Porthole Magazine
September 1, 2001
Ode to the Building of a Mega

You ain't seen nothing till you've visited a shipyard, a surreal
movie-set sort of place where massive vessels are built in gigantic
sheds by thousands of workers, who swarm around the docile giants
like Lilliputians on Gulliver. The place hums and clanks along like
a cacophonous symphony, with an orchestra of screeching cranes and
beeping forklifts piercing a polyrhythmic industrial backdrop of
crackling welders' torches, bulkheads being banged into place, and
human voices straining to be heard above the din.

And at the center of it all is the ship, growing day by day, transformed
from raw steel into a majestic vessel that will one day sail to
the far corners of the earth.

From an outsider's perspective, it's easy to be jaded and think
of today's megaships as nothing more than identical cookie-cutter
sisters rolling off an assembly line, built chop-chop-chop from
a standard blueprint like so many Honda Civics, then shoved off
to sea to make room for the next one. It's easy, that is, until
you've witnessed the dramatic shipyard scene for yourself, and gotten
a taste of the art and labor that goes into every vessel.

Of course, there's no denying ships today are more homogenous than
their ocean-liner ancestors, as cruise lines build ships in pairs,
triplets, octoplets even, for obvious economic benefit. Time-saving
technological advances, like the use of steel blocks to create the
skeleton of the hull and superstructure, pre-fab components like
cabin bathrooms and furniture, and pre-cut piping, cables and fittings
all make shipbuilding highly efficient in ways it never was before.
And fashion and safety, as well as economics, have ushered in the
age of synthetic materials like plastics and veneers, while elegant
features like wood paneling and furniture, teakwood decks, and ceramic
tiles are used sparingly, if at all.

Still, despite the evolution of the shipbuilding process, cruise
ships aren't as mass-produced as you may think, but rather great
technological and aesthetic accomplishments born of human hands.
I saw this for myself on a recent trip to the Meyer Werft shipyard
in Papenburg, near Germany's northern coast, where Royal Caribbean's
new 2,100-passenger, 90,090-ton Radiance of the Seas was built and
where I met Atle Ellefsen, one of the main men behind the creation
of the massive ship. A tall, soft-spoken man whose small eyeglasses
and gentle face give him an intellectual air, more like a professor
than an engineer, Ellefsen was the project director responsible
for seeing the $450-million-dollar vessel through its 18-month building
process. A trained naval architect with a Master of Science degree
in marine engineering and some 20 years experience in designing
all kinds of vessels, Ellefsen was the cruise line's on-site point
man, working closely with the yard's management team to make sure
the building of the Radiance stayed on course.

The fourth generation to choose a life revolving around ships and
the sea, he grew up with boats, ships, and shipbuilding, and it
consumed him from an early age, when he first developed a love of
ocean liners and began doodling them on his schoolbooks. What really
sealed his fate, though, was a sunny morning in Oslo in the spring
of 1970 when he was only 13, and Royal Caribbean's groundbreaking
new Song Of Norway entered the harbor. The glamorous ship's arrival
was big news, and Ellefsen's father, a naval architect himself,
got two invitations to visit the ship that day. "Standing by the
gangway, looking up at the crown and anchor logo lighted in blue
neon, the Viking Crown Lounge clinging to the stacks, and the raked
bow, I decided then and there that I would design ships like that
one day," he said. "I never forgot that moment. And now, my hobby
has become my job."

What a job it is. During the course of building the Radiance, Ellefsen
shuttled between paperwork, meetings in the shipyard's office complex,
and inspecting the ship's progress. This unsung hero fielded never-ending
questions from department heads, found answers to problems, held
hands, guided the yard, traveled to Royal Caribbean's Miami headquarters
25 times for meetings, and basically ran the show on a day-to-day
basis. He's also the guy who met with visiting Royal Caribbean executives
as well as the scores of interior designers, architects, commissioned
artists, and other specialists who visited the yard periodically
throughout the building process. He juggled all of this while under
the ceaseless pressure of keeping the building on schedule, and
while constantly dealing with critical issues like fire safety,
product liability, and, of course, the all-important issue of stability.
It's not a job for the faint of heart or fragile of spirit. And
sleep, what's that?

