Smooth sailing: behind the scenes on a cruise liner.

• Author: Elsberry, Richard

Take a first-class hotel designed to accommodate a thousand or more guests and marry it to a 700-foot long ocean-going vessel, and you have one of more than a dozen cruise liners plying the Inside Passage from May through September.

"But don't call it a floating hotel," says Peter Wallis, purser on the Nieuw Amsterdam, one of four leviathans of the Holland America Lines that call at Panhandle ports and Glacier Bay, often pressing on to Valdez and Seward.

That, he emphasizes, would be an oversimplification. I'm inclined to agree, having explored the MS Nieuw Amsterdam from the relative serenity of its bridge to the pulsating throb of its engine room during a seven-day peak season cruise from Vancouver to Ketchikan, Juneau and Sitka.

After meeting with Captain Jack van Coevorden and spending time with Chief Officer Hans van Biljouw and Chief Engineer Bram Francke, it quickly became clear that there is nothing simple about maintaining a 33,930-ton vessel with 607 passenger staterooms and 14 public rooms that pampers its guests at sea 51 weeks a year. An oceangoing vessel is a stand-alone community, and as a result, passenger safety and comfort - as opposed to mere housekeeping - must be the No. 1 priority round-the-clock, seven days a week.

The purpose of an ocean cruise is to provide a carefree environment for the ship's passengers. But achieving that objective while on a split-second timetable and covering nearly 2,000 nautical miles is a daily challenge for the liner's 532 officers and crew.

The Nieuw Amsterdam, whose international radio call letters are Poppa Juliet Charlie Hotel, was built at Chantiers de L'Atlantique in St. Nazaire, France, at a cost of $165 million (U.S.) and entered service in May 1983. It is registered in St. Maarten, Netherlands Antilles, but spends its summers in Alaskan waters and its winters in the Caribbean, with only a single week reserved each spring for dry dock.

The rest of the year, major overhauls and inspections - such as infrared thermography of electrical panel-boards and switch gear - take place at sea or on turnaround days in port.

Most engine room systems are inspected annually for insurance purposes, and some pumps are regularly overhauled every two years. Once every five years - also as required by its marine classification - every electrical and mechanical system on the ship gets a thorough check up. Constant Care. But it is unrelenting daily attention to maintenance that keeps the Nieuw Amsterdam functioning like the smoothly oiled machine that it is. "We can fix most anything on the ship while we are on the move, except for the main engine crankshafts," says Chief Engineer Francke, a Dutch citizen who has been with Holland America for 24 years.

The engine...