Where Do Old Cruise Ships Go To Die?

Cruise ship graveyards are a significant part of the recycling process for decommissioned cruise ships. The largest scrapyard in India is Alang, which recycles over half of the world’s decommissioned cruise ships. The second largest is Aliaga in Turkey, where old cargo and container ships are stripped for parts and broken down. These ships can be retired after several decades or experience catastrophic failures.

Cruise ships can still be valuable for their materials or be retrofitted into hotels or temporary accommodations. Carnival Corporation announced plans to remove at least six cruise ships from its fleet, with the 23-year-old Costa Victoria earmarked for removal. Nearly 2,000 workers have been employed to strip the five cruise ships of machinery, electronic equipment, glass, wood, and other materials that can be reused or repurposed. Metal parts are recycled on site or sent to a smelter or furnace to be melted, then ultimately re-used.

Cruise ships are broken down at scrapyards in the UK, Bangladesh, China, Pakistan, and other locations around the world. About half of all cruise ships go to a scrapyard in Alang, India, while about 30% are sent to scrap yards in Bangladesh, Pakistan, and other scrap yards. Along the meandering industrial peninsula of Aliaga on Turkey’s Aegean coast, the contents of gutted vessels lay strewn on the dusty industrial peninsula.

Cruise ships are rarely outright abandoned as they can be stripped for valuable materials or retrofitted into hotels or temporary accommodations. However, unscrupulous companies often have their ships scrapped on South Asian beaches, where they poison the waters and endanger the wreckers. Swiss companies are one example of companies that have their ships scrapped on South Asian beaches, endangering the wreckers.

In Izmir, Turkey, a ship processing center called Aliaga is where old cargo and container ships are stripped for parts and broken down.

Where do they put abandoned cruise ships?

That’s why cruise ships are rarely outright abandoned if they’re ever decommissioned or retired due to the ship’s age or, in some cases, catastrophic disasters.

Oftentimes, these vessels are taken to scrapyards to be dismantled for their valuable parts such as the metal. Materials from a single ship can bring in around $4 million, Business Insider reported in 2021.

When a ship is retired and sent to the scrapyard, it can end up at a ship-breaking facility like Aliag in western Turkey.

There, workers perform the dangerous job of taking apart a ship that once held thousands of passengers.

What is the biggest crime on cruise ships?

In 2023, the FBI received 52 reports of sexual assault and 79 reports of rape from passengers. The 131 incidents represent less than 1 percent of the tens of millions of passengers who take cruises each year. However, sexual assaults continue to be the most commonly reported crimes on cruise ships. According to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, more than 2 out of 3 sexual assaults are not reported.

In 2022, there were 87 reported incidents of sexual assault on cruise ships. There were 101 in 2019, the year before the pandemic shuttered the industry for more than a year. Federal authorities have jurisdiction over certain cruise cases, depending on such factors as the location of the ship at the time of the offense and the nationalities of perpetrators and victims.

The numbers were part of quarterly cruise line incident reports the Transportation Department published in early January and updated recently. Over the same time, the reports listed 22 assaults involving serious bodily injury and 20 thefts of more than $10,000.

Sexual assault on cruises has led to lawsuits in the past. A bartender on a Margaritaville at Sea cruise in May was charged with entering a passenger’s room and having sex with her when she was not capable of consent. He is awaiting sentencing after agreeing to plead guilty to a lesser charge of abusive sexual contact. In a civil suit, a second woman in the room at that time accused the man of raping her, leading to a pregnancy she “was forced to terminate.”

How many abandoned ships are floating in the ocean?

In 2020 the International Maritime Organization (IMO) database listed 438 ships worldwide, with 5,767 crew members, abandoned since 2004; not all cases are referred to the IMO, so the actual number is larger, but unknown. In 2020, by August 470 seafarers on 31 vessels had been abandoned. The Abandoned Seafarer Map project, an independent research tool, seeks to document all known cases of abandonment.

Seafarers’ problems, including abandonment, in the Arab world and Iran were sufficiently severe for the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) to set up a network for the region; its coordinator said “The flood of calls to ITF in the Arab region has never stopped. Since we created the network and seafarers (became) aware of us, the numbers of calls are going up and up”. As of 2020 the network was dealing with 15 cases of abandonment.

