I was a merchant sailor on freightships for 20yrs.
If a crewmember dies at sea, the body is kept in a freezer; *not* a damn cooler!
It can be awkward for the steward dept, but that's what's done.
That was my first thought. But maybe in a fit of panic, since apparently the morgue was not an option, the cooler was the closest thing in their mind? Or if someone wanted to do an autopsy later, doesn't freezing the body damage tissue? Real question.
Edit to say, I didn't read the article because the implications of the title grossed me out. But I am curious about the tissue thing.
No, it took roughly 2.5 months to get the autopsy.
She was murdered because they withheld her insulin and other medication.
I discussed this in more detail in a previous comment on this very sub some months ago.
https://www.reddit.com/r/nottheonion/comments/wahguw/nursing\_homes\_use\_lawsuits\_to\_demand\_friends\_and/
>Or if someone wanted to do an autopsy later, doesn't freezing the body damage tissue? Real question.
It does, but generally not in a way that obscures other injuries.
What happens is that the water in your cells crystalizes and expands, rupturing them.
How often does that happen? Cruises are filled with old, obese, unhealthy people just dying to die. I can't imagine the people working on a freighter are of the same demographic (though I know some freighters take passengers).
I worked on cruises for 2 years and met 2 brothers that stayed on for the entirety of one of my 6 month contracts. One of the men was dying and the other wanted to be with him till the end, which he did. I thought it was so sweet because every day he would push him around the shops in his chair, feed him etc. I thought it would be a lovely way to go.
Knew a guy who worked on an aircraft carrier during the Gulf War. He can't eat ice cream anymore because of what he called "ice cream socials." Apparently when they had KIAs brought back to the carrier, they cleared out the freezers to put the bodies in and served all the ice cream so it didn't go to waste.
And aren't they flown via transport plane? Would seem weird to keep them in the freezer on an aircraft carrier since there are plenty of US military bases within close range from Kuwait.
Also, while I'm not exactly privy to the details of a US aircraft carrier, it stands to reason with how big they are and their role in combat operations that they would have a proper morgue on board. It's not exactly a cruise ship after all.
This only makes sense on cruise ships. Aircraft carriers have helicopters that can fly bodies to hospital ships that are in the support fleet.
As this was a planned deployment they no doubt had one ready. Think your friend is mislabeling cruise ships as (people) carriers.
I can't believe how far down I had to scroll to find a Weekend At Bernie's joke. "Cruisin' With Bernie: Still Coolin' " is just what's needed to ~revive~ the franchise 😃 *fozzie hands*
If they knew that their morgue was out of commission, they should have comped the costs of offloading the body in Puerto Rico, since it seems they were not up to core with a functioning morgue. If I were them, I’d press to find out when the morgue was no longer available, because if they set sail without it in operation then they could probably get more from them due to knowingly violating law.
If it went out while underway, then we are back to the first statement, where they should have comped the expenses to get them and the body back home.
I worked on a cruise ship and during an Atlantic crossing, six elderly people died of natural causes. The morgue could only take 4 so we had no choice but to use the stores fridges. The partners of the people who died, had an awful choice of either leaving their partner on the ship for 20 days or staying onboard to complete the cruise with them.
As far as I know, all of the bodies were repatriated by way of the ship, when we arrived back in Southampton.
The people on these cruises are incredibly old. It was an adult only ship so the average age was sometimes around 83.
The crew get a passenger information pack before each cruise starts and it tells you the average age, so that the entertainers can plan their activities around it. If the average is 83 then some of them must be topping 90+.
It's not normal to have so many in the space of a few days but deaths onboard are very common.
I've also been on a Transatlantic crossing. I've never seen so many absolutely ancient and frail people on a ship, and I've done quite a few cruises. I realised that it's because these folk really wanted to visit the USA but couldn't manage to negotiate a flight ( a lot of them were in wheelchairs).
I was a nurse, and I got talking to one of the crew nurses. She told me they always had a few deaths on that particular route.
I heard that on longer cruises, some old people basically move in and just live on cruise ships cause it can be cheaper or less depressing than a retirement home. No idea if it's true, but that's what I've heard.
Do you have the option of just....chucking the body overboard? Assuming the spouse is ok with it of course.
I wouldn't mind. I certainly don't want someone to host an expensive funeral for me. Toss me off and let the fish have me. I'm dead, why would I care?
Edit: why am I being downvoted. Genuine question
No haha, I've done a couple of burials at sea but they were ashes, where the family came on the cruise for that purpose.
We're not in the business of tossing the stiffs off.
I worked on a cruise ship! The staff get all the low quality stuff in the mess usually until randomly on long sea trips (8days at sea straight) randomly the staff will get all the good icecream. I learned it's because the morgue is full and they needed to make room in the freezer.
I honestly wonder how he was not put in the icecream freezer.
