Two cruise ships on opposite sides of the Atlantic have embarked on journeys to visit the spot where the Titanic sank, but one that had departed after a short stop on the Irish coast returned briefly after a passenger became ill.
With the sickened passenger needing to be airlifted for medical care, the European memorial cruise on Tuesday interrupted its trip retracing the path of the Titanic’s doomed maiden voyage 100 years ago.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the ocean, the cruise ship Journey departed a New York pier on Tuesday night.
Both memorial cruise ships were packed with history aficionados, many dressed in period costumes, including a boy in a fake white beard on the New York ship who was dressed up as the captain of the tragic ocean liner. In April 1912, the Titanic left Southampton, England, bound for New York. The vessel struck an iceberg and sank into the watery dark. More than 1,500 crew members and passengers died.
The cruise ship Journey, operated by Azamara Club Cruises, and carrying 440 passengers who boarded the ship at a pier on New York’s West Side, will stop in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where more than 100 Titanic victims are buried. It will then continue on to conduct a memorial service at the spot in the Atlantic where the Titanic sank. Along the way, passengers will listen to lectures about life on board the Titanic and dine at a costume-themed dinner.
Ticket prices dropped in recent weeks from about US$5,000 per person to US$1,000 per person.
“It’s just such a human tragedy that just resonates through the years,” said Carol Owens Campbell, 61, of Long Grove, Illinois, who was on board with her husband. “What would any of us do if that happened to us?”
There was a festive atmosphere above deck as passengers sipped champagne and explored the ship, which was not decorated in any way to resemble the Titanic and looked like an ordinary cruise liner.
Across the ocean, the MS Balmoral memorial cruise, operated by Fred. Olsen Cruise Lines, began its trip on Sunday from southern England, carrying 1,309 passengers, including relatives of some deceased Titanic passengers.
The ship made a brief stop in the Irish town of Cobh on Monday before continuing on its journey to New York. The Balmoral had to interrupt its journey on Tuesday because of the medical emergency on board.
Organizers did not identify the passenger or describe the ailment, but the BBC reported that one of its cameramen, Tim Rex, was airlifted by rescue helicopter “as a medical precaution.”
At least one person on board the Journey had a very personal connection to the tragedy. Sharon Lee Willing, of Tucson, Arizona, bought a ticket to honor her great-grandfather, Herbert Chaffee, a farming magnate from North Dakota who perished in the sinking. Family lore has it that Chaffee and his wife were in Europe on their second honeymoon, Willing said.
“I know it’s just going to look like water, but to think of that great ship down there,” Willing said, getting choked up at the thought. “It’s going to be kind of tough, I think.”
Her great-grandmother, Carrie Chaffee, was placed in the last lifeboat to make it off the ship safely.
After the journey, Campbell and her husband plan to stay at New York’s Jane Hotel, where many crew members and survivors stayed after the sinking. Campbell said she’s just a little nervous about the voyage.
“It’s fairly daunting to go on a ship at this particular time,” she said. “If I see an iceberg, I don’t know what I’ll do.”
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS