does anyone have fucked up cruise ship stories like im kinda obsessed with them. like people mysteriously disappearing and whatnot
Hi I work on a cruise ship as a navigator in training;
- People mysteriously disappear off cruise ships all the time. It’s happened to me (I won’t go into detail for privacy reasons but it was a crew member in my case.) We have a special procedure for when this happens. On the navigational side if the man overboard is declared immediately, we will press a button on our GPS which marks our exact Longitude and Latitude so we can relay that as a search area for rescuers and ourselves. We will then throw life rings off and most vessels will do what’s called a Williamson turn, which basically means whacking the rudder hard over to do a tight turn to come back. On a cruise ship we generally don’t do it instantly though, as at high speeds turning so hard will cause a list of over 30 degrees which is fine for the boat but will cause everything to slide and fall which will hurt people. Which leads onto my second point;
- Most people who fall off do not survive. There have been a few cases where people have (that guy near florida i think who went 20 hours) but thats VERY unlikely. Most water is cold enough that you will drown in 10 minutes if you’re wearing regular clothes. It’s hard to do it by accident, most are drunk people doing drunk people things or deliberate. Because cruise ship’s won’t instantly do the turn maneuver, they can be like 3 miles away before they start coming back around. If you fell off and people instantly released life rings and such you have a decent chance, but unobserved you will drown. Some modern cruise ships have sensors installed for this but many don’t.
- Continuing on, people die on cruises. A lot. Especially on cruise lines where the main customers are elderly. Strokes and heart attacks and random death are common. We do indeed have a morgue. The medical care on cruise ships is pretty good (some even have kidney dialysis available so people with that need can come onboard). But alongside having all their needs like room cleaning, food, and entertainment covered sometimes cruise ships can be treated like a floating hospice. You end up with a lot of very ill and elderly people on cruise ships who are very fragile and shouldn’t really be there. Believe me, I can’t count how many times we have diverted or turned back to port or called the coast guard for a helivac.
- Other creepy parts of cruise ships are the watertight doors. Passengers never usually see these because they’re on low decks but they’re these massive hydraulic powered things and will HAPPILY cut you arm or leg off if they get caught. They also make a very ominous loud alarm.
- Also don’t drink the water from the taps. It has either been run through the desalination plant and is gathered seawater or has been pumped in from a random port anywhere via a hose we prop up on wood to keep from touching the ground. It is all tested ofc, but it’s so heavily chlorinated it’s horrid just get the bottled stuff.
- We regularly dump waste water, sewage, and food waste overboard. (If you want to know how this is regulated google MARPOL) And by sewage yes shit and piss. Food waste gets dumped in the middle of the night so passengers don’t see or smell it.
- Ships make a LOT of noises that sound very scary when there’s stormy weather. Waves do not treat the hull nicely and and all vessels are designed to bend and stretch so the metal creaking sounds are loud and obvious. The anchor chain is also very loud (most cruise ships will do the ‘let go’ anchor release method which is just letting it run free because the other method is too long and annoying) when it’s running out it is EXCEPTIONALLY loud and we can tell if the anchor is dragging based on the sound the anchor and brakes are making.
- The mooring deck is very dangerous. The ropes have to hold tonnes of tension and go so tight you can walk on them like a tightrope. If they snap and hit you they will cut you in half. It sounds like a bomb going off and has the force of one too. Google rope snapback if you wanna know more. They will decapitate you.
- No ship has a deck 13 even if they have 13 or more decks because sailors are superstitious as fuck. (I have been scolded for whistling on the bridge before lol)
- The crew all go through a massive hallway spanning the length of the ship. This connects to the food storage area and the crew accommodation, and usually the engine room. It goes further than you can see. It’s usually called the I-95 or M1 depending on what you call your highways
Other non scary facts:- I saw you mentioned the low crew wages. This is true, but from talking to my colleagues they all come from places that amount is a very solid living wage compared to back home. It’s still not fair, but that’s why people do it.
- If you wanna befriend the crew buy them cigarettes (And wooly hats. For some reason the old lady passengers kept donating knitted hats and all the guys loved them and wear them constantly. The sea is cold!)
- The hardest working people are the kitchen and hotel staff thank them
- At night the navigation bridge is totally dark so we have good night vision and it’s kinda funny because we can be dead serious talking and not see each other at all.
- Cruise ships have a safety officer who’s in charge of well, safety. They are all bonkers and laugh at videos of people falling over they get sent to review.
- Engineers just sit in a nice cool office looking at flashy buttons pretending to work and then complain because they 'don’t have air con in the engine room!!!!’
- Also the crew constantly have affairs and love triangles. No one is 'married’ or has a 'family’ on a ship. Penises will be stuck where the sun does not shine.
Thank you for letting me shout at you. I love boats