The "Are You Ready To Cruise?" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Getting ready to go through the Panama Canal on our cruise ship.  Ship is immense and narrowly makes it into the canal.  The majority of the passengers stand with me to observe what we all paid to see.  

Passing through the Panama Canal. The
people in the foreground were standing
on the front of the ship on which I was riding. 

Makes you wonder just how big they can make a ship today.  Well, the ship I was a passenger on back in 2010 was quite impressive, but much more so now after seeing the new replica of the Titanic sitting in front of a ship of similar size as the one I was on almost ten years ago.  It was back in 2012 that Australian billionaire Clive Palmer decided to make a replica of the original Titanic.  Blue Star Line (BSL), the company behind the Titanic II project, will follow the original journey that the original Titanic took from Southampton to New York.  Passengers on Titanic II will also get to circumnavigate the globe in order to create intrigue and mystery at every port it visits.  The new ship, when finished, will be an exact replica of the original which fell to the bottom of the Atlantic during its maiden voyage.  The new model will have a few different changes with a welded hull, modern navigational technology and a few more lifeboats.  The new Titanic will cost approximately $500 million and carry about 3,000 passengers.  But, it seems that the BSL's website had very little activity since 2014 so why should anyone think the new ship will actually be ready soon?  Seems that on September 27, 2018, BSL announced that the ship is back on schedule once again.  The ship was being built in a Chinese shipyard in Nanjing.  

The Titanic sitting in Southampton waiting to set sail.

Then on October 22nd BSL said it will be moving operations to Paris.  They also said that the maiden voyage, whenever it might occur, will be from Dubai to the United States.  It wants to make its maiden voyage a two-week excursion to simulate the original route the 1912 ship took.  After the maiden voyage it will go around the world embarking on other routes.  The new sail date has now been moved to 2022.  That's 110 years after the original Titanic set sail.  Would you want to be on that new ship?  After seeing the size of Titanic II in front of a modern-day cruise ship such as the one I was on when going through the Panama Canal, I think I'll pass on the chance to make history.  I did find a few reasons for the first accident that I'm sure will be corrected in the new edition.  Also found a few interesting facts to go along with the reasons.
  

Representation of the Titanic in front of a modern day cruise ship.

Here are my findings:

1.  There were supposed to be 48 lifeboats in the original design, but because all those lifeboats made the ship look crowded, it was decided to change it to 16 lifeboats and the lifeboat drill for the passengers was cancelled before they sailed.
2. The ship featured watertight dividing walls (bulkheads) which could be operated by a switch in the bridge.  That is why the ship was said to be "practically unsinkable.  There was one big flaw though; the walls didn't reach the ceiling so water could flow from one room into the next.  It wouldn't have sunk if the walls had reached the top.
3. Titanic's sister ship, The Olympic, happened to be docked for repairs and some of her officers were placed on the Titanic, forcing other officers of the Titanic to leave the ship.  One such officer accidentally took the key to the binocular locker leaving them without the binoculars.
4. The iceberg they struck was four times the size of the Titanic.
5. The ship's baker was so drunk on whiskey, but he managed to tread water for two hours.
6. The last survivor of the disaster was Millivina Dean who died in 2009 at the age of 97.
7. The wreck was found in 1985 about 2 miles below the surface of the water with the bow of the ship buried 18 meters into the sea bed.
8. The musicians on board were required to know a book of 352 songs which were played for the first-class guests. 

Carol and I have taken two cruises since I retired in 1999.  We enjoyed both of them, but we enjoy being able to explore a vacation site without having to get back on the ship before dark.  And, we don't have to worry about sea-sickness.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.