Oriana Windows Failure

We were on passage between New York and Southampton about 600 miles off the Irish coast when the wave hit. It was around 1400 hrs.

6 cabin windows failed, three on deck 5 and 3 on deck 6.

Deck 6 windows glass was 15mm thick, deck 5 was 19mm thick.

The news broke very quickly due to Mobile phones.............

Richard Fennelow was the Captain at the time with David Pembrage the Deputy Captain.

In the news article on the BBC two statements were made, panic and shattered, Yep, lots of panic and shattered, no not all the windows.

We were about 600 miles off the Irish coast when the wave hit us.

The waves were not small ones as you can see.

Initial attempts to secure the breach with this cabin.

A deck head panel which as you can see has been wrapped around the sprinkler pipe etc. The power of water should never be under estimated.

More damage to the deck head which one would never see in a cabin unless the deck head panels are removed.

This picture shows the damage to the partition bulkhead between two cabins.

A further picture showing the damage. In the foreground you can see the back of the cabin fridge.

Attempts to secure the breached window.

Finlay the breach in this 0ne cabin is secure. You can see the mess made in the cabin and across the bed etc.

This was Garry the Hotel Engineer after we had secured majority of the cabin windows which had failed. He was ex RN and as such had a wealth of damage control knowledge. He had also completed the DREW course. As you can see our attempts were not that good to start with but we improved markedly as the seconds passed by !!

This picture shows the access alleyway to the cabins on deck 5. The following pictures was taken 48 hours later.

Here we have removed all the damaged bulk heads etc in preparation for the rebuilding of the cabins. During the incident the office were pestering me to send pictures so that they could start and asses what was required to repair the damage. They were able from the pictures to start and order replacement materials for our arrival back into UK.

Cabin shower/bathroom.

The base with small up stands is what is left of the bathrooms between cabins.

These were the Deck 6 Cabins.

In this one you can see that the bathroom cubicle remains intact.

The 6 windows of the cabins which sustained damage. (Deck 6 and 5).

This put into question why the windows had come out and not shattered.

The view of a deck 5 window from inside.

The window construction is quite detailed and or to a set tolerance. We needed to determine the exact position of the window glass within the frame.

Fortunately I had a technician on at the time who was conducting ultrasonic thickness testing. In discussion with him we came up with a method of determining the position if we took the various measurements.

We were tasked with measuring all the windows on the decks 4 – 5 and 6. We found quite a few which were not installed correctly. These windows had to be removed and re-installed correctly.

Recommendations from Lloyds after a full investigation, some 11 months down the line.

There were strict guidelines issued for surveyors concerning the installation and survey of ships side windows as a result.

One simple solution to ensure the correct positioning was the etching of a line on the window. If you could not see the line as it was behind the window framing then the glass was not in the correct position. These are pictures of the windows of the Arcadia which was built in 2005.

White line etched on the window.