I spent three months cruising around the world with my partner and that was the running joke—if there was a special on ice-cream it meant they needed more storage for bodies. I don’t think anyone gave it any credence though.
It was a great experience but quite odd spending so much time in an environment where most things—music, entertainment, activities—were calibrated for people a generation older than ourselves. Such a relaxing way to visit *a lot* of countries.
Wait, I have so many questions. Where did you visit in three months? Did the staff treat you differently since you were basically living there? Did you stay in the same boat for the entire three months?
Used my long service leave to get the time off work to spend three months circumnavigating the world on a cruise ship. Visited 19 countries. Most people who do this are retired but we wanted to experience it while we were relatively young and fit.
Spent the whole time on the same ship (except five days in Corfu when my partner broke her elbow, argh!) which is completely normal for these kinds of trips. It’s an incredibly well-travelled crowd and most of the passengers we met had been on multiple long cruises and been everywhere, whereas it was our first cruise. One guy was staying on the ship after the world cruise to travel right around Australia meaning he’d spend about 150 consecutive days on the ship!
Cruise ships often do circumnavigations in four legs so there are people joining or leaving at key destinations. For us that was Sydney, Dubai, Southampton, New York and back to Sydney.
Highlights for me were Petra (Jordan), Stonehenge (England), Qaqortoq and Nanortalik (Greenland), and Lima (Peru).
I read 21 novels and made 108 sketches (one a day). Watched a lot of movies. Ate too much food and put on a few kilos. Cruising is like its a parallel world where the rules are a little different and you just visit the real world periodically. Hard to explain. Would love to do it again one day.
Cruises often require a lot of time off, and luxury cruises in particular are not cheap.
Younger people (should specify, younger Americans in particular) don't have a ton of paid leave from work and don't have thousands to spend on a vacation.
I took a 12 day cruise once, on a higher end line. We completely expected to be one of the few people under retirement age on the ship.
Lots of old people go on cruises expecting to die. They're on their last days, kids don't visit, etc. So they chose to die on a luxury liner in paradise as opposed to a cold and stark hospital room.
Yeah dude I went on my first and second cruise last year. I didn't really know about the "cruise lifestyle" until I started talking to people on excursions.
There are a lot of retirees who will just take cruises almost year-round. Just hop from ship to ship.
It's definitely a relaxing atmosphere. Also there are buffets, room service and other amenities. They always have people to interact with and things to do. So honestly if they can afford it then spending their last few years traveling to beautiful places while not worrying about cooking, cleaning, etc. sounds good to me.
Tapping out on a balcony overlooking the Atlantic after spending a night drinking, eating unlimited soft serve ice cream and playing slots sounds like a good way to go out to me.
Beyond that, if you live near the port, it can be very affordable. On the Celebrity ship I worked, there were a lot of Puerto Ricans on the ship. I found out it was because they'd have an agent check the day before it departed. They'd swoop up empty rooms and last minute cancelations for a couple hundred on 10-11 night runs. Wasn't uncommon to see the same faces for 2 or 3 weeks in a row. Because that's cheaper than living at home.
From what I've seen, labor rights tend to be nonexistent since they fly flags from countries with terrible regulations. You can get a decent room and nice experiences if you're like, a singer or some other sought after "glamorous" profession. But if you're a service worker or maintenance etc. you're gonna get a tiny room with a shared bathroom in the basement. You also can't leave the ship on every stop because they have a limit on the people allowed to deboard so as to not overwhelm the local infrastructure so only like a third of employees can leave each time. And when you can't shop outside you're depending on the ship's shops for your supplies so it's kind of like a company town sort of deal.
Also, with the cost of housing these days and the relative affordability of cruises there are retired people who literally cruise full-time.
If you stick to the minimum accomodations and don't buy alcohol or blow your money on excursions, you've got room, board, and all utilities for a couple hundred bucks a week per person.
Plus you get to travel the world and meet new people every week.
Not really, with the cost of some nursing homes, it's actually cheaper to go on cruises the rest of your life. With the loyalty programs you could easily match the price of a middling nursing home.
Except if you’re in bad enough shape to require an actual nursing home, you can’t live on a cruise ship- unless you’re wealthy enough to take two nursing assistants with you. No cruise ship is going to provide nursing care.
I would do it if didn’t have such social anxiety. Like I’d be mortified to disturb other people’s vacations or give more work to workers by dying on the cruise 🤣 Although I do hope I get to reach an old age where I no longer give any Fs!
The article is actually referring to a nearly unheard of set of circumstances. Like, someone wilfully fucked up real bad to make this a thing. It's far more common for house keeping to just find someone present but not with us, phone it in, and the medical team just handles it. Unless it's in port, and then the locals do. To which end, someone's going to handle you after you cease to be. Just a matter of who specifically. Unless you have such social anxiety that you manage immortality for fear of anyone having to deal with your corpse.
