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Message: [QUOTE="Michael H. Standart, post: 313085, member: 79064"] Hi Erik, good news bad news time; the good news being that passanger vessels are rarely hijacked. This much you already know, however. The bad news is that when they are hijacked, it's usually by terrorists vis a vis the Achille Lauro. Those escapades get rather ugly to say the least. Ask the poor chap in the wheelchair that they pitced overboard.(Better bring your Oujii Board when you do it. The poor bloke is a little bit dead.) Yuri, I never had to abandon ship for real...and I'm damned glad of it. I've drilled at it plenty of times and just mustering the crew can be a time consuming excercise. One probably doomed to failure as every abandon ship drill I took part in assumed battle damage or a conflagration and plenty of casualties. The lifevests we had to wear were the inflatable type and the flashlights didn't always work. Sometimes the CO2 cartridges were missing as well. That green dye marker was always there, but it wasn't the sort of thing you wanted to use if you didn't have to. That stuff was frequently referred to as "shark attractant." The drill is that the crew is mustered at the stations where the liferafts would be (Graciously assuming they haven't been blown away by shell or missile fire), muster would be taken, the liferafts would be launched to be inflated in the water, the crew wouyld jump feet first over the side and clinb onto the rafts. The last people to leave the ship would be those charged with destrying classified documents/equipment, and also the really lucky blokes who had to OPEN watertight fittings to make sure the ship would sink. (Can't have it falling into enemy hands). I always wondered how I missed being picked for that detail, but I kept my mouth shut for obvious reasons. The last time I did this was on the USS George Washington (CVN-73) just as we were about to complete a yearlong overhaul. The commander who was running this cluster flop was so inept in the way he managed the whole thing that it didn't inspire confidence. If we had been obliged to do it for real, we would have jumped overboard AFTER the ship sank because he took so long. Not that I would have waited. When sharks are swimming in the hanger deck looking for a free lunch, it's time to leave...and I would have! Cordially, Michael H. Standart [/QUOTE]

Verification: In which year did the Titanic sail?