“Carnival does not expect any impact to the next Carnival Freedom voyage scheduled to depart from Port Canaveral on Monday, March 25,” said the Carnival Cruise Line in a Saturday X post.
By Monday, the company realized that the ship would not be able to sail. In fact, two Carnival cruises expected to depart from Port Canaveral, Fla., this week after a fire on board the Carnival Freedom ship.
A press release published by The National Desk explained that: “Regrettably, the damage is more than we first thought and will require an immediate repair to stabilize the funnel, resulting in the cancellation of the March 25 and March 29 cruises from Port Canaveral.”
In a series of X responses posted Saturday, the cruise line revealed that a fire was reported on the Freedom – a 110,000 gross ton ship that can carry 2,980 passengers – at approximately 3:15 pm EDT that day, while the ship was around 20 miles off Eleuthera Island, Bahamas. This fire was on the vessel’s port side in an exhaust funnel.
At the time of the fire, the ship was “headed to Freeport after a cancelled call to Princess Cay due to weather,” said Carnival.
“The captain has made multiple announcements to guests and crew and advised all but essential safety personnel to stay away from all open decks,” said the company on X. “There are no injuries. The port side portion of the funnel has fallen onto Deck 10 and the fire response is putting out the flames.”
It also said the ship’s fire response team acted quickly and that the captain sailed towards heavy rain to maximize efforts to put the fire out. Some eyewitnesses reported seeing a lightning strike, and Carnival said that possibility was being investigated Saturday. Additionally, the U.S. Coast Guard was notified of the incident.
After the funnel was stabilized, the ship arrived in Port Canaveral Monday. From there, the ship needed to return to Freeport for repairs.
“We sincerely regret the impact to our embarking guests, as we know they have been looking forward to their spring break vacation. We are providing all guests on both cancelled cruises a full refund and a 100% future cruise credit so they can come back and enjoy a future cruise with us,” said Carnival in a statement.
This is at least the second time that a Carnival Freedom exhaust tunnel ended up on fire. Per CBS News, it also went up in flames in May 2022 when the ship was in Grand Turk on a five-day cruise from Port Canaveral. There were no injuries connected to that fire, said the report.
Earlier this year passengers on another cruise line, Royal Caribbean, dealt with water instead of fire when rooms started to flood after the Serenade of the Seas was caught in rough water off the coast of South America.
“One set of elevators and six rooms were impacted by some of the rain,” they said in an emailed statement cited by USA Today. “Our team on board is managing the minor cleanup and elevator repairs.”
When asked Tuesday whether the collapse of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge would impact Carnival cruises, the company said: “Our thoughts are with those affected by this tragic accident. It is premature for us to comment on possible impacts to upcoming sailings,”