Published: July 24, 2008 03:55 pm         

Take a tour of the Emerald Princess bridge

On April 7, 2005 the keel was laid for the Emerald Princess cruise ship, at the Fincantieri Shipyard in Monfalcone, Italy. She was delivered March 30, 2007. In January 2008, Nancy and I enjoyed back-to-back 10-day cruises on this magnificent vessel. Everything about her is large. She is 948 feet long; this translates into 316 yards or more than three football fields. Most lots at Lake Tansi Village are 90 feet wide, so walk past 10 lots and you begin to get a feel for the size of the ship. One day I walked the length of our passageway at a brisk pace and it took two minutes and forty-five seconds. She weighs in at 113,000 gross registered tons and can accommodate a maximum of 3,573 passengers and 1,227 crew. In January, she was the fourth-largest passenger ship in the world. By comparison, the World War II carrier USS Yorktown was 900 feet long, 27,000 tons and carried a crew of 2,500. Despite the size, it is easily maneuvered. I learned this at a presentation by the third officer titled “A Virtual Tour of the Bridge.” Information in the presentation was so interesting I asked if it was available. The next day a large envelope arrived at our stateroom.

The third officer is Emma Devereux, a delightful 21-year-old from England. She was kind enough to include information on herself along with that of the ship. Emma finished school at 16 and enrolled at a nautical college. While in college, she was employed by a tanker company as a deck officer trainee cadet. Throughout the three-and-a-half-year cadetship she did months at college completing exams and months at sea with a training portfolio. After a year’s sea time and passing all exams, she sat an oral examination at an MCA Board. There are only a few female captains at this time, and Emma hopes to join them in the near future.

The bridge of Emerald Princess is one of the largest on any passenger ship and is the location of the navigational and primary safety systems onboard the vessel. The bridge is manned 24 hours a day and is the operations center of the ship. During arrival, maneuvering, bad weather, heavy traffic, etc. the manning of the bridge is supplemented by the captain and staff captain.

The Emerald Princess is fitted with a fully integrated bridge system. This includes Gyro compass, speed log, satellite navigation, radar, echo sounder and Electronic Chart Display and Information System (ECDIS). The Gyro compass is an extremely sophisticated piece of equipment and is housed in a separate room with repeaters on each bridge wing and on the center line. There is a magnetic compass as a back up. The compasses are frequently checked for errors by taking a bearing of celestial objects (which is the way sailors navigated for years before the invention of the compass.) The Gyro compass heading is used by the helmsman as a reference for steering the ship. The heading is also fed in to the auto pilot system so the ship may be steered automatically.

Emerald Princess operates using a diesel electric propulsion system – four large and two small diesel generators generate electricity that is fed to electric propulsion motors that drive each propeller shaft. The diesel generators produce all the power required to run the ships facilities. Thrusters are located fore and aft on both the starboard and port sides and are used to maneuver the ship sideways when approaching or moving away from a dock.

Emerald Princess is one of the first cruise ships to operate on a fully ECDIS that allows the ship to be navigated without using conventional paper charts. The Integrated Bridge System (IBS) allows for the chart and radar to be monitored simultaneously.

The ship can be steered from the bridge in either automatic or manual control modes. The automatic pilot is “intelligent” and learns about how the weather is affecting the ship. It uses its intelligence to control the ship's rudders to compensate for the effects of drift caused by wind and currents.

There are five primary radars – three scanners mounted on the main navigation mast, one mounted on the bow and one on the stern of the ship. These all have automatic radar plotting aid (ARPA) allowing the navigational officers to “acquire a target” and find out all relevant information to avoid collision – range, bearing, speed, course, closest point of approach and time to closest point of approach.

Emerald Princess has her own safety center. The Safety Management System (SMS) controls from one main unit everything from smoke detectors to watertight doors to low location lighting.