Royal Caribbean Cruise Ship Fire: Another Black Eye for the Industry

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published May 28, 7:00AM EDT

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Another black eye for the cruise industry, which over the past year has been dogged by a ship that ran aground and killed passengers, a number of cases of food poisoning and a ship that lost engine power and drifted without ready aid. Reuters said of the Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. (NYSE: RCL) cruise ship fire:

Fire aboard a Royal Caribbean cruise ship forced it to dock at Freeport, Bahamas, on Monday, with all passengers and crew safe but the rest of the trip canceled, the cruise company reported.

Grandeur of the Seas, operated by Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd, was on a seven-night trip that left Baltimore on Friday. The 916-foot-long (280-metre) ship was en route to CocoCay, Bahamas, when a fire occurred in its mooring area early on Monday, the company said in a statement.

The fire was extinguished in about two hours and the 17-year-old vessel was redirected to Freeport, the company said. As a result of the damage, the rest of the trip was canceled and passengers were refunded their fares and offered a free cruise in the future.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.