Megas have hearts, too - Cruise Views - Brief Article

Cruise Travel, Dec, 2001 by Heidi Sarna

Everyone knows today's big, new megaships are flamboyant, floating Vegas-style hotels, churned out by corporate giants in assembly-line fashion in groups of nearly identical sisters--right? We cling to memories of great old liners like the Queen Mary, Rotterdam, and France, each an individual masterpiece, shaking our heads and saying, "They just don't make 'em like that anymore."

Okay, well they don't, that's true. But, today's new megas aren't as shallow as they may seem. I saw for myself on a trip to Check out Royal Caribbean's Radiance of the Seas under construction at the Meyer Werft shipyard in Papenburg, Germany, just how much passion, pride, and energy go into the building of a cruise ship--about $400 million worth of blood, sweat, and tears to be precise. I gained a whole new appreciation for a cruise ship, made all the more dramatic in this age of cookie-cutter megas and their gimmicky rock-climbing walls and around-the-clock dining, and I'll never look at one in the same way ever again.

In spite of efficiencies in mass production like the use of steel blocks to create the skeleton of a ship's hull and superstructure, a cruise ship is still very much an evolving masterpiece built up piece-by-piece by thousands of welders, electricians, plumbers, painters, and carpenters. Dozens of designers from around the world and a team of dedicated marine engineers and naval architects take each cruise ship from a sketch on a note pad to a finished product carrying thousands of passengers through the oceans of the world. The final product, a result of hard work and a bit of serendipity, could never have been planned out by some corporate president in a boardroom three years before.

A small group of specialized carpenters laid the stunning herringbone Jatoba wood floors in the Bombay Billiard Club on the Radiance of the Seas piece-by-piece, for instance, while the wall mural in the Portofino restaurant was hand-painted by artist R.C. Bailey. The hundreds of bright square panels on the midnight blue stage curtain in the Aurora Theatre were hand-painted by artist Scott Alred, and United Kingdom-based Chris Manley was the person who sculpted the bronze animal statuary in the Solarium. These were no assembly-line workers, that's for sure.

It's people like these artisans, and like marine engineer and naval architect Atle Ellefsen, who put their guts, personality, and very souls into a ship, sacrificing sleep, weekends, and normal family lives in the process. As a project director for Royal Caribbean at the Meyer Werft yard, Ellefsen was the point man at the yard for all phases of design and construction of the Radiance of the Seas, which debuted last March. (see "New Ship Review," page 18). Every step of the way he agonized over even the most obscure details, from the color of the steel supports on the Solarium's retractable glass roof to the design of crew stairwells and the precise rake of the vessel's bow.

After some 18 months supervising her construction at the yard, like a parent accompanying his child for the last time between home and the real world, Ellefsen was aboard the ship, hunkering down in cabin 7046, during her final 40-mile journey down the tiny Ems River from the shipyard to the North Sea, and then for weeks after. He was there in Hamburg at the Bloss Voss yard while the ship was up on blocks in a drydock getting last-minute adjustments, and then still aboard for two sets of sea trials, before finally releasing the Radiance of the Seas from his care for good. An exhausting process, but a satisfying one.

There's no confusing passionate ship lovers and experienced professionals like Ellefsen and the hundreds of artisans who contribute to a ship with corporate drones pushing buttons and churning out cookie-cutter cruise liners. So next time you're on a megaship, waiting for a cone of frozen yogurt or flinging yourself around the disco floor, stop for a moment to think how many individual hands, heads, and hearts it took to build her.