Half Of A Mayflower Got Rammed

“…As long as a football field … As big as a 747 airplane … Hail the size of golf balls …” I wonder how we would describe things if these measurements didn’t exist?

How about “Half a Mayflower”? The Costa Classica cruise ship got rammed by a bulk carrier the other day and sustained damage half the length of the Mayflower. About sixty feet, from an estimated size of that little ship whose length is figured as being 113 feet. Nobody really knows, but it’s a professional guess.

Or, as my shipyard-employed brother put it in a note he sent, “Lots of overtime there for the welders and such!” Everyone has their own view: “The collision opened about a 60-foot gash, and passengers say water washed into the ship's lower decks through broken portholes.” No thought of overtime. (Cruise News Daily)

So let’s measure shipping accidents in “Mayflowers” shall we? The Costa Classica had a torn hole one-half a Mayflower long. The Titanic, although it really sank by having its bottom torn out, also had the mythical, and nearly impossible, 300’ hull fracture. So the Titanic had a 5-Mayflower “hole” ripped in its hull.

My favorite cruise ship, Holland America Line’s “Maasdam,” has a passenger capacity of 12.4 Mayflowers. This assumes you use the generally-accepted passenger manifest of those days, and not today’s families who proudly note parentage on what must have been a 10,000 passenger ship.