Originally Posted by TMOliver

...vastly too high and underbuilt by North Atlantic standards, from collapsing in upon itself. All those enormous "clear span" compartments in the newer ships come with a price, substantially more risk of injuries in any sort of sea state or high winds ... Nor... would I care to be aboard any one of a number of such ships, literally stuffed with flammable synthetic fabrics and materials, almost all of which give off what in enclosed spaces are "deadly" fumes when heated, when the inevitable major modern fire occurs. Every time one of them goes to sea with a full pax load and a crew under-trained and under-equipped to fight a shipboard fire - part of the lower cost of foreign flagging and less than stringent requirements by the USCG - some of us who have been around for shipboard fires see a larger repeat of MORRO CASTLE on the horizon...