they take on water through the car deck. Estonia is a good example. Granted, it's debated whether she really sank because of her bow visor breaking off, but she definitely did not instantly turn 90 degrees. It took time until she was floating keel-up.
@@leDespicable I believe that the only reason Spirit of Commerce didn't flip over completely was that the water it was sailing in was too shallow. I don't know what ferry incident Estonia refers to, so I can't comment on it.
@@Rath460 Thank you for the correction.