I do agree that many new cruise ships are extremely fugly... but...
to play Devil's Advocate here, the cry of "it doesn't look like a ship" goes back more than a century.
When steam was starting to rapidly replace sail, many mariners were appalled that these new dirty smokey behemouths didn't even look like ships at all.
Commodore David Bone of the Anchor Line makes this point in his autobiography. When sailing up the Clyde to Glasgow, he couldn't believe his eyes at all these unshiplike machines being built at all the shipyards. Of course he was eventually won over.
Cunard was endlessly touting their big Atlantic greyhounds as being floating hotels, "passengers will hardly notice that they are on a ship at all." French Line etc. did the same thing, and this was one of their big selling points of the Queen Mary.
It didn't end with the Queen Elizabeth 2 either. Purists at the time, and many Cunard regulars, hated her. Cunard actively promoted her as a floating resort, a "Vacation Island".
So, it's an old story, and perhaps the ugly boxes crowding the cruise lanes now is a look at what's to come?
"Form follows function" is an old rule of design, and much of what we would consider necessities for a ship to look like a ship, are simply either archaic and obsolete, or no longer wanted by the cruise line customers of today.
When the Mauretania (I) was sent to the scrappers, one of her former captains said that the only thing wrong with her was the public's desire for private bathrooms. And now it's balconies,verandahs, and jacuzzi suites.
But, still, there is no excuse for some of the horrors being unleashed on the oceans of the world.
