Cruise Ship Boneyard

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fredymac

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Seems like cruise ship economics is another area where things are a bit different. I would have thought there should be some kind of downstream market for these things other than a breakers yard. Its not like they churn out hundreds of these things every year. This picture is from Turkey so I guess these were used mainly for the Euro cruise market.

Cruise Ship Graveyard.jpg
 
This is the breakers in Aliaga, Turkey. They are one of the few places in the world that meet EU standards for safety and pollution control in regards to ship breaking (the other yards are in the EU and Brownsville, TX). These ships were owned by Carnival and Royal Caribbean. Following the COVID pandemic, cruising has been shut down. It costs millions of dollars a month to maintain these ships. So the decision was made to begin scraping the oldest ones. These ships are between 27 and 32 years old. They also have an almost complete lack of balcony cabins, which made them economically unviable. They did try to sell these ships to smaller lines, but almost all of those lines have collapsed and are no longer around to buy them. And considering that the cruise lines believe it will be years before the cruising market returns to pre-pandemic levels, it didn't make sense to retain these ships until they could be returned to service. And these are just the first ones heading to the breakers. Carnival has at least 3 more waiting for a plot to open up to be beached.
 
In contrast, there is plenty of video on www.youtube.com of old ships running aground in Pakistani breaking yards. Nobody in Pakistan seems to have heard words like "pollution", "contamination," "toxic chemicals," "carcenogens," "asbestos," "hard hats," "steel toed boots," "respirators," and all the other health and safety measures that are routine in First World shipyards.
 
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riggerrob said:
In contrast, there is plenty of video on www.youtube.com of old ships running aground in Pakistani breaking yards. Nobody in Pakistan seems to have heard words like "pollution", "contamination," "toxic chemicals," "carcenogens," "asbestos," "hard hats," "steel toed boots," "respirators," and all the other health and safety measures that are routine in First World shipyards.
," etc.
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Applies to Alang in India as well. And to a lesser extent in Bangladesh.
 
fredymac said:
Seems like cruise ship economics is another area where things are a bit different...... Its not like they churn out hundreds of these things every year.

[/QUOTE
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They are now a bit like Las Vegas hotels, except it seems to be cheaper to scrap the old rather than renovate and reinvent, and build new with the latest attractions to keep the pax coming back.

Here is the list of new builds due over the coming few years - 28 already scheduled through to 2023.
www.cruisecritic.co.uk

New Cruise Ships on Order

These are the new cruise ships on order for 2024 and beyond. See which new cruise ships are launching next!
www.cruisecritic.co.uk www.cruisecritic.co.uk

That was on top of 18 new ships in 2019 and 14 in 2018, many bigger than their predecessors. Currently the biggest is over 228,000 tons and carries (or would do but for the pandemic) over 5500 pax.

Asia Pacific Maritime (APM) 2020

18 – 20 March 2020 Singapore About Organizer Attend About Asia Pacific Maritime (APM) is the premier exhibition and conference in Asia showcasing a complete overview of the vessel sectors – services and solutions, technology,
www.marineinsight.com www.marineinsight.com
 
Or a very expensive white elephant. At a time when tourism is at an all time low and the larger passenger aircraft being struck off inventory, they show the worlds largest passenger liner? A bit like Airbus choosing this as the time to launch the A380. Ouch.
 
Foo Fighter said:
Or a very expensive white elephant. At a time when tourism is at an all time low and the larger passenger aircraft being struck off inventory, they show the worlds largest passenger liner? A bit like Airbus choosing this as the time to launch the A380. Ouch.
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Actually, the reverse is true for the cruise lines. The bigger ships are actually far more economical for them to operate. For example, the Oasis class from Royal Caribbean breaks even at under 50% occupancy while the older ships don't break even until 50-60% occupancy
 
SSgtC said:
Actually, the reverse is true for the cruise lines. The bigger ships are actually far more economical for them to operate. For example, the Oasis class from Royal Caribbean breaks even at under 50% occupancy while the older ships don't break even until 50-60% occupancy
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Economies of scale at work? Similar costs for a dozen restaurants, bars, and other entertainment facilities (and the ship itself), but more rooms to use them?
 
