11 Terrifying Facts About Cruise Ships

Discovering the grittier side of the cruise industry.

Complex Original

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We are all familiar with the movie Titanic and the grandeur and style that the richest of the rich were accustomed to having in their daily lives. That's exactly what every passenger nowadays dreams of when they decide to book their tickets for a cruise and pack their bags-- a getaway to an exotic location in a vessel filled with luxury and comfort, basically a week-long escape from the reality of a steady job and normal-person problems.

Everybody who decides to take a cruise goes with the idea of relaxing and enjoying their seafaring time--perhaps even re-enacting the famous Kate-and-Leo deck scene, for those in-the-closet romantics. But there is a dirtier, grittier side to cruises that's usually ignored and invisible. It's the stuff that the cruise liners try to hide--those ugly truths that nobody really wants to hear, those ugly truths that are better swept under the carpet. Well, in the heart of cruise season, it's time for somebody to lift up the rug. Here are 11 Terrifying Facts About Cruise Ships.

The world's largest cruise ships are about four football fields long and are as heavy as 9,000 army tanks.

Almost everyone has seen the film Titanic-- all those scenes of lavish dining halls and extravagant ballrooms, even a prayer room. Not to mention the famous staircase where Kate and Leo exchange a momentarily-electric glance. Then there’s the sweeping decks with incredible views of the sea stretching far and wide in all directions. This is exactly what all passengers nowadays really expect when they board cruise ships bound for exotic destinations. They want the Kate-and-Leo feel of living in a beautiful ship. And that’s what cruise liners aim to give passengers; grandeur by sheer size and volume and weight.

Did you know that the largest cruise ships in the world are about four football fields long? Currently, Royal Caribbean International owns the MS Oasis of the Seas and the MS Allure of the Seas, the two actual largest cruise ships in the world. Each of these monster ships have 16 decks and can carry over 6,000 passengers. In comparison to the Titanic, these gargantuan creations are 300 feet longer and almost four times heavier (as heavy as 9,000 army tanks actually). The Allure even has a replication of New York City’s Central Park right inside the ship.

Most cruise ships come equipped with a morgue that can hold between one and three bodies.

It is interesting to note that the longer cruises attract a lot of old people because they are retired and relaxed individuals who are no longer bothered by the inconveniences of a daily job or routine. This makes them the ideal passengers for those longer trips that last more than a week.

But the fact that there are a lot of old people travelling on cruise ships also means that there are quite a few natural deaths that occur each year on the cruises. In fact, most cruise ships actually have morgues that can store up to two or three bodies. Morbid, yes, but better safe than sorry. And although cruise liners don’t reveal the number of natural deaths that occur onboard each year, it is possible to estimate the numbers by examining the reports from coroners’ offices near ports. According to Broward County Medical Examiner’s Office in Florida, there were 97 cruise ship deaths between the 1999 and 2007. According to Miami Dade County Medical Examiner’s Office, there have been 33 cruise ship deaths since 2004. According to the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office, there were 22 deaths between 1991 and 2003. Those are pretty significant numbers there.

In 2009, pirates earned 30 million Euros from ransoms and stolen goods. That year, they successfully completed 200 attacks.

The threat of Somali pirates is still a very real problem and an actual possibility for any vessel within a couple hundred miles off the Somalian coast. Actually, the year 2009 was the most lucrative for the pirates, who were able to obtain approximately 30 million Euros from ransoms and stolen goods during their 200 attacks. These pirates are fierce, usually attacking ships with grenades, machine guns, and rockets. Although there are US Navy and Nato ships positioned in the area, they are unable to intervene unless there is an actual attack-in-progress-- which is why it is quite difficult to catch the culprits behind Somalia’s piracy.

On average the following food and drink are consumed DAILY on cruise ships (from Disney cruise line): 8,260 cups of coffee, 5,000 eggs for breakfast, 2,000 steaks, 1,000 baked potatoes, and 1,150 pounds of bananas.

So, who is your average cruise ship passenger? Just less than 17 million people took a cruise in the year 2011, and their favorite destinations were the Caribbean, the Mediterranean, Europe, Alaska, and Hawaii. So what are people eating during these jolly times? Here are the stats on the food consumption of these passengers (courtesy of the Disney cruise line) on a daily basis: An average of 8,260 cups of coffee are consumed daily, usually about 5,000 eggs consumed every morning, then approximately 2,000 steaks, 1,000 baked potatoes, and 1,150 pounds of bananas.

