Carnival cruise ship grazes ice in Alaska, assessment finds no damage

A Carnival Cruise Line ship grazed a piece of ice during an Alaska cruise last week.

“Carnival Spirit made contact with an errant piece of drifting ice last Thursday while sailing in Tracy Arm Fjord, Alaska,” spokesperson Matt Lupoli told USA TODAY in an emailed statement. “An assessment determined no damage to the ship’s hull and the vessel continued on its cruise and there has been no impact to operations.”

The ship was on a week-long sailing that departed from Seattle, Washington, on Sept. 3 at the time.

Footage shared on social media shows the ship approaching the ice while passengers look on. TikTok user Cassandra Goskie referred to it as a “Titanic moment.”

“If we die, it was damn well worth it,” she can be heard saying in a video posted this week. Goskie did not immediately respond to an interview request.

Alaska cruises: Why the journey is the destination on Last Frontier sailings

The news comes after a Norwegian Cruise Line ship, Norwegian Sun, actually hit a small iceberg while transiting to Alaska’s Hubbard Glacier in 2022. Stewart Chiron, a cruise industry expert known as The Cruise Guy, told USA TODAY at the time that while ships “take extraordinary caution” to avoid icebergs, ice does regularly fall from glaciers and float in the water.

"Sometimes they bump them, and you know, no big deal," Chiron said.

Nathan Diller is a consumer travel reporter for USA TODAY based in Nashville. You can reach him at ndiller@usatoday.com.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Carnival cruise ship grazes ice in Alaska, assessment finds no damage