Engineering:Grand Princess

Short description: Cruise ship owned by Princess Cruises

Grand Princess in Split, Croatia, showing refitted stern
History
Name:	Grand Princess
Owner:	P&O Princess Cruises (1998–2003) the company was renamed to Carnival plc (2003–present)
Operator:	Princess Cruises
Port of registry:	Liberia, Monrovia (1998–2000) Bermuda, Hamilton (2000–present)
Ordered:	8 February 1994
Builder:	Fincantieri
Cost:	US$450 million
Yard number:	Monfalcone, 5956
Launched:	20 May 1998
Christened:	29 September 1998, by Olivia de Havilland
Maiden voyage:	27 May 1998
Refit:	May 2011, March 2019
Identification:	Call sign: ZCBU5 IMO number: 9104005 MMSI number: 310327000
Status:	Quarantined
Notes:
General characteristics
Type:	Grand-class cruise ship
Length:	289.86 m (951 ft 0 in)
Beam:	35.97 m (118 ft 0 in)
Height:	61.26 m (201 ft 0 in)
Draught:	7.92 m (26 ft 0 in)
Decks:	17
Propulsion:	Two shafts; fixed-pitch propellers
Speed:	22.5 knots (41.7 km/h; 25.9 mph) (cruising)
Boats & landing craft carried:	6 tenders
Capacity:	2,590 lower berth passengers 3,100 maximum passengers
Crew:	1,100
Notes:

Grand Princess is a Grand-class cruise ship owned by Princess Cruises. It was built in 1998 by Fincantieri Cantieri Navali Italiani in Monfalcone, Italy, with yard number 5956, at a cost of approximately US$450 million. She was the largest and most expensive passenger ship ever built at the time. Grand Princess was the flagship in the Princess Cruises fleet until the new Royal Princess took that title in June 2013.

(As of April 2020), at least 122 people that were on Grand Princess when it was rerouted are known to have tested positive for COVID-19, and 7 people have died.

Design

Grand Princess and Pacific Princess in Split, Croatia on 7 August 2011

Grand Princess was the first of the Grand-class cruise ships, and has a different decor scheme to her sister ships, using darker woods, and the interior decor is more similar to the smaller Sun-class ships. When Grand Princess was launched, she featured in the Princess Cruises brochures as a Sun-class ship; it was only with the subsequent launch of Golden Princess that the Grand class appeared in brochures.

She is the sister ship of Star Princess and Golden Princess. Grand Princess was the setting for a task in the second series of the UK version of the reality TV show The Apprentice.

Grand Princess has a large theater, a large central performance lounge, and an aft show lounge.

On 19 July 2009, the ship was drydocked for 14 days for refurbishments such as boosting Grand Princess's energy and environmental efficiency.

In May 2011, Grand Princess completed the most extensive dry-dock in Princess Cruises history that included a refit and removal of the passengers lounge from her stern. This resolved her tendency to sail bow high, and has improved her fuel economy by about 3–4%. The bow high tendency was peculiar to Grand Princess, and does not affect any of the other Grand-class ships (or the derivative classes) as unlike Grand Princess they have aluminium upper decks. In March 2019, Grand Princess underwent another dry-dock refurbishment.

Ports of call

As of August 2019, Grand Princess is based year-round in San Francisco, California , sailing on itineraries for Alaska, Hawaii, the Mexican Riviera, and the California coast.

Incidents

2017 whale incident

On 9 August 2017, a dead humpback whale was found stuck on the bow of the ship after it docked in Ketchikan, Alaska. Princess Cruises issued a statement that said "It is unknown how or when this happened as the ship felt no impact. It is also unknown, at this time, whether the whale was alive or already deceased before becoming lodged on the bow." It was the second time in two years that a whale had been carried into an Alaska port on the bow of a cruise ship.

2020 coronavirus pandemic

File:California National Guard's 129th Rescue Wing delivering Covid-19 test-kits to the Grand Princess Cruise liner DOD 107714355-5e6fb4b0cca35.webm

The Princess-owned Grand-class ship, Diamond Princess, had experienced an outbreak of the disease in February 2020, and had been quarantined for nearly a month in Yokohama, Japan; at least 712 out of the 3,711 passengers and crew had contracted the virus, and seven of them had died.

