Crazy But True Stories That Happened On Cruise Ships

You’ve saved all year to take the vacationof a lifetime on a cruise ship.

After you set sail the fun begins, the bandstarts playing, and soon you’ll be gorging on seemingly never-ending buffet items.

After a few days, a few too many drinks anda 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 committedthe murder with a lead pipe in the ballroom.

Half way through your game, people start runningaround covered in blood, and of course you think this is all part of the fun.

What we just told you is a true story, andnow we will explain. 10.

The Cruise Ship MurderIn 2017, the Emerald Princess set off from Seattle with 3,400 on board on a journey toSoutheast Alaska.

One of those passengers would not survivethe trip.

During the night of the murder mystery partya couple on that ship were having a domestic dispute, one that would end with the man beatinghis wife to death.

Soon staff and medical officers were on thescene, and what they saw before them was a woman covered in blood.

A ship security officer subdued the man andput him in handcuffs.

Some passengers on the ship had heard screamsand some would later see staff with the woman’s blood on them.

One passenger later told the media, “Peoplewere running through the hall with blood all over them and trying to get security.” They actually thought this was some kind ofhoax,

just part of the game, but of course they were wrong.

It was later revealed that the woman had diedfrom blunt force trauma to her head and face.

The man admitted to what he had done and isnow in jail.

The answer is yes, and like always, we’llleave the best until last.

Maybe “best” is the wrong word…we shouldprobably have said “worst.” 9.

Poop CruiseIn 2013, some of the 4,000 people aboard the Carnival Triumph cruise ship woke up to thesmell of smoke and the sound of fire alarms.

What happened shortly after was the ship lostpower and was left stranded in the Gulf of Mexico.

Ok, so the fire was extinguished…surelythings could haven’t been that bad.

You see, those 4,000 people on that ship hadno air conditioning…Most of the time they were left without any lights, and some peoplecomplained 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 functioningand sewage was building up.

4,000 people created quite a lot of poop inthe four days that the ship was stranded.

People later sued the company and describedin dramatic detail how people were huddled together on the ship’s decks not knowinghow things would turn out.

They explained that the human sewage fromoverflowing toilets made its way to the deck and there was a terrible stench.

We guess this might sound quite amusing tosome of our viewers, but the experience was traumatic for those passengers.

They had paid for what was supposed to bethe trip of a lifetime and instead spent days in darkness in a sea of poop.

This is how one woman later described theexperience when she was testifying in court, “I did not get physically injured.

I got mentally injured… I think about the smell, the stench and thebad things.

All the memories come flooding back, and Ican't stop them.” Another witness said she and others thoughtthey were going to die, and if not, then just get ill from the sewage.

She said in court, “There was lots of urineand feces all the way up to the rim of everyone.” The Poop Cruise was certainly a holiday inhell.

But as you’ll see, things could have beenworse. 8.

Mass SicknessOn the poop cruise most of the injuries that were sustained were of a mental kind, buton a cruise ship that left the U.S.

for the Caribbean in 2010, a lot of people becameextremely ill all of a sudden.

You're on a ship with over 1,800 guests andsuddenly hundreds of them just start throwing up and come down with a bad case of diarrhea.

Passengers go out on the deck and then suddenlysomething shifts in their stomach.

They vomit all over the place…and rightacross from them another person vomits.

It’s actually what you might call a viralrelay.

What had happened is a stomach virus had beenpassed from one person to another and in the end this virus affected more than 400 peopleon the ship.

To stop the spread, people were told to washtheir hands often or better still, isolate themselves in their cabins.

That was not exactly what you’d call a colorfulvacation in the Caribbean…holed up in a cabin waiting for the mass pooping and vomitingto die down.

If one person brings a virus on board it canquickly spread.

We think you all know a story of when thisrecently happened, but that’s a tale for another day. 7.

Bad WeatherYou’ve all seen videos of cruise ships having a hard time in bad weather, and usually theships can handle it even though passengers might get thrown around a bit. Massive 30-foot waves rocked the Viking Cruiseship and that led to engine failure. 

The problem was, it was too dangerous to keepthe people on the ship but it was also too dangerous to send boats in to evacuate them. Before that happened some waves were so bigthat they broke down doors of the cabins and threw people across their rooms. 

