The
National Transportation Safety Board has determined that a second
officer on the Crown Princess caused the ship to list by steering
the wrong way.
The NTSB released a
report late Jan. 10 that said that the probable cause of the
accident on the Princess Cruises' vessel in July 2006 was a second
officer's "incorrect wheel commands, executed first to counter an
unanticipated high rate of turn and then to counter the vessel's
heeling."
The accident resulted
in 14 serious and 284 minor injuries to passengers and crew
members, the NTSB said.
In a statement,
Princess said, "This isolated incident was the unfortunate result
of human error, and we again apologize to all our 
passengers and crew who
were injured or frightened by the unexpected listing of the
ship."
The NTSB also blamed
the ship's captain and staff captain for inappropriate inputs to
the vessel's navigation system, a failure to stabilize the vessel
before leaving the ship's bridge and inadequate training of its
crew members in the use of the navigation systems.
"We see from this
accident the importance of having adequate training," said NTSB
member Mark Rosenker. "Had the crew been better trained in the
equipment they were using, this accident may not have occurred, and
implementing our recommendations is one way to help ensure
this."
Princess also said
that since the incident, it has introduced many measures designed
to keep a similar situation from occurring, including enhanced
training of its deck officers with an emphasis on its navigation
systems.
The Crown Princess
had been in service for about a month when it departed Port
Canaveral, Florida, for Brooklyn, New York, the last stop on a
10-day roundtrip voyage to the Caribbean. About an hour after
departing, the NTSB said, the vessel's automatic navigation system
caused the ship's heading to go off of its intended
course.
Alarmed by what he
perceived as a high rate of turn, the second officer attempted to
correct the ship's direction, and his steering resulted in the ship
heeling to a maximum angle of about 24 degrees to starboard, the
NTSB said, causing people to be thrown about or struck by unsecured
objects.
The officer took
manual control of the steering, but "Rather than remedying the
problem, the second officer's actions aggravated the situation,
resulting in a very large angle of heel," the report said, by
turning the wheel the wrong way. "The captain quickly returned to
the bridge and brought the vessel under control by centering the
rudder and reducing speed."
To
contact reporter Johanna Jainchill, send e-mail to jjainchill@travelweekly.com.