A notorious case was the 2013 abandonment of MV Rhosus in Beirut, Lebanon, the unloading and storing for years of its explosive cargo, and the ensuing catastrophic explosion on 4 August 2020. A previous crew had mutinied due to unpaid wages. When the ship docked in Beirut, it was arrested for non-payment of port dues, and the owner did not respond to the captain’s communications. The captain and three crew members remained on the ship, unpaid, for a year, relying on the port agent for food and water to keep them alive. The explosive cargo was unloaded as collateral for the unpaid debts, then left for years in a warehouse until it exploded.;

Where are cruise ships sent to die?

Even new cruise ships will someday be decommissioned. When they are, they’ll likely be sent to one of the many dismantling or ship-breaking yards. These yards in Turkey and India will take the ships apart to reuse as much of the material as they can. The largest of these yards are Alang and Aliaga.”At both places, ships are run up onto the shore and gradually cut down,” Peter Knego, journalist and ocean liner historian who runs Peter Knego’s MidShipCinema on YouTube, told The Points Guy. This process differs from yard to yard,Knego added, though it usually involves cutting pieces away from the ship which is a difficult undertaking.

There are several reasons you may not want to take a cruise, yet none are as unsettling as the process of ripping one apart. It is estimated that at least 800 ocean vessels are brought to shipbreaking yards every year, adding hulls to the graveyards’ populations. Although there are myriad dangers when working with such massive carcasses and tools, there is one unexpected hazard for workers here: Asbestos.

Although the use of most asbestos was banned in 1989 in the United States, it was still being used in cruise ships until 2011. Because of this, ships are still being processed with yard workers being exposed to the dangerous material. Among the other materials scrapped from the ships, evidently, even the asbestos is sold off afterwards.Ingvild Jenssen, the executive director of Shipbreaking Platform which regulates ship recycling, told Chemistry World that there isn’t enough infrastructure in countries like Bangladesh to properly dispose of the hazardous materials otherwise.

Where do all the old ships go?

Cruise ship graveyards. Decommissioned ships are almost always sent to one of two scrapyards. The largest is Alang, located in India’s Gulf of Khambhat, which recycles more than half of the world’s decommissioned cruise ships. The second largest is Aliaga in Turkey.

When vessels arrive at the graveyard — usually under their own power but sometimes with the aid of tugs if their engines are no longer operational — they run aground on the beach.

Workers called shipbreakers then use machinery to haul them farther up onto the sand so they can begin disassembling them.

How common are cruise ship murders?

“Although cruise-ship murders are incredibly rare, they do happen,” she wrote. “Murders are usually committed by a person that the victim knows and the majority of cruise ship murders involve arguments that escalate or a previous history of abuse.

What happens to older cruise ships?

Decommissioned cruise ships often end up in scrapyards where they’re pulled apart. But others have been repurposed as floating hotels and artificial reefs.

Every year, retired cruise ships are sold to ship-breaking yards in Turkey and India where thousands of workers painstakingly dismantle the massive vessels and sell their parts for scrap.

But some cruise ships survive the so-called “cruise ship graveyard” and are converted into hotels, or are even intentionally sunk to the bottom of the ocean in order to create artificial reefs.

Thanks to their mobility, cruise ships and ferries have also been temporarily transformed into hospitals and housing during emergencies like the COVID-19 pandemic, the Ukraine war, and Hurricane Katrina.

What happens to abandoned ships at sea?

• Owner abandons the ship – On their journey, tension develops when the vessel gets abandoned by the owner. Ship abandonment is a concerning issue in the maritime industry where the seafarers lose contact with the ship’s owner for more than eight weeks. Owners abandon ships for legal or financial reasons. These abandoned ships are either left to dry at the port or anchorage or roaming the sea to find suitable ports.
• The crew abandons the ship– It occurs in emergency cases when due to some faults or disasters, the ship is about to sink. In such cases, the captain has no choice but to save the life of people onboard and, therefore, signals the crew to evacuate the ship. The sinking ship takes all the goods and containers worth millions, leading to a significant loss for the ship owner, shipping company, supplier and receiver.