And of course, he wasn't alone. The amount and scope of work that
goes into building a cruise ship like Radiance of the Seas is mind-boggling,
and the manpower is immense. Meyer Werft employs an army of some
2,400 workers, with about 1,000 of them working on one ship at any
given time, from teams of welders firing up their torches, to electricians
making sense of an immense web of wiring and painters covering the
massive hull in white. Add to them the plumbers, carpenters, refrigeration
specialists, tile layers, fire and safety guards, truck drivers,
crane operators, measurement teams, dock operators, and machinery,
insulation, and carpet fitters --- you get the picture. Another
thousand or so outside subcontractors were also on-site at various
times during the construction, supplying and/or installing features
like the retractable glass roof over the Solarium pool and the stunning
herringbone Jatoba wood floors in the Bombay Billiard Club. Along
with a small army of naval architects, a handful of lighting, art,
and technical consultants were involved, plus 9 design companies
and their architects. Counting every last soul, from cleaners to
drivers and secretaries, 4,000 to 5,000 people had a hand in creating
Radiance of the Seas, a monumental achievement to say the least.

But when I saw her, much of that detailed building was still to
come. Leaving Ellison's office, I donned a hardhat and made my way
to the enormous, 1,000-foot-long, 18-story-high, airplane-hangar-sized
building shed where the Radiance sat in a construction dock along
with part of another ship under construction. Much of the extraordinary
machine was still naked as a newborn, sheathed only in burnt-red
primer, with its raw decks a tangle of cables and its hull lined
with scaffolding, workers in their lemon-yellow hardhats hovering
around it like bees. Thousand of tons of massive steel plates were
stacked on deck and pier side, while hulking cranes hovered overhead
to move them and other construction supplies. The place bubbled
and murmured with industry in the total sense of the word, and seeing
it all laid out before me was as exciting as watching a rocket readying
for take-off, each worker knowing exactly the part he had to play
to bring the great ship to its launch.

The activity spilled outside, where the grounds of the yard were
piled high with containers, brought there mostly by truck from Holland,
Germany and other parts of Europe, filled with all the materials
and supplies that go into the construction of today's huge passenger
ships, from transformers to toilet brushes, cabin curtains to paint
-- you name it, all stacked and shuffled around with great booming
thuds by more cranes and a small fleet of forklifts that darted
around the grounds. As I walked around, dodging workers on bicycles
pedaling to far corners of the yard and busloads of visitors coming
to have a peak at it all, I suddenly caught sight of something truly
awesome: the ship's powerful, 17-foot-high, 5-ton-plus steel propeller
blades, resting alone and gleaming ñ the very blades that would
soon create the wake over which countless passengers would swoon
at sunset, for years to come.

My visit to the yard was brief, but for those involved in the construction,
the ship was a long-term love affair. After its launch, Ellefsen
told me that he personally spent about 6,500 hours seeing the Radiance
from a sketch on a notepad through the four weeks he spent hunkered
down in cabin 7046, accompanying it on its 40-mile journey from
the yard down the Ems River to the North Sea for sea trails and
final adjustments, before finally releasing the ship from his care
for good. And he's already doing it all over again as the project
director for the next three Radiance-class ships, which are in the
pipeline at Meyer Werft through 2004. For the post, he has had to
move from his native Oslo, Norway, to Papenburg, leaving his family
and friends behind. A tall order, but a calling is a calling, and
while it's not a glamorous job like a ship's captain or cruise line
president, it's an incredibly rewarding one.

My visit to the yard was brief, but for those involved in the construction,
the ship was a long-term love affair. After its launch, Ellefsen
told me that he personally spent about 6,500 hours seeing the Radiance
from a sketch on a notepad through the four weeks he spent hunkered
down in cabin 7046, accompanying it on its 40-mile journey from
the yard down the Ems River to the North Sea for sea trails and
final adjustments, before finally releasing the ship from his care
for good. For the project director post, he had to leave his family
and friends behind in Oslo, Norway, spending more time in Papenburg
than at home. A tall order, but a calling is a calling, and while
it's not a glamorous job like a ship's captain or cruise line president,
it's an incredibly rewarding one.

The sense of accomplishment and sheer pride of successfully spearheading
the building of a megaship make it all worthwhile, and Ellefsen
feels lucky to being doing what he loves -- though he does pine
for the days, just a few years ago, when things were simpler in
the shipbuilding business: fewer meetings, fewer departments, and
just fewer darn ships.

There's no confusing experienced professionals like Ellefsen and
his thousands of artisans and tradesmen with corporate drones pushing
buttons and churning out cookie-cutter cruise ships, that's for
sure. These people are real. And they just want to build ships.
What would he do if he couldn't design ships? He'd want to drive
them. It's the uniform, Ellefsen admitted, he's always had a thing
for the uniform.