There were 79 fires on cruise ships between 1990 and 2011.

Of all the possible mishaps that could happen to cruise ships, there’s three pretty common problems that most of these ships face: Fires, plumbing issues, and running aground. According to Dr. Ross Klein, professor at Memorial University in Newfoundland, Canada and avid passenger of cruise ships, there have been about 79 fires onboard cruise ships between the years 1990 and 2011 (the number of fires in cruise ships per year has actually doubled since 2006). Also, 98 ships have run aground between the years 1972 and 2011. As for plumbing issues-- those arise when passengers on the upper decks attempt to flush things other than human waste, which clogs the pipes at the lower deck levels. This is very common and often hard to prevent.

The craziest cruise ship mishap of this year is, with no doubt whatsoever, the incident of the stranded Carnival cruise ship Triumph in the Gulf of Mexico. Apparently, there was a fire in the ship’s engine room that cause the whole cruise ship to lose power. As the passengers aboard Triumph waited to be rescued, the sewage system backed up, causing stinking sewage to flood hallways, drench the walls, and seep into rooms. The conditions became so bad that most passengers began living on the decks to escape the horrid smells. The rescue process took a grueling five days.

About 200 people have disappeared from cruises in the past 13 years.

There have been about 200 bone-chilling cruise-ship disappearances altogether since the year 2000. There were 23 disappearances in the 2012 alone. Most of the numbers and statistics on these disappearances have been gathered by Dr. Ross Klein, the author of Cruise Ship Blues:The Underside of the Cruise Ship Industry. Dr. Klein has even testified for Congress multiple times about the growing concerns.

Based on Dr. Klein’s data, about half of the disappearances since the year 2000 have occurred on Carnival Cruise ships (94 out of the 200 disappearances, to be more exact). Royal Caribbean is the cruise line with the second largest number of disappearances, with about 39 in those 13 years.

Here are a few more interesting facts about cruise ship disappearances: Men are more likely to go overboard than women, the average age of passengers who have gone overboard is 44, and these instances are most likely to happen on the last night of the cruise, probably during the endangered passenger’s drunken wanderings onboard the ship.

This year, a Carnival cruise ship failed a Center for Disease Control Inspection.

Food is one of the biggest luxury aspects to traveling in cruise ships-- those cocktail drinks, the all-you-can-eat buffets, room service, the specialized restaurants, and so much more. Not to mention the star-quality service along with each meal-- that’s exactly what every passenger onboard a cruise ship pays for and that’s exactly what they expect to get. But you can imagine their surprise if they found out about the sometimes-not-so-great sanitary conditions aboard such cruise liners. And as always, a lack of sanitation inevitably leads to sickness and infection, especially in such an enclosed environment and close quarters.

In fact, just this year a Carnival cruise ship failed a Center for Disease Control Inspection. How? Here it is in a list:

Lack of chlorination for the ship’s water park

Salad bar foods that were unprotected by “sneeze shields”

Lack of lighting for cleaning areas involving food

A large fly near raw hamburger-patties

A leaking dried food waste compartment

A roach nymph (basically a baby cockroach) in the deck drain of the room service juice dispenser.

Just this year, two cruise ships (one Royal Caribbean cruise ship and one Princess cruise ship) had extremely contagious outbreaks of the stomach bug (formally known as norovirus), which resulted in hundreds of passengers throwing up and having diarrhea, to put it bluntly. Some of these passengers were even quarantined due to the severity of the virus. Legionnaire’s disease is another common cruise-ship bacteria that is developed in stagnant water. For the 2003-2004 year, there were eight cases of the bacteria reported aboard various cruise ships.

The Alaskan cruise ship, Sapphire Princess, generates the same amount of sulfur dioxide fumes as 13.1 million cars on a DAILY basis. The famous English cruise ship, Queen Elizabeth II, consumes 121,119 gallons of fuel PER DAY.

The cruise liners have established an entire industry that provides relaxing and scenic means of traveling through some of the most ecologically diverse, beautiful paradises around the world-- voyages to places like Alaska, the Caribbean, the Mediterranean and so much more. It is ironic that it is the cruise ships, these gas-guzzling monsters, are the means of transportation to such ecologically unique and pure destinations.

