MOBILE, Ala. (WPMI) - Little food, few working bathrooms and an unbearable stench. They are all conditions thousands of passengers have endured since Sunday on a 7 mph trek toward Mobile.
"No one here from Carnival is happy about the conditions aboard the ship," President & CEO Gerry Cahill told reporters. The company has taken its lumps publicly, but the pressure is still on. As the National Transportation Safety Board heads to Mobile to investigate, new accounts from former Triumph passengers about engine or propulsion issues with the triumph on previous cruises.
"They knew about it, they knew about it way in advance, " Mindy Dlohy, who took a cruise from January 28 - February 2, said, "I don't understand why they just keep putting people on the ship and on the ship and on the ship."
Dlohy snapped several pictures of a truck delivering spare ship parts to the Triumph crew in Progreso.
Heidi Hill took a cruise just before that one and remembers the ship having to be tugged to Cozumel. "It's just very irritating to me," she said, "Now these people are stuck out there in horrible conditions and it all could have been prevented as I see it."
On the consumer website 'Cruise Reviews' other passengers recall problems with the Triumph on the two previous trips. One traveler, speaking of the late January voyage recalled, "Our initial departure was delayed several hours because of propulsion system problems that according to Carnival began on the previous cruise."
Carnival responded in a recent statement, telling the public, "There is no evidence at this time of any relationship between this previous issue and the fire that occurred on Feb. 10."
The NTSB said since the Triumph is a Bahamian-flagged vessel, the Bahamas Maritime Agency will have the lead in the investigation. NTSB said in a statement it will still play a role to determine how the engine fire started and how to prevent it from happening again.
