By Eric Novak, Columnist
This past week, there was breaking news that a Carnival cruise liner, ironically named the Triumph, was set adrift by an unexplained engine fire, paralyzing the ship completely. This ordeal began on Monday and lasted all the way until Thursday night, when the ship was successfully towed back to port.
This cruise gone awry was coined “Hell Cruise” or “Nightmare Cruise” by passengers and newscasters alike.
Conditions of the cruise were described as “insane,” as the ship was littered with excrement as well as rotting food. The toilets had overflown and various manner of fecal matter had begun seeping through the walls, no doubt surprising some unsuspecting passengers.
In lieu of these toilet problems, passengers were given red biohazard bags, in which they would deposit their waste.
Even after the cruise ship had successfully docked and the passengers had reached dry land for the first time in days, the failure of the Triumph was far from over. Lawsuits followed, suing the Carnival company for the four-day nightmare that vacationers all had to experience.
These conditions do indeed sound deplorable, although I think people are forgetting one of the most important things that could have happened: no one was seriously hurt or killed.
A few people became sick over the course of the cruise, which is understandable given the circumstances, but no one was critically ill or even injured at the conclusion of the voyage.
There have been a lot of claims of serious injury, but no proof of these injuries. Only these peoples’ lawyers speak for them. I am suspicious of these lawsuits, as it seems to me that many people are eager to profit from any unfortunate event that they have to go through.
Instead of jumping at the chance to extort money from this affair, people should spend more time being thankful for the fact that no one was seriously hurt.
In addition to suspected greediness, it seems to me that the apparent state of chaos that resulted when the ship’s systems went down was mirrored in the intelligence of the passengers on the ship. The state of things on the ship was said to have been, and I kid you not, a “mix of ‘Survivor’ and ‘Lord of the Flies’.”
I know that living on a non-functional cruise ship for a few days with bodily fluids sloshing about the deck has to be undesirable, but comparing it to a survival match where every person becomes a savage in order to preserve their livelihood is just ridiculous.
These people were trapped on a cruise ship. A ship equipped to sustain life for at least the four days that they were stranded.
While people were pooping wherever they could on the ship and I understand that it caused a lot of issues with smell, I can’t help but noticed how ridiculous this is.
What I can’t seem to wrap my mind around is the fact that no one had once considered the idea of emptying their feces into a bucket and then depositing the contents of said bucket over the side of the ship. Not only would this have eliminated the problem, but it would have also made the prolonged cruise a bit more tolerable.
This “Hell Cruise” was mostly made so due to the irrational state of thinking that many people fall into when faced with a crisis. If the passengers had just stopped to consider their situation for a minute, they would’ve been able to avoid a good bit of the “nightmare” and a whole lot of smell.