You’ve saved all year to take the vacation of a lifetime on a cruise ship.
After you set sail the fun begins, the band starts playing, and soon you’ll be gorging
on seemingly never-ending buffet items.
After a few days, a few too many drinks and a couple of extra pounds added to your body,
you decide that evening to take part in the, “Murder Mystery” party.
You love that kind of thing, the “whodunnit” caper…you remember the last time you played,
and the killer was the servant, who committed the murder with a lead pipe in the ballroom.
Half way through your game, people start running around covered in blood, and of course you
think this is all part of the fun.
It isn’t…someone has actually been murdered.
What we just told you is a true story, and now we will explain.
10.
The Cruise Ship Murder In 2017, the Emerald Princess set off from
Seattle with 3,400 on board on a journey to Southeast Alaska.
One of those passengers would not survive the trip.
During the night of the murder mystery party a couple on that ship were having a domestic
dispute, one that would end with the man beating his wife to death.
Soon staff and medical officers were on the scene, and what they saw before them was a
woman covered in blood.
A ship security officer subdued the man and put him in handcuffs.
Some passengers on the ship had heard screams and some would later see staff with the woman’s
blood on them.
One passenger later told the media, “People were running through the hall with blood all
over them and trying to get security.”
They actually thought this was some kind of hoax, just part of the game, but of course
they were wrong.
It was later revealed that the woman had died from blunt force trauma to her head and face.
The man admitted to what he had done and is now in jail.
He could be facing a life sentence.
Have stranger things happened on cruise ships?
The answer is yes, and like always, we’ll leave the best until last.
Maybe “best” is the wrong word…we should probably have said “worst.”
9.
Poop Cruise In 2013, some of the 4,000 people aboard the
Carnival Triumph cruise ship woke up to the smell of smoke and the sound of fire alarms.
The ship was on fire.
What happened shortly after was the ship lost power and was left stranded in the Gulf of
Mexico.
Ok, so the fire was extinguished…surely things could haven’t been that bad.
Well... things were really bad.
You see, those 4,000 people on that ship had no air conditioning…Most of the time they
were left without any lights, and some people complained later that they had to go without
water and food..
So, why was it called the “Poop Cruise.”
That’s because the toilets weren’t functioning and sewage was building up.
4,000 people created quite a lot of poop in the four days that the ship was stranded.
People later sued the company and described in dramatic detail how people were huddled
together on the ship’s decks not knowing how things would turn out.
They explained that the human sewage from overflowing toilets made its way to the deck
and there was a terrible stench.
We guess this might sound quite amusing to some of our viewers, but the experience was
traumatic for those passengers.
They had paid for what was supposed to be the trip of a lifetime and instead spent days
in darkness in a sea of poop.
This is how one woman later described the experience when she was testifying in court,
“I did not get physically injured.
I got mentally injured…
I think about the smell, the stench and the bad things.
All the memories come flooding back, and I can't stop them.”
Another witness said she and others thought they were going to die, and if not, then just
get ill from the sewage.
She said in court, “There was lots of urine and feces all the way up to the rim of everyone.”
The Poop Cruise was certainly a holiday in hell.
But as you’ll see, things could have been worse.
8.
Mass Sickness On the poop cruise most of the injuries that
were sustained were of a mental kind, but on a cruise ship that left the U.S. for the
Caribbean in 2010, a lot of people became extremely ill all of a sudden.
Imagine this.
You're on a ship with over 1,800 guests and suddenly hundreds of them just start throwing
up and come down with a bad case of diarrhea.
Passengers go out on the deck and then suddenly something shifts in their stomach.
They vomit all over the place…and right across from them another person vomits.
It becomes a kind of vomit-athon.
It’s actually what you might call a viral relay.
What had happened is a stomach virus had been passed from one person to another and in the
end this virus affected more than 400 people on the ship.
To stop the spread, people were told to wash their hands often or better still, isolate
themselves in their cabins.
That was not exactly what you’d call a colorful vacation in the Caribbean…holed up in a
cabin waiting for the mass pooping and vomiting to die down.
That’s the problem with cruise ships.
If one person brings a virus on board it can quickly spread.
We think you all know a story of when this recently happened, but that’s a tale for
another day.
7.
Bad Weather You’ve all seen videos of cruise ships having
a hard time in bad weather, and usually the ships can handle it even though passengers
might get thrown around a bit.
But sometimes ships just get stranded and they can’t sail out of the madness.
This happened in 2019 off the coast of Norway.
Massive 30-foot waves rocked the Viking Cruise ship and that led to engine failure.
The problem was, it was too dangerous to keep the people on the ship but it was also too
dangerous to send boats in to evacuate them.
Before that happened some waves were so big that they broke down doors of the cabins and
threw people across their rooms.
They were of course just a little concerned that the ship might go down.
The authorities were concerned, too, and so soon helicopters started arriving to airlift
people from the ship.
No one died on this occasion.
We’ll get around to death soon.
6.
Spying This one is just plain weird.
It happened on the Caribbean-headed Carnival Cruise ship in 2018.
A couple on that ship one night were in their cabin about to watch some TV.
Suddenly the man noticed something weird, something that looked like a small camera
pointing at them.
This camera was aimed at the bed.
The man went over to investigate and he later told a court that it was working and so someone
was likely watching them.
This company denied that the camera was turned on, but it did admit that there was a camera.
The couple said this was hogwash, and they said they could see clearly that the camera
was working.
