Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Abandoning Ship: an Etiquette Guide

Yes, but they say nothing about gender or age. The International Maritime Organization has issued fairly extensive rules about the location and size of lifeboats a cruise ship must offer, and how quickly a company should be able to clear its ship. If an evacuation alarm sounds, cruise-ship passengers are supposed to proceed to the loading area and board a lifeboat that was assigned to them based on their cabin numbers. Some evacuations are far more chaotic than that, and the crew just loads whoever is ready to go. In those emergency situations, men sometimes step aside for the women to go first, but it?s not a matter of maritime law, nor is the tradition observed in many parts of the world. Similarly, the captain has no obligation to go down with the ship, and he or she doesn?t have to be the last person to step into a lifeboat. (In many cases, like the Costa Concordia incident, people go unaccounted for, so requiring the captain to be the last person off would be a death sentence.) Nevertheless, it?s possible that Captain Francesco Schettino failed in his duty to his passengers. The International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea requires the captain to exercise his professional judgment to protect passenger safety, and most maritime experts would agree that presence on the ship is a prerequisite for to fulfilling that obligation.

Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=907238c753fa6df271a4cab4652f8dee

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