For those of you who are taking or planning to take cruises, it might be worth your while to stop by Guest Services on the ship and inquire as to whether they offer a tour of the ship’s bridge. They don’t advertise these tours, but they’re often available.
Today I got a chance to see the bridge of a latest-generation ocean liner. I went to Deck 6 of the Viking Orion whilst we were in the middle of the Gulf of Thailand, off the east coast of Malaysia.
My first impression was how sparse it is! Of course, most things are computer-controlled these days.
The Captain leaves the day-to-day driving to his helmsmen. He takes over the controls only when the ship is docking.
I wasn’t prepared to see that the Captain uses a trackball and a joystick for fine control of the ship during docking!
Of course, he has control over the thrusters and the engines during this process.
There are parallel control stations on the port and starboard sides of the bridge.
The ship’s four engines engines burn high-grade fuel oil (of which the maximum capacity is 950 cubic meters [250,800 gal.]) and diesel oil (650 cubic meters [171,600 gal.]).
Depending on the conditions of the seas, the ship can go at cruising speed for about two weeks without refueling.
The ship has onboard reverse osmosis plants for desalinating seawater. In one day, the plants can produce enough fresh water for the day plus a day in reserve. The ship also takes on fresh water at port. This water is tested before being loaded onto the ship and afterward, and is chlorinated or treated as necessary.
Of course, anyone who’s ever seen Titanic asks about emergency controls on the ship.
Computer screens show the status of the watertight doors and every deck…
…and video monitors also show what’s going one everywhere. Probably not a lot of places where Leo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet could hide.
Mr. Documentation was happy to see all the manuals and logbooks throughout the bridge.
There are even emergency flags filed by country.
The ship’s call sign is LAYQ7, and there was a reminder on the bridge of the flags for that designation.
Finally, I noticed the ship’s registry plate in a corridor off the bridge.
We heard that the construction cost of the Orion was about $350 million. That’s equivalent to the “revised” price of about four F-35A fighter jets. Not bad for a state-of-the-art vessel that can carry 900 passengers and 467 crew around the world in extreme comfort!
