Reports are trickling in from the passengers aboard the Carnival Cruise ship that was stranded for days in the Gulf of Mexico. After a fire in the engine room disabled the ship, apparently the crew started giving away booze — and then, when people went nuts, had to stop giving away booze. Meanwhile, the sanitation situation was gross and “the stench was awful,” according to a 50-year-old from Dallas woman who spent her birthday on the ship. “A lot of people were crying and freaking out.”
Obviously when you sign up for a relaxing vacation and end up sleeping on the floor and shitting in a plastic bag, you’re going to complain. As you should! But as Paul Whitefield of the LA Times reminds us, the Mayflower had 150 and crew passengers on a 110-foot long wooden ship also carrying farm animals. And if you’ve ever seen how black people were crammed together and stacked on shelves slave ships, well you might think 3,143 passengers on the 900-foot-long Carnival Triumph were lucky, in a way. In any case, the supposedly fun trip was decidedly not fun at all; let’s allow the passengers to tell it in their own words:
- “All I can do is cry.”
- “My mother is a diabetic, and they would not even come to the room because she cannot walk the stairs to help her with insulin. She hasn’t had insulin in three days.”
- “The ship’s afloat, so is the sewage.”
- “Pipes are busting, I know the sewer is backing up, and water is in the cabins, and it’s just a nightmare.”
- “Just imagine the filth… People were doing crazy things and going to the bathroom in sinks and showers.”
- “The floors were mushy — you had this smell in your throat that you couldn’t get rid of.”
- “There’s poop and urine all along the floor. The floor is flooded with sewer water … and we had to poop in bags.”
- “People were hoarding food — boxes and boxes of cereal, grabbing cake with both hands.”
- “The worst thing was the toilets. Going in them little red bags and we just had to put them in the trash. It got to the stage when they said if you have to urinate go in the sink or the shower.”
- “We now know things about each other we really don’t need to know.”
- “It was like a hot port-o-potty, and when the ship tilted, [the sewage] would spill.”
- “There were some people that were hungover and drunk and were too lazy to do what the crew said when it came to precautions… they were throwing up on the carpet and the stairs, throwing up in the toilets that weren’t supposed to be used.”
- “Cesspool.”
- “It was horrible. Horrible.”
- “It was inhuman.”
- “Like Katrina in the Dome, except it’s afloat.”
- “I truly, truly, truly thought the boat was gonna tip over because it slants at, like, a 45 degree angle one day and the next day it is to the other side.”
- “There were people screaming obscenities in the hallways, wasted.”
- “It’s degrading. Demoralizing, and then they want to insult us by giving us $500”
- “I want a hot shower and a daggum Whataburger.”
- “This was my first and my last cruise.”
- “It could be a lot worse.”
- “There are some who have over-exaggerated and dramatised it, and are going to milk it for all it’s worth.”
“I just wanted to vomit, like every second probably,” said 12-year-old passenger Allie Taylor.
More here: “Some lady was SELLING Immodium. Woman died yesterday of a heart attack. Today they cleaned the hell out of this ship, served LOBSTER FOR LUNCH, crew is wearing matching hats.”
And this just in: “Carnival rescue bus breaks down while bringing passengers home”. Oy.
Carnival cruise horror: Forced to eat lobster and chocolate cake! [LA Times]
On crippled cruise ship, icky jobs fell to ‘amazing’ crew [CNN]
Stranded Carnival Cruise Ship’s Toilets Are So Full Of Shit They Are Falling Off The Walls, And Other Gross Details From Someone Aboard [Deadspin]
‘It was like the Hunger Games’: Tears as Carnival cruise survivors reveal their horrific ordeal on board stranded ship [Daily Mail]
Cruise ship nightmare: Passengers describe ‘filth,’ ‘stench,’ ‘freaking out’ [Chicago Tribune]
Carnival ‘Cruise from hell’ was a mix of ‘Survivor’ and ‘Lord of the Flies’ [SCPR]
It Could Be A Lot Worse,’ Triumph Passenger Says; Cruise Ship Docking At Ala. Port [NPR]
Passengers leave cruise ship telling tales of woe [CBS News]
Ohio Cruise Passenger: All I Can Do is Cry [Fox Cleveland]
Passengers, cruise line offer different tales [Amarillo Globe News]
‘Tempers started flying’: Passengers from crippled cruise liner tell of filth and fright [NBC News]
Nightmare Conditions for Cruise Passengers Adrift at Sea [Arutz Sheva]
Stricken US cruise ship passengers disembark [Al Jazeera]
Weary passengers fan out for homes after finally getting off crippled cruise ship [Washington Post]
Carnival Triumph Cruise Ship: ‘Blessed’ Passengers Return Home With Stories of Horror [ABC News]
Passengers disembark after Carnival’s cruise from hell arrives in Alabama port [Fox News]
Images via clarkaj and chasemaclaskey on Instagram h/tAl Jazeera