In March 2020, it was reported that two passengers on the Grand Princess's cruise to Mexico of 11–21 February 2020 had contracted the COVID-19 coronavirus disease and one of them had died. The announcement came as the ship approached San Francisco with 3,533 passengers aboard (2,422 guests and 1,111 crew members, with 54 nationalities), some of whom were reporting symptoms consistent with the disease, and the ship was held offshore by authorities for quarantine and testing of some of the passengers and crew.

On 5–6 March 2020, while the ship was near the coast of California, the California National Guard's 129th Rescue Wing dropped off and retrieved coronavirus tests. As of 6 March, 46 people on the ship had been tested, and 21 tested positive, including 19 crew and 2 passengers. Among the other 25, one test was inconclusive and the other tests were negative. Grand Princess was allowed to dock on 9 March in the industrial Port of Oakland, and some of the passengers were gradually disembarked, starting with those in acute need of medical treatment. Crew members were held on the ship for quarantine and treatment, and all disembarking passengers were tested for the coronavirus and transferred by planes or buses to various military bases in California, Texas, and Georgia for quarantine, while a handful who were treated at hospitals and released were moved to various hotels. On 10 March, Canada flew its citizen passengers to the CFB Trenton military base in Ontario for quarantine there. On 11 March, it was reported that one of the repatriated Canadians had tested positive for the virus after disembarking. On 16 March 2020, Grand Princess undocked from the Port of Oakland.

On 1 April 2020, a crew member became the third person to die besides the two male passengers. While under quarantine, the ship was anchored in San Francisco Bay for almost three weeks. As of 28 April 2020, 7 people died.

Of the 1,103 passengers who elected to be tested, 103 tested positive, 699 tested negative, and the remaining results were pending, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said. Nearly two-thirds of the passengers quarantined at Travis Air Force Base refused to take the test, with some passengers stating that federal officials had discouraged them from doing so, and others admitting that they did not want to be tested because they wanted to be released from quarantine.

On 7 April 2020, Grand Princess docked at Pier 35 in San Francisco for supplies before leaving San Francisco the next evening.

As of 20 April 2020, neither Princess Cruises, nor the CDC, nor the HHS appeared to have made any subsequent test results public. In addition, some passengers complained about waiting for weeks without getting test results back, and some passengers have not been tested at all even though they showed symptoms upon disembarkation, despite Vice President Mike Pence's earlier claim that all passengers would be tested.

Lawsuits

At least a dozen lawsuits have been filed by passengers of Grand Princess against companies responsible for the cruise ship.

On 9 March 2020, a lawsuit was filed against Princess Cruise Lines by a Floridian couple that were passengers still aboard Grand Princess at the time. The lawsuit alleged that Princess Cruise Lines did not screen passengers appropriately for the virus prior to boarding and that the cruise line did not warn passengers that symptoms of the virus had been observed on passengers of the previous voyage.

On 8 April 2020, a lawsuit was filed against Princess Cruise Lines, Fairline Shipping International Corporation, and Carnival Corporation by nine Northern Californians who were passengers of the Hawaii cruise. The lawsuit alleged that the defendants did not screen passengers appropriately, did not disinfect the ship properly, and did not quarantine passengers until around 5 March 2020. The lawsuit also alleged that the defendants did not inform passengers that coronavirus symptoms had been reported by passengers on the previous voyage, that passengers from the previous voyage who stayed aboard the ship for the Hawaii cruise had been exposed to the virus, and that a former passenger had died. One of the plaintiffs was infected by the virus and hospitalized at an ICU.

On 13 April 2020, a lawsuit was filed against Princess Cruise Lines by the widow of a retired Dallas firefighter who was a passenger that died of the virus. The lawsuit alleged that Princess Cruise Lines did not warn the couple that an outbreak on board the ship had sickened passengers during its previous voyage.

On 4 May 2020, a lawsuit was filed against Princess Cruise Lines and Carnival Corporation by the son of a retired Lehigh County steel worker who was a passenger that died of the virus. The lawsuit alleged that passengers were not informed that passengers on the previous voyage had exhibited symptoms consistent with the virus and that there were crew members aboard that had been exposed to the virus.

External links

• The picture of Grand Princess departing from Fort Lauderdale post refit.