For example, the Sapphire Princess cruise ship that often makes its way through the pristine Alaskan waters usually generates the same amount of sulfur dioxide fumes that 13.1 million cars could generate in just one day (according to the EPA). The Queen Elizabeth II, an English cruise ship (It was actually launched by her Majesty Queen Elizabeth herself), is known to consume about 433 tons of diesel fuel per day. Yes. Per day. By a 7.15 lb/gallon of No. 2 diesel, that's 121,119 gallons per day.

Aside from the air pollution, all cruise ships also pollute the waters through which they travel. Most cruise ships these days can carry between 4,000 and 6,000 people, including both the crew and the passengers. This means that enough water must be stored aboard for each person’s shower and toilet functions. It also means that the waste that all the passengers generate must be stored as well, in accordance with basic laws and regulations of course (But rules and regulations can always be broken. Why store when you can just dump?). So, what does that mean in terms of the actual quantities of waste generated by these gargantuan monsters?

Brace yourself. Your average cruise ship produces between 140,000 to 210,000 gallons of sewage per week. It also produces another million gallons of waste-water per week that comes from using the showers, the sinks, and doing laundry while on board. And what’s so bad about poop-water being dumped into the seas? The sewage water contains phosphates and nitrates that can rapidly increase the growth of algae, which in turn can harm the ecological system of coral and fish that’s already in place before the sewage is dumped. Then, there’s also 25,000 gallons of oil-rich bilge water that is released from the ship’s engine systems each week. It certainly all adds up. That’s approximately 1,165,000 to 1,235,000 gallons of toxic water released by one cruise ship in one week. And there’s a lot of cruise ships out there.

Your average cruise ship produces between 140,000 to 210,000 gallons of sewage per week.

Potential employees from third world countries often have to pay agents and the cruise liner itself thousands of dollars to become an established worker.

The whole point of taking a cruise is to have that special worry-free feeling of being a king or queen. You're surrounded by constant luxury and entertainment. but while everything above is glamorous and clean and all the crew members are smiling and inviting, graciously hosting throughout your journey, it’s what’s hidden behind the scenes that will completely change your perspective on the labor situation aboard cruise liners.

A large majority of crew members are recruited by agents who charge them ridiculous sums of money (sometimes as much as $1,500 for an interview and job conformation) to get them steady positions aboard cruise ships. In addition to agent fees, the cruise liner itself will often charge the new employee (maybe an additional $1,000 to $2,000) for airfare and uniforms. This means that this new crew member now actually owes the cruise liners and agents money before even beginning his or her job.

But what choice does he or she have? Most crew members are recruited from third-world countries, primarily India and the Philippines, where others can easily be recruited if they decide to turn down the job. To give you some perspective: David Dingle, CEO of Carnival in the United Kingdom, told The Guardian that “we have a manning office out in Mumbai (Bombay). There are queues out on to the street.” And it’s no surprise why all cruise liners hire such cheap labor. They aim to keep their prices low while the right people (the higher ups) end up maximizing on the profits.

Another common practice in these seafaring workplaces is when the lower-level workers must pay off their managers or other workers with some of the tips they earn, in attempts to secure better placements and positions. An example: Noel Everett, a steward for Norwegian Cruise Lines, recalled how he and a friend had to pay other workers to help out with their unrealistic workload: “There’s no way two of us could clean 34 rooms between 10:15 and 11:30 am.” Krishnan, an Indian cook aboard Concordia, also does a great job with summing up the ugly truth: “They never feel that we are humans. They believe we are machines.”

Cruise liners are able to violate many major U.S. rules and regulations by registering their ships in other countries.

Most cruise ships are actually registered to foreign countries such as Panama or Liberia. This is because these countries are often unable to properly enforce strict regulations and rules for the cruise liners to follow. This means that most cruise liners are basically unregulated and untouchable by American law enforcement. It allows them to get away with using cheap labor, polluting the seas and skies, not following proper sanitation policies, and not preparing properly for cruise ship mishaps and accidents.

This little "oversight" is referred to as "flying flags of convenience." The only way to truly stop all of the misdeeds of these cruise liners is forcing them to follow all basic, American laws and regulations. No more loopholes. Of course, this is easier said than done.