the German online edition of Der Spiegel news magazine reports that "Louis Majesty" (formerly "Norwegian Majesty") encountered heavy seas in the Mediterranean earlier today, resulting in two fatalities, according to the Greek Coast Guard.

The ship is currently heaving towards Barcelona. Additional details have not yet become available.

Best,

Best,

[ 03-03-2010: Message edited by: Kevin Griffin, London ]

http://maritimematters.blogspot.com/2010/02/louis-majesty-to-iberia-by-peter-knego.html

And I just posted a clip on YouTube with footage taken before we hit some severe seas (a Force 9) on the day prior to returning to Genoa. The Gulf of Lyon is a ferocious place.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9A_MngraWE

Yes, it is curious about whether it was in the Royal Fireworks (a most underutilized but pleasant room) or the almost always packed Royal Observatory up on Deck 9 or the Cafeteria up on Deck 10, both of which are above the bridge.

Our call at Gibraltar was abandoned and we also hit some serious seas the night prior to Casablanca.

[ 03-03-2010: Message edited by: Kevin Griffin, London ]

[ 03-04-2010: Message edited by: dmwnc1 ]

Seems Fox news has forgotten about the other recent similar incidences. Very sad people were killed indeed; it could so eaily have been the same situation on Brilliance OTS & Norwegian Dawn and many others. Barcelona port was closed to other shipping when they returned to drop off the passengers, so other reports say, so it must have been really bad weather. Other cruise ships were in the area though as we have seen.

quote:

---

Originally posted by PamM:
It has sound on the BBC website [mine didn't on YT].

Pam

---

BARCELONA, Spain - The Mediterranean was heaving as the 68-year-old Italian stood in the cruise ship lounge. A moment later a monstrous wave shattered the windows and sent shards into her head, leaving her bleeding on the ground and calling out for her husband.

Torrents of water gushed into the Louis Majesty, pouring through several floors of the ship.

"I thought I would end up in the sea, drowned," said Ana Lita, who had a black eye and bandages on her head and hand Thursday.

The three waves that struck the Cypriot-owned ship Wednesday claimed two lives off the coast of northeast Spain. The vessel was carrying 1,350 passengers and 580 crew members, from a total of 27 countries.

Lita's husband Carlo, 69, who had been beside her on a sofa, was thrown in the air and ended up with five stitches in the head and a leg injury.

Another Italian, Giovanni Zanoni, said that after the waves blew out the windows of the lounge, the ceiling caved in and pandemonium broke out.

"People were screaming, panicking. They were grabbing life vests," Zanoni said. He said he saw one huge shard of glass hit a man in the face, killing him. It took a while to find the body because he was under the wreckage of the ceiling, Zanoni said.

The ship's owner and operator, Louis Cruise Lines, said the vessel was struck Wednesday by three "abnormally high" waves more than 33 feet (10 metres) high that broke glass windshields in the forward section on deck five, which is one of 10 used by passengers. Two people died and 14 were slightly hurt, the company said.

Large waves are not rare in the Mediterranean, but ones that size occur only once or twice a year, said Marta de Alfonso, an oceanographer with the Spanish government.

This accident happened in an area of the Mediterranean called the Gulf of Leon, which is known for big waves when storms hit.

The ship was on a 12-day cruise from the ports of Genoa and Marseilles in the western Mediterranean, calling at Tangiers, Casablanca, Tenerife, Lanzarote, Cadiz, Cartagena, Barcelona and had been due to return to Genoa on Thursday.

Passengers said the weather was terrible as they left Cartagena in eastern Spain Wednesday, and the captain announced he was skipping a planned stop in Barcelona and heading straight for Italy.

"I remember when the wave hit," Lita said. "It broke all the windows and I was rolling and rolling and did not stop calling out for my husband."

Amateur video footage taken by a passenger and aired on Spanish television showed a huge, foamy wave hitting what appeared to be the lounge area, sending water gushing in and people scurrying for safety.

"Suddenly we saw a wave that went up above our level, and I said to my husband, 'tonight we will not have to wash the windows,"' said Claudine Armand of France, who was in her cabin at that point. "Right then we heard we heard a loud noise, and it was the wave that hit us."

"When we came out of the room we saw the wave had flooded everything," she told Associated Press Television News.

Pierre Languillon, also of France, said damage was extensive and he saw many people with superficial injuries.

"They called for doctors, as many doctors as there were. Luckily nothing happened to us, but I think we averted a catastrophe."

Louis Cruise Lines spokesman Michael Maratheftis said 14 passengers who suffered only minor injuries were taken to hospital as a precaution.

Arrangements have been made to fly all passengers home Thursday and the ship will carry on with its normal schedule later this month after repairs are completed, he told the AP from Cyprus. By the end of the day most will have left the ship.

