Cruise Ship Accident Brings Up Question of Seaworthiness

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Just two short weeks after our post about boating accidents being on the rise, a really, really, REALLY BIG boat (OK, a ship) was involved in an incident off of Florida's east coast yesterday. The Crown Princess cruise ship accident has been all over pretty much every news outlet since it nearly rolled over Tuesday. The fact that dozens of passengers were injued (some reports report as many as 20 serious injuries) has been wel documented. But while I was scouring the news to get as much information as I could about the Crown Princess, which, as it turns out, embarked on its maiden voyage only last month, I ran across this interesting tidbit from The Travel Bloggers:

Do you wonder if the Princess and the cruise industry just dodged a huge bullet and this ship is not seaworthy? Or was this just a fluke occurrence that the steering problem tha caused the roll was human error?

Obvioulsy the author is just thinking out loud, but it was a possibility that I hadn't considered or seen brought up in all the news coverage.