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Editor: Rod Sullivan
Profession: Maritime Attorney

Category: Safety at Sea

My kids are upset with me each year when the annual maritime disaster movie comes out. Their problem? I am perpetually debunking the premise of the movie. Maybe I know too much about ships and shipping, but I simply can't sit quietly by while something totally improbable happens on the screen.

I thought that what I'd do is prepare a list of do's and dont's for screenwriters writing ship disaster movies, or ship horror movies, so that they would be more believeable, and hence I could watch them without cringing. Here is my list:

1. When a ship is upside down, or tilted more than about 15 degrees forward to aft, the lights go out. No ifs, ands or buts about it. It's dark. (It's because of the boilers)

2. You cannot walk through the engine room after there has been an explosion. Superheated steam is invisible, heated to over 1200 degrees and will cut a person in half if it doesn't suffocate them first.

3. If you are trying to escape from a sinking ship, never split up and try to go it alone.

4. If machinery starts operating by itself, stay away from it.

5. If you run aground on an island with rocks shaped like human skulls, don't get off to look around.

6. If the water is rising in the engine room, get out. When it hits the lower boiler drums there will be an explosion, followed by superheated high pressure water shooting in all directions, followed by superheated steam suffocating or scalding to death everyone in the engine room.

7. If there has been an explosion in the engine room, don't go back to see if anyone is alive. They're not, and you won't be either if you go back to check.

8. Don't make a fuss over the Bermuda Triangle. Every cruise ship leaving from Miami or Port Everglades on a Caribbean or Mexican cruise goes through the "Bermuda Triangle". It connects Miami, Bermuda, and San Juan, Puerto Rico. So far, no cruise ship has disappeared.

9. If a ship is aground, throwing the furniture overboard has no appreciable affect on refloating it.

10. If an oil tanker is aground and leaking oil through the bottom, put water into the oil tanks. The water will sink to the bottom of the tank and out the holes in the bottom. The oil will float on top of it, and the volume of the oil spill will be reduced.

11. If the Exxon Valdez is navigating off the coast of Alaska, the Captain doesn't need to be on the bridge. Second and Third Mates do that. It's okay for the Captain to be in his cabin.

12. You can't lift a 50 foot tall gorilla with the ship's cargo gear, from a rocky coastline, and put him in the hold of the ship.

13. No matter how big a shark is, he cannot pull three empty barrels below the surface of the water. The barrels are connected to a single harpoon by a rope. Either the harpoon will pull out of the shark's body, or the rope will break before the barrels are submerged.

14. At sea, never read aloud from a book of incantations which promises to summon demons from the dead. On a ship there is no place to go if the incantations work.

15. If you come upon a ship that is stopped, deserted, and has blood stains on bulkheads, do go aboard looking for somebody to provide an explanation.

16. If you are stranded at sea in a lifeboat, eat the fat guy first. According to cannibals, men taste better than women. ( I don't know why, they just do.) Men are also usually bigger than women and have larger buttocks muscles (from which ham is made). Hence one fat guy will feed more people than a woman will and will keep the others alive longer.

17. Chain saws have very limited uses aboard a ship. If you see someone walking around the ship, covered in blood, and carrying a chain saw, he is probably not a member of the ship's crew. Ditto for hedge trimmers.

18. As a corollary to #14, its probably best not to solve riddles which open the portals to hell while you are at sea either.

19. If you are on a Disney cruise and the children begin speaking in ancient languages, their heads begin spinning around 360 degrees, and they begin vomiting is long gushes, they probably have more than seasickness.

20. Stay off cruise ships named Titanic, Andrea Dorea, or Lusitania, whaling ships named Pequod, and charter fishing boats named Orca.