The guy said it was warm when he touched it.
This one remains a bit of a mystery.
The camera was turned over to the FBI and we don’t know what happened after that.
5.
It's A Stick Up It wouldn’t surprise you if we told you
that someone has stolen someone’s belongings while on a cruise ship.
Hey, there are just some folks in this world that can’t resist themselves when they see
a smartphone or a wallet lying around.
But in 2012, 22 Carnival Cruise passengers were robbed, which is quite out of the ordinary.
They were on an excursion at the Mexico seaside resort of Puerto Vallarta when it happened.
The robbery wasn’t actually on the cruise ship; it happened when the people were taking
a bus back to the ship.
Some guys in the middle of the street didn’t get out of the way and the bus had no choice
but to stop.
After that, the men - what the media called “bandits” - got on the bus holding guns
in their hands.
The shocked tourists were told to hand over everything of value.
That included their watches, jewelry, money, cameras, passports, and anything else that
was of any value.
The Mexican authorities said this was a “rare” event, but the cruise line later said that
this particular tour would now be suspended.
4.
Falling Off So, you’ve probably heard that now and again
people fall off cruise ships, but what you might not know is that it happens quite often.
In 2016, a young woman on the Carnival Liberty had been in the bar and it turned out that
she had had the grand total of 19 drinks, which is a hell of a lot for someone who weighed
just 120 pounds (54kg).
The woman then went up to the deck at around 2 am and sat on a deckchair that was right
next to the railing of the ship.
She was never seen again.
Now, you probably think this is a very rare thing to happen, but do you know that from
the year 2000 to the year 2018, 284 people fell off cruise ships—and another 41 people
fell from large ferries.
That’s quite a lot.
We found a few more recent cases of this happening, too, and the outcome is not usually good,
although sometimes people do get saved.
There have also been a few cases when people purposely jumped off a ship.
3.
The Pirates of Somalia In 2005, a cruise ship traveling off the coast
of Somalia came under attack from pirates.
This must have been pretty scary for the passengers because when the pirates got close to the
ship they fired automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades.
There were only 302 passengers on the ship and most of them were from the U.S. and the
UK.
One American woman who was interviewed explained to the media what she witnessed.
She said, “My daughter saw the pirates out our window.
There were at least three RPGs that hit the ship, one in a stateroom four doors down from
our cabin.”
Yep, can you imagine that!
A British guy on the ship said he saw the pirates firing and he said that one of the
rockets from the rocket launchers went right through the liner and into a suite where some
people were staying.
Thankfully, the ship managed to keep the pirates away using a water hose and a long range acoustic
device.
None of the passengers were hurt during the ordeal, although one of the crew members was
injured.
This was quite an unusual thing to happen since cruise ships have so many people on
them.
Pirates tend to go for cargo ships where there is a lot of loot to be had and only a few
crew members.
2.
A Modern Disaster You all know about the sinking of the Titanic,
but some of you might not have heard of the 2013 Costa Concordia disaster.
That ship was sailing with 3,229 passengers and 1,023 crew on January Friday the 13th
when it hit a rock.
A hole was torn in the hull and water started to get into the ship, meanwhile the gigantic
ship was turning on its side.
32 passengers and crew died during the event, and after it happened the captain of the ship
was imprisoned on a charge of manslaughter.
He also abandoned ship to save his own life and so he became known as “Captain Coward.”
Some people say he was made a scapegoat for the disaster, although the coast guard captain
that shouted, “Get on board, dammit!” didn’t think that was the case.
Titanic 2 One of the worst disasters that ever happened
on a passenger ship happened in 1914 and the ship was called RMS Empress of Ireland.
Those old passenger ships were not exactly cruise ships, but back then they were about
as close as you can get to a modern day cruise ship.
Passengers on board could float in the luxury of a first class suite or they could get the
much cheaper second and third class cabins.
While sailing through thick fog on the Saint Lawrence River in North America, the ship’s
crew could barely see a thing…and then suddenly BANG.
It was hit by the Norwegian collier SS Storstad in the early hours of the morning.
This disaster happened around two years after the Titanic went down and killed around 1,500
people, so the ship was equipped with ample lifeboats and had watertight compartments.
No one ever thought something like the Titanic disaster could ever happen again.
It actually took just 14 minutes for the ship to fill with water and sink, so there wasn’t
much time to get people into those lifeboats.
Out of the 1,477 people on board the ship, 1,012 of them died.
It was Titanic, the sequel.
The disaster killed the rich and the poor and it took the lives of quite a few notable
people.
The survivors were all picked up while floating in the water, with only four children amongst
them.
134 children in total died that fateful day.
One of the reasons that so many people died was because the impact was so sudden and just
about everyone was fast asleep at the time of the collison.
In the aftermath the Norwegians said the Empress of Ireland was at fault, but the captains
and crew on that ship said it was the Norwegian ship that had caused the crash.
One of the survivors who was one of those saved kids later said in interviews that she
remembered how beautiful the ship was, calling it a “floating hotel.”
She said she remembered how wonderfully the orchestra played.
One night she went to bed and was woken up by a bang.
Before she knew it, she was floating in the water holding on to some wreckage.
She was eventually saved, but lost both her parents.
Now we think you just have to watch this amazing video, “Where Did All The Bodies On Titanic
Disappear?”
Or watch, “50 Insane Facts About Titanic You Didn't Know.”