A major power failure Monday left a cruise ship with thousands of passengers drifting for hours off the coast of Italy, according to Cruise News Today.
An electrical issue the ship’s engines caused the outage, though onboard services continued with little disruption The ship required help from the Italian Coast Guard and two tugboats that guided it into Naples. The ship later regained partial engine power, arriving hours after it was originally meant to. The cruise line is conducting a full inspection and said the ship is expected to resume its sailing schedule Tuesday.
While this power failure was quickly addressed and resulted in limited disruption to passengers’ vacations, other engine failure, mechanical issues and fires do occur aboard ships. If not swiftly dealt with, however, there can be bigger consequences. The passengers of a 2013 cruise ship that lost power know this better than most. In that case, which was explored in a recent Netflix documentary, passengers were stranded without power for days in a stifling ship with no working bathrooms, creating a recipe for disaster.