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The eBearing News
September 21, 2004
Celebrity Cruise Ship Out of Service
Again for Bearing Failure
copyright © 2004 eBearing Inc.
Celebrity Cruises (USA, a subsidiary of Royal Caribbean Cruises, USA) has been forced to take one of its
premier cruise ships, Summit, out of service again for yet another radial bearing failure in its
Rolls-Royce Mermaid pod drive propulsion system.
The ship is currently in dry dock for emergency repairs to the starboard pod drive.
This marks over a dozen cruises the company has had to cancel to replace bearings in its pod drive systems.
Each cancelled cruise costs Royal Caribbean between $6 million and $10 million in repairs, refunds, lost
revenue and enticement discounts it must give on future cruises.
The company's four Millennium-class cruise ships are each equipped with two Rolls-Royce Mermaid pod
propulsion systems. Two large bearings, approximately 2-1/2 feet in diameter, carry the propeller
shaft in each pod. The bearings are apparently failing under thrust loading. Summit's speed was
limited to 18 knots when the latest bearing failure was identified.
In service for just over two years, Summit has had its pod drive bearings replaced multiple
times, as have the other Millennium-class ships. In 2002, Rolls-Royce released a redesigned propeller
shaft bearing which was supposed to hold up better under load, but has not.
In mid-2003, Celebrity filed a $300 million suit against Rolls-Royce and Alstom Power Conversion,
to cover lost revenue and costs related to at least four separate bearing failures and other problems
in the Mermaid pod drive systems. The company charges Rolls-Royce and Alstom deceived
Celebrity about the unproven pod drive technology in its Millennium-class cruise ships.
All four cruise ships have been forced into emergency dry dock repairs multiple times to replace
failed pod drive propeller shaft bearings. Celebrity's Millennium ship has had more than ten
pod drive related failures since its launch in 2000. Celebrity's most recent pod drive problem
was with its Infinity cruise ship, back in drydock in March 2004 for its third set of replacement bearings.
In its suit, Celebrity charged the Mermaid pod drive systems, "turned out to be a defectively designed and built
product which was in fact at an experimental stage of its development when it was installed.
These recurring failures cost the company hundreds of million of dollars, for which
the lawsuit seeks restitution." The company went on to claim Rolls Royce and Alstom Power Conversion
willfully misrepresented the Mermaid pod drive system, and that it was, "deceptively
and fraudulently marketed."
Although Rolls-Royce claimed it initiated a three-month detailed probe into the Mermaid
system problems, Royal Caribbean believed there it was a coverup. "The repeated investigations,
trumped-up fixes, and expert committees instituted by Rolls-Royce and Alstom have been
nothing more than an elaborate charade to cover up the truth. Furthermore, Rolls-Royce and
Alstom have refused to disclose to Royal Caribbean critical information in their possession
regarding the problems with the bearings and other components of the Mermaids," they said in their complaint.
• 2001 article: Pod drive systems and failures
• 2002 article: More pod drive bearing failures
In September 2003, the French finance ministry stepped in to rescue Alstom from bankruptcy by
engineering a reported $8 billion bailout package, saving the company and its 38,000 jobs.
The company was troubled, but its bankruptcy was triggered by $4.5 billion in litigation losses related to
problems with heavy-duty gas turbines it supplied via Swiss-Swedish company ABB.
Bearing failures and other problems are not unique to Celebrity's pod drive systems, lending credence
to several leading experts' opinions that pod drive is not a mature product or technology. In fact,
Rolls-Royce has had other Mermaid system failures but says, "these issues have been resolved." The
Radisson Seven Seas Mariner, for example, has been out of commission to repair its Mermaid pod drive bearings.
In December 2000, ABB Industry reached a financial settlement with Carnival Cruise Lines over
a propeller bearing failure in one of the 14 MW Azipods which power the company's ship Paradise. The
Paradise's Azipod bearing failure was blamed on lubrication problems, although an analysis pointed to
a "series" of unspecified problems.
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- by Bruce A. Carr
from individual research,
tips and commercial sources.
Copyrighted material; unauthorized reproduction prohibited.
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eBearing.com ... for everything that moves™
Entire contents Copyright © 1999-2010, eBearing Inc. All rights reserved.
eBearing.com and "... for everything that moves" are registered trademarks of eBearing Inc.
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