Maratheftis said the two dead passengers - a German and an Italian - suffered fatal injuries from the glass shards and ripped-out window frames and furniture.

"It was three waves, one after the other. The damage was done by the second and the third waves. We are talking about waves that exceeded 10 metres in height. This was unforeseen and unpredicted because the weather was not really that bad," Maratheftis said.

De Alfonso said there was in fact a big storm in the area at the time and the waves might have been stirred up by fierce winds. Waves often come in threes, she said.

Another passenger, Jean Claude Fery, of Marseille, said he was in his cabin looking out the porthole at tremendously turbulent seas. "I have never seen waves so big. It was unbelievable."

A Louis Cruise Lines statement said the waves smashed windows in a public area on deck 5 on the forward part of the vessel.

BARCELONA, Spain (AFP) - Terrified passengers told Thursday how three giant rogue waves smashed through the front windows of a Mediterranean cruise ship killing two people and causing mass panic on the liner.

The eight-metre (26-foot) high waves injured another 14 people, including one woman in "very serious condition" in hospital. Most of the 1,300 tourists were being repatriated from the Mv Louis Majesty to their home countries on Thursday.

"It was a monster wave... it smashed all the windows. Everything happened so quickly," German passenger Margrit Woffe-Ternes told Spanish public television.

Images filmed by a passenger showed screaming people fleeing as a wall of water crashed through a window and then swept into a lounge area, knocking over furniture. The film was shown by Spanish television.

"It was a tragic moment, water was coming in from all sides and the boat shook," Italian passenger Ervico Curtis told the website of daily newspaper El Pais.

"We didn't know what was happening, if there were dead or injured, only that we were going back to Barcelona," another Italian passenger identified as Franco told Spanish public television.

One German and one Italian passenger were killed in the accident on Wednesday evening as the ship was off the coast of Spain, the owners, Cyprus-based Louis Cruise Line, said.

One 64-year-old woman, was in "very serious" condition, a spokeswoman at Barcelona's Vall d'Hebron Hospital said. Spanish media said the woman's legs were broken in the accident. A 59-year-old man was also hospitalised with multiple injuries.

The 200-metre (660-foot) long ship was on a 12-day cruise of the western Mediterranean with 1,350 passengers and 580 crew when it was hit.

It docked in Barcelona late Wednesday to evacuate the dead and injured, start repatriating passengers and carry out repairs.

"I wasn't scared but I am very happy to be going home now," German passenger Brigitte Himmelhan, who was in the ship's theatre when the waves hit, told El Pais.

The company said in a statement that the passengers were killed when the freak waves smashed windows in a public area at the front of the ship.

Louis Cruise spokesman Michalis Maratheftis said there would be no investigation.

"This was a natural, unforeseen and unpredictable phenomenon because we are talking about three big waves, higher than eight metres, striking the vessel," he told AFP in Cyprus.

"This is not an incident which we could have prevented, therefore there will be no investigation.

"All passengers are on their way back to their respective countries as we speak. We have made all the necessary arrangements for all of the passengers to be safely transported back to their countries," Maratheftis said.

But an expert from the French national weather agency, Jean-Michel Lefevre, said the cruise ship was in heavy seas where eight-metre waves were to be expected.

"The conditions were favourable to the formation of waves higher than normal," he told AFP.

Cruise ship: 8-meter swells not exceptional, says expert

The Maltese-flagged ship was to remain in Barcelona for repairs before sailing back to the Italian port of Genoa where normal operations would resume on March 12.

Experts say rogue waves are almost always generated by storm-related winds.

"They always come when you are least expecting it," said Michel Olagnon, a specialist on the phenomenon at the French Sea Institute (Ifremer) in Paris.

Once possible scenario for Wednesday's monster waves could be a phenomenon of amplification whereby two or more waves overlap.

"As wind increases in intensity, it is first going to create relatively small waves, and then bigger ones, which travel faster," said Christain Kharif, a French oceanographer and co-author of "Rogue Waves in the Ocean".

quote:

---

Originally posted by jeremya:
Louis Cruise spokesman Michalis Maratheftis said there would be no investigation.

"This was a natural, unforeseen and unpredictable phenomenon because we are talking about three big waves, higher than eight metres, striking the vessel," he told AFP in Cyprus.

---

I would have though there are matters for investigation, such as the course the Captain took, the fact people were in the lounge in such heavy seas etc.

[ 03-07-2010: Message edited by: Malcolm @ cruisepage ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Frosty 4:
Maybe even though rogue waves are rare,wouldn't it be a good idea to put safety glass in areas of the ship prone to heavy seas. I wonder about the windows on lower decks-ocean view.cabins???
F4

---