Cruise Ship Damaged in Storm

*shrug*

I saw the footage. I've experienced worse offshore fishing, and I've seen worse on YouTube. Anyone remember this one?

Aren't cruise ships notorious for hiring unscreened personnel from overseas as crew, and not being able to police the more rowdy or unsavory passengers?

They do use offshore crew, many from the Phillipines and such, not sure how they screen them. On the seas, they are the police, and the cruises I've been on there weren't any rowdy passangers, if there were I'm sure they'd handle it.

The foreign owned, foreign flag ship is free to employ whoever they please.

You will find a great number of the nice large yachts you like to oogle at the dock also employ those who could be described the same way.

It's just that last year I thought about taking a cruise, then came across all these reports about muggins, rapes, cabin breakins and crew assaulting passngers and tossing them overboard because the criteria for hiring foreign crew are not as stringent as American, European and Australian hiring practices.

Needless to say it put me off on going for a cruise. So when I see stuff like this, other than the fact that I've been in worse storms, I tend to wonder why anyone goes on popular cruise lines in the first place.

Because what you've read about rarely happens. You would have better odds of getting hit by a drunk driver in your own driveway than any one of those things happening to you on a cruise. Look at how many passengers per year the cruise ships service.

We have no interest in cruises, but know many who love them. I think perhaps the less you know about boating and other issues, the more enjoyable they are. However, when all heck breaks loose then the lack of knowledge makes it more scary.

I think also, while the cruise lines tend to be dismissive of the problems, you're overstating them significantly. Yes, everything you describe has happened, but a low percentage of passengers have been directly impacted.

I also think their crew hiring practices are less of a problem than you might think. I disapprove strongly of how they treat crew. However, all the issues you mention, you would still have if it was US, European, or Australian crew. You have them in hotels with all US employees. Now the cruise lines do work hard to cover up their issues, but rest assured major resort hotels do the same. The huge hotels in Vegas have the same issues cruise ships have.

We don't take cruises for many reasons, foremost among them being we cruise on our own boats. However, prior to us having such boats, my main reason for not taking them was cleanliness and health standards and fear of being on a boat where everyone aboard had norovirus and you couldn't get off.

We have all US flagged vessels and, therefore, all US crew. However, I wouldn't say for one moment that you couldn't find good crew from anywhere in the world. Or bad crew. There are some bad captains out there running US boats too.

Back to the issue at hand, I do think it points out the conflict between passenger comfort vs. revenues. Cruise ships do decide to proceed where if you owned the ship, you might well decide not to. I think the lack of regulation and review of their decision making is unfortunate. It's not where crew is from. It's what regulatory authorities do they have to answer to. I'm sure considerable pressure is put on captains to proceed with trips. How well that is handled and defended against is all a matter of each and every captain. There is an environment of a bit of fear. If you're a food service manager on a cruise ship and raise issues of cleanliness and meeting health standards you're likely to lose your job. Captains see that. Everyone does. There are thousands of people standing in line to take the jobs.

Cruise ships are not in a lot of accidents though or incidents with significant loss of life so they can claim a good safety record. I was disappointed that the fines of the cruise line in the Costa Concordia case weren't greater as what that ship was doing was a common practice among their captains and ships.

Now from the video. The Captain, by his words, went from 6:00 AM to 1:00 PM without checking the weather, so it appeared the storm hit more suddenly than it did. I think those hours are the key time I'd want to know more about if investigating. I also think his comments on safety were narrow and unsympathetic to the passengers. While the boat wasn't going to flip or sink, when passengers and furniture get thrown across rooms, then that's a safety issue. They say the hotel part isn't built for those conditions. Well, news flash, they had a lot of people in that hotel part. I also think they diminished what it was like to go through to those without knowledge of ships. I'm sure many thought their lives were about to end.

Last, their way of compensating is totally inadequate. Seriously, you think you're being generous in not charging me for a trip that we didn't get? Then half price on future travel. First, many will be too scared to travel. Second the ones who do may well find cheaper tickets from many sources. It reminds me of the old compensation system airlines had when they overbooked flights and how they were required to improve it. There will be suits filed, there are with every incident on a cruise ship. To the cruise line, that's just part of the cost of doing business.

You know, everyone is making a big deal of this and it's a relatively normal voyage for a vessel this size. 1148' vessel in 30' seas is hardly alarming. Over 6000 people on board and 4 have minor injuries, and a drop ceiling fell down........