"someassemblyrequired" (someassemblyrequired)
10/05/2020 at 19:30 • Filed to: Astronaut in daring cruise ship rescue
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"someassemblyrequired" (someassemblyrequired)
10/05/2020 at 19:30 • Filed to: Astronaut in daring cruise ship rescue | 6
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Yesterday was the 40th anniversary of the M/S Prin
sendam fire, where Coast Guard, the USAF, Merchant Marine and Canadian Forces (now RCAF) rescued all 520 passengers and crew from a burning ship in the Gulf of Alaska.
This feat is even more impressive considering how far the ship was from shore, and the fact that the Coast Guard’s rescue swimmer program had not yet been established.
Washington Post article is here (note future astronaut Bruce Melnick’s helicopter airlifted 109 from the ship - against orders I might add, as they feigned radio problems to start hoisting passengers):
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This article (no paywall) has more detail on the rescue:
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ranwhenparked
> someassemblyrequired
10/05/2020 at 19:47 |
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That was Holland America’s first ever cruise ship, and, at the time, the only one in their fleet (also their last vessel ever from a domestic Dutch shipyard).
As a
further
testament to how well the rescue went, they felt comfortable enough to reuse the name rather than retire it, it later went to the former
Royal Viking Sun
, one of the best ships of the 1980s, during its time in the Holland America fleet from 2002-2019.
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someassemblyrequired
> ranwhenparked
10/05/2020 at 19:58 |
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Yeah typically it’s considered a faux pas to name a
civilian ship
after one
that was lost.
Though I wonder a bit if that was to game search engines so nervous passengers wouldn’t find stories of the
original Prisendam...
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ranwhenparked
> someassemblyrequired
10/05/2020 at 20:25 |
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It wasn’t done until 22 years later, and the new one served the same purpose - longer, expedition-style cruises with an educational component, and was also a one-off with no sister ships and the smallest in the fleet. Probably more sake of tradition, and to appeal to people who sailed on the original in the ‘70s. There were still plenty of them around in the ‘00s, and HAL used to have very high customer loyalty when they were still a high class line.
duurtlang
> someassemblyrequired
10/06/2020 at 04:50 |
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Small correction; Pri N sendam.
I do wonder where the name comes from. They’re usually named after cities. This just has the word prins (prince) in it.
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someassemblyrequired
> duurtlang
10/06/2020 at 11:54 |
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F
ixed for posterity,
everyone here leaves the N out when they say it so I carried through like a doofus
...
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duurtlang
> someassemblyrequired
10/06/2020 at 12:13 |
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They leave the N our while pronouncing it? Weird. It’s pronounced Prince-en-dam
Assuming we take the Dutch pronunciation .
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someassemblyrequired
> duurtlang
10/06/2020 at 18:25 |
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Yeah it ends up as Prison-dam so the Dutch have even more reason to laugh at America