Passenger ship
A
passenger ship is a
ship whose primary function is to carry passengers. The category does not include
cargo vessels which have accommodations for limited numbers of passengers, such as the ubiquitous twelve-passenger freighters once common on the seas in which the transport of passengers is secondary to the carriage of freight. The type does however include many classes of ships which are designed to transport substantial numbers of passengers as well as freight. Indeed, until recently virtually all
ocean liners were able to transport mail, package freight and express, and other cargo in addition to passenger luggage, and were equipped with
cargo holds and derricks, kingposts, or other cargo-handling gear for that purpose. Only in more recent
ocean liners and in virtually all
cruise ships has this cargo capacity been suppressed.
While typically passenger ships are part of the
merchant marine, passenger ships have also been used as
troopships and often are commissioned as
naval ships when used as for that purpose.
Passenger ships include
ferries, which are vessels for day or overnight short-sea trips moving passengers and vehicles (whether road or rail);
ocean liners, which typically are passenger or passenger-cargo vessels transporting passengers and often cargo on longer line voyages; and
cruise ships, which typically transport passengers on round-trips, in which the trip itself and the attractions of the ship and ports visited are the principal draw.
An
ocean liner is the traditional form of passenger ship. Once such liners operated on scheduled line voyages to all inhabited parts of the world. With the advent of airliners transporting passengers and specialized cargo vessels hauling freight, line voyages have almost died out. But with their decline came an increase in sea trips for pleasure, and in the latter part of the
20th century ocean liners gave way to
cruise ships as the predominant form of large passenger ship.
Although some ships have characteristics of both types, the design priorities of the two forms are different: ocean liners value speed and traditional luxury while cruise ships value amenities (swimming pools, theaters, ball rooms, casinos, sports facilities, etc.) rather than speed. These priorities produce different designs. In addition, ocean liners typically were built to cross the
Atlantic Ocean between
Europe and the
United States or travel even further to South America or Asia while cruise ships typically serve shorter routes with more stops along coastlines or among various islands.
For a long time cruise ships were never as large as the old ocean liners had been, but in the
1980s this changed when Knut Kloster, the director of
Norwegian Caribbean Lines, bought one of the biggest surviving liners, the
France, and transformed her into a huge cruise ship, which he renamed the
Norway. Her success showed that there was a market for large cruise ships. Successive classes of ever-larger ships were ordered, until the
Cunard liner
Queen Elizabeth was finally dethroned from her 56-year reign as the largest passenger ship in the world.
Both
RMS Queen Elizabeth 2 (1969) and her successor as Cunard's flagship
Queen Mary 2, which entered service in
2004, are of hybrid construction. Like
transatlantic ocean liners, they are fast ships and strongly built to withstand the rigors of the North Atlantic in line voyage service.[
1] But both ships are also designed to operate as cruise ships, with the amenities expected in that trade.
QM2 superseded the
Explorer of the Seas of the
Royal Caribbean line as the largest passenger ship ever built, and in turn was surpassed by Royal Caribbean's cruise ship
Freedom of the Seas. The latter ship and her sisters will in turn be superseded by ships of the
Genesis class scheduled for delivery starting in 2009. [
2]
By convention and long usage, the size of civilian passenger ships is measured by gross
tonnage, which is a measure of enclosed volume. Gross tonnage is not a measure of weight, although the two concepts are often confused. Weight is measured by
displacement, which is the conventional means of measuring naval vessels. Often a passenger ship is stated to "weigh" or "displace" a certain "tonnage", but the figure given nearly always refers to gross tons.
While a high displacement can indicate better seakeeping abilities [
3],it has been suggested that gross tonnage is the most important measure of size for passengers, and that the ratio of gross tonnage per passenger gives a sense of the spaciousness of a ship-- an important consideration in cruise liners where the onboard amenities are of high importance. [
4][
5]
Gross tonnage normally is a much higher value than displacement. This was not always the case. As the functions, engineering and architecture of ships have changed, the gross tonnage figures of the largest passenger ships have risen substantially, while the displacements of such ships have not.
RMS Titanic, with a gross tonnage of 46,329 but a displacement reported at over 52,000 tons [
6], was heavier than contemporary 100,000 - 110,000 gross ton
cruise ships which displace around 50,000 tons. [
7] Similarly, the
Cunard Line's
RMS Queen Mary and
RMS Queen Elizabeth of approximately 81,000 - 83,000 gross tons but displacements of over 80,000 tons [
8], do not differ significantly in displacement from their new 151,400 gross ton successor,
RMS Queen Mary 2, which has been estimated to displace approximately 76,000 tons[
9],or from the even newer 158,000 gross ton
Freedom of the Seas which is also estimated to displace in the range of 75 - 80,000 tons. [
10] Indeed, not until the 2009 launch of the first of the
Genesis class ships, which is projected to displace about 100,000 tons [
11], will there be a passenger ship which clearly surpasses the Cunard
Queens of the 1930s in displacement.But by the conventional and historical measure of gross tonnage there has been a recent dramatic increase in the size of the largest new ships. The
Genesis ships will measure 220,000 gross tons, over four times larger than
Titanic and twice as large as the largest
cruise ships of the late 1990s.
The
Great Eastern of 1858 was not superseded in gross tonnage until 1901. She was converted to a cable laying ship after only a few voyages as a passenger ship.
*Durand, Jean-François. Autour du Monde Paquebots. Cruise ships around the world. Editions marines, 1996. [bilingual text]
*Marin, Pierre-Henri. Les paquebots, ambassadeurs des mers. Paris: Gallimard, 1989.
