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The disaster in 1912, in which just over 1,500 people lost their lives, was of such epic proportions that the proper noun “Titanic” entered into our vocabularies as an adjective in its own right. Described originally as the vessel that couldn’t sink, Titanic was hailed, at the time of her launch, as the largest moving manmade object ever created. People have surprisingly short memories, though. Before the era of mass air travel, ocean liners were the main means of inter-continental travel and most visitors to Indonesia would have arrived by ship at Tanjung Priok, Jakarta, or Singaraja, North Bali. From the 1960s, when air travel started to become cheap enough to cater for the mass market, the ocean liner business went into a long, slow decline. It reappeared as the cruise ship industry in the 1980s, with vessels built much larger and designed for comfort rather than sheer speed. Pleasure cruising is now a major component of the tourist industry worldwide, with business estimated to be worth almost $20 billion and 19 million passengers carried in 2011. Modern cruise ships resemble five-star hotels: As many of the cabins as possible have portholes while passengers expect to be able to enjoy facilities, apart from top-quality restaurants, that include most – if not all – of the following: designer-label shopping malls, cinemas, theaters,
swimming pools, fitness centres, busines centres, spas, nightclubs and casinos. The amount of food consumed on cruise ships is mind-blowing: The weekly consumption by passengers and crew on Royal Caribbean International ship Mariner of the Seas is 9,000 kg of beef, 28,000 eggs, 30,000 litres of ice cream and 18,000 slices of pizza. That doesn’t include prodigious quantities of luxury foodstuffs like champagne, fine wines and spirits, caviar and cigars. One of the factors driving the increased demand for cruising is the changing world demographic: Quite simply, there are more elderly and retired people around and many of them are opting for a cruise as a vacation. This is already starting to become noticeable in Bali and adjacent islands as many ships now stop there as part of a Southeast Asian cruise. Two recent incidents involving ships operated by Costa Cruises, one of the world’s largest companies of its type, illustrate how popular cruising has become, for both were modern vessels. At the end of February 2012, Costa Allegra ran adrift in the Indian Ocean after she was immobiised by an engine-room fire. Only six weeks earlier, Costa Concordia, launched in 2005 as the largest Italian ship ever built, capsized off the Italian coast after she struck a rock. Of the 4,250 or so people aboard 30 are known to have died, with 60 injured. Just like Titanic 100 years before, the Concordia disaster showed that even a modern ship can still sink if holed badly enough below the waterline. Industry analysts reckon that the two Costa incidents will not have a long-term detrimental impact on the popularity of cruising. Expect to see more ships calling on Bali and Jakarta in coming years. (Jim Read)
www.beatmag.com
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ou’ve probably had enough already of all the Titanic commemorations: The 100th anniversary of the vessel’s sinking on her maiden voyage has just been celebrated widely while the 1997 Hollywood movie, which won 11 Oscars, has been re-released in 3D. The original was one of the great weepies of all time.