Dramatic flames and thick black smoke engulfed the funnel of a Carnival Cruise ship on Thursday, after the vessel caught fire while docked in the Turks and Caicos islands.
The 110,000-tonne Carnival Freedom caught alight while docked in Grand Turk yesterday morning, with hundreds of holidaymakers watching as fire and smoke shot from the vessel.
The ship was docked alongside the cruise line’s Mardi Gras ship, with passengers across the water taking photos and video of the scene.
Twitter user Brian H described the incident, saying: “Shortly after the Carnival Freedom arrived in Port next to us on the Mardi Gras, smoke and flames began to shoot out of the exhaust funnel.
“The crew quickly started to battle the fire to extinguish it. A partial piece of the funnel fell [from] the the top deck while smoke and ash flew in the wind.
“Luckily the wind was blowing away from our ship. The crew did a great job as it appears the fire did not spread any further than where it was.”
Meanwhile, Freedom passenger Jen reported: “A little bit of the panic on the boat as we had to put on life jackets and go to muster areas.”
The Carnival Freedom had left Port Canaveral in Florida for a five-night Eastern Caribbean cruise on Monday, and is scheduled to return to the port on Saturday.
It had scheduled stops of the Dominican Republic and Turks and Caicos before returning to the departure point.
In a statement, Carnival Cruise Line said that “an emergency response team quickly activated and extinguished a fire inside the ship’s funnel while the ship was in Grand Turk.”
The company added: “All guests and crew are safe, and the ship’s guests were cleared by local authorities to go ashore. We continue to assess the situation”.
A printed letter issued to guests onboard and posted to Twitter said that a technical team would be boarding on Thursday afternoon to assess the damage, and that the Freedom’s sister ship, Carnival Conquest, was being sent to retrieve passengers and return them to Florida.
It added that guests would board the new ship on Saturday evening and set sail for the US coast, arriving on Monday morning.
It assured those who had bought wifi or drinks packages that they would have their package extended on the replacement ship and said that each stateroom would be credited $100 to spend onboard.
The Freedom is 290m long with a capacity for more than 3,000 passengers. Later in the day, Carnival shared photos of the ship sailing as normal.