chimeric oncogene said:
SSgtC said:
Actually, the reverse is true for the cruise lines. The bigger ships are actually far more economical for them to operate. For example, the Oasis class from Royal Caribbean breaks even at under 50% occupancy while the older ships don't break even until 50-60% occupancy
Click to expand...
Economies of scale at work? Similar costs for a dozen restaurants, bars, and other entertainment facilities (and the ship itself), but more rooms to use them?
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Pretty much, yeah. A lot of the fixed costs are damn near identical. But they're spread out over a lot more passengers on the bigger ships. And having more capacity means that at even reduced numbers due to covid protocols, the big ship will still turn a profit while the small ones will just barely break even
 
Foo Fighter said:
Or a very expensive white elephant. At a time when tourism is at an all time low and the larger passenger aircraft being struck off inventory, they show the worlds largest passenger liner? A bit like Airbus choosing this as the time to launch the A380. Ouch.
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eh, you do realize that article was from 2018?
 
Just to kind of show why, let's use the Sovereign class (two of which are being dismantled at that shipyard) as an example. The ships are 880' LOA with a beam of 105' and a draft of 24'. That's remarkably close to the Essex class dimensions of 888'x103'x24' (SCB-27C/125A ships). Both ships are about 45,000 tons displacement. So I see why it sounds attractive. But here's why it's not.

An Essex class has 150,000 shaft horsepower installed to push the ship up to between 31 and 33 knots, plenty fast enough for flight operations. Even the Invincible class could get up to 28 during flight operations. The Sovereign class has only 56,600 horsepower installed with a fatter hull not as well suited to high speed steaming. Her maximum speed is 21 knots. That seven knot difference between Sovereign and Invincible may not sound like a lot, but that's a lot of wind over the deck lost when you're trying to launch or recover Harriers or Lightnings. To get the speed up to an acceptable level, you'll probably have to at least double the size of the installed plant. You may even need to give the ship a nose job.

Next, internal spaces. A carrier is very highly subdivided for safety. You can isolate down to very small spaces to contain flooding or a fire (see how Forestall, Enterprise and Oriskany were able to keep shipboard fires isolated enough to save the ship). Cruise ships don't have anything close to that level of subdivision. They can isolate flooding and fire to an extent, but not nearly to the extent a warship can. For a carrier, the internal spaces tend to built into the ship and pretty permanent (with the possible exception of berthing spaces which generally have some flexibility built in). Not so much for a cruise ship. Other than spaces designed for a specific purpose, all the cabins in a cruise ship are built as slide in modules that are then bolted to the deck. So that means your new carrier will have huge open flats throughout the ship. God help you if you suffer battle damage. Unless of course you're willing to spend the money to convert all those wide open areas to much smaller watertight spaces.

And let's not forget the more mundane issues. Like where are you putting the aviation fuel storage? What about the magazines? Weapons elevators? Where is the hangar deck going (and how much surgery is needed to give it enough overhead clearance)? What about aircraft elevators? How much ballast will you need to counterbalance the island?

By the time you're done cutting down the old structure, adding what you need, bringing the ship up to MILSPEC (or equivalent) and building all the new structures, the UK will you be looking at you funny and telling you that they could have built you a Queen Elizabeth class for less.
 
SSgtC said:
Other than spaces designed for a specific purpose, all the cabins in a cruise ship are built as slide in modules that are then bolted to the deck. So that means your new carrier will have huge open flats throughout the ship
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Makes me wonder how hard it would be to strip it all from the hull, bolt on a few large cranes, and essentially just have a flat top near the waterline for the ESB concepts or whatever they are calling their off-shore transfer bases these days (new buzzwords generated annually, seemingly).

Adding a bit of hangerspace and a suitable flight deck (rotary-wing/V-22) seems relatively easy from there.
 

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