They were of course just a little concernedthat the ship might go down. The authorities were concerned, too, and sosoon helicopters started arriving to airlift people from the ship. No one died on this occasion. We’ll get around to death soon. 6. SpyingThis one is just plain weird.

It happened on the Caribbean-headed CarnivalCruise ship in 2018. A couple on that ship one night were in theircabin 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 latertold a court that it was working and so someone was likely watching them. This company denied that the camera was turnedon, but it did admit that there was a camera. 

The couple said this was hogwash, and theysaid 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 andwe don’t know what happened after that. 

5. It's A Stick UpIt wouldn’t surprise you if we told you that someone has stolen someone’s belongingswhile on a cruise ship. Hey, there are just some folks in this worldthat can’t resist themselves when they see a smartphone or a wallet lying around. But in 2012, 22 Carnival Cruise passengerswere robbed, which is quite out of the ordinary. They were on an excursion at the Mexico seasideresort of Puerto Vallarta when it happened. The robbery wasn’t actually on the cruiseship; it happened when the people were taking a bus back to the ship. 

Some guys in the middle of the street didn’tget 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 overeverything 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 OffSo, you’ve probably heard that now and again people fall off cruise ships, but what youmight not know is that it happens quite often. In 2016, a young woman on the Carnival Libertyhad 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 around2 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 rarething to happen, but do you know that from the year 2000 to the year 2018, 284 peoplefell 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 peoplepurposely jumped off a ship. 3. The Pirates of SomaliaIn 2005, a cruise ship traveling off the coast of Somalia came under attack from pirates. This must have been pretty scary for the passengersbecause when the pirates got close to the ship they fired automatic weapons and rocket-propelledgrenades. There were only 302 passengers on the shipand most of them were from the U.S. and the UK. 

One American woman who was interviewed explainedto the media what she witnessed. She said, “My daughter saw the pirates outour window. There were at least three RPGs that hit theship, one in a stateroom four doors down from our cabin.” Yep, can you imagine that! A British guy on the ship said he saw thepirates firing and he said that one of the rockets from the rocket launchers went rightthrough the liner and into a suite where some people were staying. Thankfully, the ship managed to keep the piratesaway using a water hose and a long range acoustic device. 

None of the passengers were hurt during theordeal, although one of the crew members was injured. This was quite an unusual thing to happensince cruise ships have so many people on them. Pirates tend to go for cargo ships where thereis a lot of loot to be had and only a few crew members. 

2. A Modern DisasterYou all know about the sinking of the Titanic, but some of you might not have heard of the2013 Costa Concordia disaster. That ship was sailing with 3,229 passengersand 1,023 crew on January Friday the 13th when it hit a rock. A hole was torn in the hull and water startedto 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 lifeand so he became known as “Captain Coward.” Some people say he was made a scapegoat forthe disaster, although the coast guard captain that shouted, “Get on board, dammit!”didn’t think that was the case. Titanic 2One of the worst disasters that ever happened on a passenger ship happened in 1914 and theship was called RMS Empress of Ireland. 

Those old passenger ships were not exactlycruise ships, but back then they were about as close as you can get to a modern day cruiseship. Passengers on board could float in the luxuryof a first class suite or they could get the much cheaper second and third class cabins. While sailing through thick fog on the SaintLawrence River in North America, the ship’s crew could barely see a thing…and then suddenlyBANG. It was hit by the Norwegian collier SS Storstadin the early hours of the morning. 

This disaster happened around two years afterthe Titanic went down and killed around 1,500 people, so the ship was equipped with amplelifeboats and had watertight compartments. No one ever thought something like the Titanicdisaster could ever happen again. It actually took just 14 minutes for the shipto 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 poorand it took the lives of quite a few notable people. The survivors were all picked up while floatingin the water, with only four children amongst them. 134 children in total died that fateful day. One of the reasons that so many people diedwas because the impact was so sudden and just about everyone was fast asleep at the timeof the collison. In the aftermath the Norwegians said the Empressof Ireland was at fault, but the captains and crew on that ship said it was the Norwegianship that had caused the crash. 

One of the survivors who was one of thosesaved kids later said in interviews that she remembered how beautiful the ship was, callingit a “floating hotel.” She said she remembered how wonderfully theorchestra played. One night she went to bed and was woken upby a bang. Before she knew it, she was floating in thewater holding on to some wreckage. She was eventually saved, but lost both herparents.