There’s more than just top heaviness to worry about, too. These ships are flat-bottomed, so they can carry more tonnage into shallower harbors, and they are boxy, which makes them easier to assemble from prefab sections. and cheaper to make, more accessible volume for less hull plating, and so on. This means the shape of the hull itself does not generate the righting moments as different cross-sections are forced into the water by the ship’s roll and pitch. The graceful hulls of steamships have evolved over almost two centuries to resist capsize on the N Atlantic run and have been refined by much science, tank testing and experience. A boxy shape is not “weatherly” and the stabilizers presumably make up for this. How well they work and how dependable they are I don’t know, but I don’t trust them.

I cruised once on a conventional hull design liner retrofitted with stabilizers, and it was remarkably stable, (cruise passengers cannot tolerate any rough weather) although the ship’s residual motion felt unnatural and awkward to me. I was a destroyer sailor, long, narrow and top heavy with deep draft. We practically qualified for sub pay in heavy weather and extreme rolls never scared me, I knew she always came back. Stabilizers kind of hesitate and jerk, they don’t feel right to a sailor, and if they should jam or turn the wrong way, they could make a normal roll at high speed while carrying some rudder totally unpredictable, which I suspect may have played a role in this accident.

Ships are built this way for purely economic reasons, more displacement in less size, ease of construction, access to more and shallower harbors for the tourist trade, massive superstructures with way to much freeboard and windage, so everyone can have a stateroom with a balcony (with sliding glass doors!). They have GPS navigation, weather radar and satellite communications so they should be able to avoid bad weather rather than have to fight it. And of course, they are designed to cruise in areas that have nice, sunny weather most of the year. On top of that, they are building these things huge, 4-5K passengers and crew! That’s as much as an aircraft carrier. And what was that ship doing there, with today’s nav gear, and with the Med being very well charted and marked with aids to navigation? There was even a lighthouse on the island she ran into!

The officers and crews are from different countries, speak different languages, and I can’t imagine how they can train effectively for emergencies, even if they are competent.

In spite of all my Navy talk on this forum, I’ll be the first to admit I may not know what I’m talking about, it’s been a long time since I’ve been anywhere near a ship. But my instincts (and I trust them) tell me these vessels are death traps.

I do know that to my non-expert eye they look pretty damn top heavy, but then so does an aircraft carrier.

I also wonder how much modern ships rely on active stabilization.

I do know of at least one fighter plane that was literally impossible to fly without computer assistance, being inherently unstable (the one with the wings sweeping forward instead of aft).

She does appear to be one of those modern new cruise ship designs optimized for profit rather than sea-worthiness (shallow draft, flat bottom, wall-like superstructure, top heavy, vane-stabilized). I don’t really know for a fact if these new-fangled hull shapes are as unstable as they look, but I know I would never trust my family’s life to one.

I have a theory about these vane stabilizers. They rely on gyro-actuated hydrofoils sticking out of the hull like pectoral fins to keep the ship upright, as opposed to relying on hydrostatic buoyancy provided by the curves of the ship’s hull shape. Nicer ride, more spacious hull, cheaper to build, but it is not mechanically fail safe. We had a cruise ship that limped in here like this who had almost capsized in calm seas, causing many injuries (fortunately, no deaths). The news was very vague about what happened (cruising is BIG business here in Lauderdale) but I suspect a rogue stabilizer jammed and threw the ship into a roll while she was in the middle of a turn at speed.