Cruise Ship Lawyers Blog
Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas continues to make headlines months after its inaugural sail and people are still talking about the enormity of it.
Though the ship has been sailing since the beginning of the year, a recent video featuring its arrival in Port Miami has gained traction online with many users asking “how does this thing manage to float?”
The answer can be found in most grade school science classrooms – buoyancy. When a massive ship such as the Icon of the Seas is hulking past seemingly without effort, it is because it is pushing aside water, displacing enough to equal its weight. Structural designs such as a U-shaped hull help the ship carve through the waves and displace water. The hull’s round edges reduce potential drag and keep the ship from rolling. When building the immense ‘floating cities’ we know as cruises today, engineers must take weight distribution into account. Ships that are bottom-heavy will sink while the opposite would cause the ship to be destabilized, increasing the probability it would topple over.
