Poseidon (fictional ship)

SS Poseidon
The Poseidon Adventure
In the 1972 film the SS Poseidon is based on the RMS Queen Mary.
Type	Ocean liner

The S.S. Poseidon is a fictional transatlantic express liner that first appeared in the 1969 novel The Poseidon Adventure by Paul Gallico and later in four films based on the novel. The ship is named after the god of the seas in Greek mythology.

In the 1969 novel, the ship is traveling across the Atlantic on her first month-long cruise with African and South American ports of call, after her recent sale & conversion from the 35-year old British ocean liner RMS Atlantis into the American cruise ship that she is now. On December 26, the Poseidon capsizes when a landslide in the Mid-Atlantic Ridge produces a massive 99-foot tsunami. The description of the ship is slim, Gallico described her as a quadruple-screw ocean liner of 81,000 tons, as long as four city blocks, and as high as an apartment building with three massive funnels. He also described her fatal flaw as riding high in the water, improperly ballasted and technically unseaworthy, this, he wrote, made Poseidon vulnerable to capsizing in heavy seas.

In the 1972 film, The Poseidon Adventure, the ship is in the Mediterranean on her final voyage, which will take her to the breaker's yards in Greece, when an undersea earthquake produces a rogue wave that capsizes the ship just after midnight on New Year's Eve. The film uses the RMS Queen Mary as a stand-in for Poseidon, using actual onboard locations as well as model shots. The captain (Leslie Nielsen) complains about Poseidon being top-heavy and hence vulnerable to capsizing by tsunamis, and he makes clear his intent to take on ballast, but the representative of the owners refuses to allow this and indeed, orders him to proceed at full speed, threatening to fire him and replace him with another officer. Of the hundreds aboard, no more than a handful survive.