• What happens to abandoned shipping containers?. If the owner abandons the ship– Shipping containers from abandoned ships either reach their destination ports or some other port nearby. Upon reaching the port, the fate of the containers is to be decided by their shipping lines or the freight forwarders if either of them is enlisted as ‘principal’ in the master bill of lading. In such cases, shipping containers are put up for private or public auction if the shipper does not recover the cargo by paying their debts. Abandoned containers and goods may not be in good condition
• therefore, during auctions, no customs authority takes a guarantee of any of the stuff put up for auctions.
• If the crew abandoned the ships– It is estimated that more than a dozen vessels either sink or get lost at sea annually, sometimes taking the unit down with them. But if the crew senses any disasters or calamities beforehand, they can abandon the ship in time. In such circumstances, the ship’s fate is up to the tides and waves, which may either sink or carry it along before it finally sinks. In all cases, the shipping containers immediately sink to the ocean floor or float on the surface before finally sinking. Container floating occurs for boxes with low-volume cargo that are not heavier enough to sink. Due to their additional buoyancy, reefer containers take even longer to sink. It is tough to extract the containers from ocean beds, and most cargo goes useless, causing considerable losses to shipping companies, shippers and the receiver.

Can abandoned cargo containers at sea be recovered?. After getting abandoned by their crew, the ships run high chances of getting sunk soon enough, or if not, they travel the waves unless they finally get entrapped by the tides. In such cases, if the ship gets traced by rescuers or some other passer-by ship, chances of recovering the cargo containers onboard increase. But in maximum cases, the vessel sinks to the ocean floor, taking along with it all the shipment. If a few containers fall into the sea while the ship struggles to survive on water, the containers remain afloat beneath the ocean surface for days until they rust and get filled with water and ultimately sink.

What happens to abandoned ships?

• Owner abandons the ship – On their journey, tension develops when the vessel gets abandoned by the owner. Ship abandonment is a concerning issue in the maritime industry where the seafarers lose contact with the ship’s owner for more than eight weeks. Owners abandon ships for legal or financial reasons. These abandoned ships are either left to dry at the port or anchorage or roaming the sea to find suitable ports.
• The crew abandons the ship– It occurs in emergency cases when due to some faults or disasters, the ship is about to sink. In such cases, the captain has no choice but to save the life of people onboard and, therefore, signals the crew to evacuate the ship. The sinking ship takes all the goods and containers worth millions, leading to a significant loss for the ship owner, shipping company, supplier and receiver.

• What happens to abandoned shipping containers?. If the owner abandons the ship– Shipping containers from abandoned ships either reach their destination ports or some other port nearby. Upon reaching the port, the fate of the containers is to be decided by their shipping lines or the freight forwarders if either of them is enlisted as ‘principal’ in the master bill of lading. In such cases, shipping containers are put up for private or public auction if the shipper does not recover the cargo by paying their debts. Abandoned containers and goods may not be in good condition
• therefore, during auctions, no customs authority takes a guarantee of any of the stuff put up for auctions.
• If the crew abandoned the ships– It is estimated that more than a dozen vessels either sink or get lost at sea annually, sometimes taking the unit down with them. But if the crew senses any disasters or calamities beforehand, they can abandon the ship in time. In such circumstances, the ship’s fate is up to the tides and waves, which may either sink or carry it along before it finally sinks. In all cases, the shipping containers immediately sink to the ocean floor or float on the surface before finally sinking. Container floating occurs for boxes with low-volume cargo that are not heavier enough to sink. Due to their additional buoyancy, reefer containers take even longer to sink. It is tough to extract the containers from ocean beds, and most cargo goes useless, causing considerable losses to shipping companies, shippers and the receiver.

Can abandoned cargo containers at sea be recovered?. After getting abandoned by their crew, the ships run high chances of getting sunk soon enough, or if not, they travel the waves unless they finally get entrapped by the tides. In such cases, if the ship gets traced by rescuers or some other passer-by ship, chances of recovering the cargo containers onboard increase. But in maximum cases, the vessel sinks to the ocean floor, taking along with it all the shipment. If a few containers fall into the sea while the ship struggles to survive on water, the containers remain afloat beneath the ocean surface for days until they rust and get filled with water and ultimately sink.

What does Royal Caribbean do with old cruise ships?

And the Majesty of the Seas. This will make room for its newer ships. Including Odyssey of the Seas. And wonder of the Seas.

Where do broken cruise ships go?

In addition to the huge breaking yards at Alang and Aliağa, cruise ships are broken down at scrapyards in the UK, Bangladesh, China, Pakistan and other locations around the world.

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Where do they send old cruise ships?

“When they are no longer valuable, cruise ships are sailed to scrapyards where they are stripped for parts. Ship-breaking yards can be found in Pakistan, Bangladesh, China, and India. However, one of the largest, Kılıçlar Ship Breaking Yard, is located in Aliaga, Turkey.”