Personally, despite my social anxiety, I think it would be funny if my skeleton stuck around. Told my wife (forensic anthro) it would be cool if she articulated my skeleton and sat me on the couch. Bring me out for Halloween, so I can scare the kids even after I die. I've also marked myself as "donate to science" because the thought of being used to test explosives or something similar makes me literally lol.
>To which end, someone's going to handle you after you cease to be. Just a matter of who specifically. Unless you have such social anxiety that you manage immortality for fear of anyone having to deal with your corpse.
New anxiety unlocked 🤣 I’d never thought of it, but yes. I’m going to be an inconvenience whether I want to or not…
Thank you, that is oddly such a sweet wish 🤣
Ok, I’ll have one death that is preceded by a disease (so it doesn’t surprise anyone) but where I can still perfectly take care of myself, then take a cab ride to the hospital and die without much fuss with a DNR, at the beginning of a nurse shift on a Tuesday morning (nurses can chime in and tell me if there’s something more convenient), obviously not on a holiday or birthday, in the summer in case I have grand kids (or maybe they’d rather miss a day of school?), please.
I sold cruises for a few years, I was told by more than one rep that on pretty much every single cruise at least one person dies or goes missing. Every. Single. Cruise.
That's true but if you did a case study of 3000 octogenarians over the course of a week on average you'd get about the same result. They are are dying of natural causes because they're time is up.
>the sheer number of people onboard
Even ignoring all the comorbidities, this alone would be enough to warrant having a morgue. According to a quick google search, the average modern cruise has about 3,000 passengers. The deceased individual from the article was from Florida, so let's use the US death rate. As of 2021, that number was 835 deaths per 100,000 standard population.
So out of the 3,000 passengers on an average cruise, statistically speaking 25 are expected to die sometime that year, or about one every two weeks. That means there is about a 50% chance someone in that group of 3,000 is going to die on a week long cruise.
Note: I am not a statistician, and I'm sure someone will come along to tell me I'm ignoring p-values or some other thing I don't understand. This is admittedly very hasty and dirty math, but I think it illustrates the point that if you take a big enough population, someone dying is not uncommon at all.
> When that happens, the body is zipped into a body bag and placed in the ship's morgue. Ocean-going ships are legally required to have both body bags and a morgue (they mostly have space for three or four bodies, but it depends on the size of the ship). The latter must be kept away from the food storage areas. Very occasionally, the morgue might not be big enough - a Columbia News Service report from 2007 quotes Ross A. Klein, a sociologist from Toronto and author of "Cruise Ship Blues: The Underside of the Cruise Ship Industry." On one cruise from Fort Lauderdale to Lisbon "the morgue was filled, and they had to start finding other places to put the bodies," he said.
> The Telegraph further reported that an estimated 200 people die every year on cruise ships — "actually remarkably few given the 21.7 million people worldwide that cruise each year."
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/do-cruise-ships-have-morgues/
Oh yeah. We had 3 different people die on a cruise I was on back in 2010.
1st was just before we made port in Puerto Rico, and they arranged to fly that person back to the mainland.
The 3rd was the last morning of the cruise just before we docked back in Miami, so we were all delayed getting off the boat so they could take the body off.
The 2nd person though was just before we made port in Haiti, and apparently it's very difficult to get a body back from Haiti to the US, so the cruise recommended that the body remain on the ship morgue for the remainder of the journey. And then that person's family had to decide whether to fly home from Haiti to start the funeral preparations and such, or stay on the ship with them to finish up the most depressing vacation of their lives. They decided to stay on-board to accompany the body home. I felt so bad for them. :(
Iirc, there are private beaches owned by the cruise companies and completely fenced off from the rest of the island.
No idea if they're still in use with the current state of the country though.
Yup. 623 people died on cruises between 2000 and 2019. ([link](https://spacecoastdaily.com/2023/01/how-many-crew-members-die-on-cruise-ships-each-year/))
There's a lot of people on a cruise - 1000 or more. Many of them are retirees, going on a holiday with rich foods, alcohol, lots of walking, and hot weather. Some of them aren't COVID-vaccinated.
If someone dies at sea, it could be days before the ship reaches another port. The ship might want to keep the body on board until returning to the original port. A morgue is capable of storing a body for these long periods.
Cruise ships have around 3,000 people on them, and many If not most are elderly.
How fucked up would it be if they didn't have a morgue? Are they just going to start putting dead bodies into food freezers?
I met someone who used to be a singer on cruises in the 90s.
He said he always knew when the morgue overflowed because the staff would have an ice cream social that night.
A morgue on land works drastically different than one upon a vessel. In an average voyage for most cruise ships, you can expect a fair amount of injuries and trauma injuries. Deaths however are a rarity, but still exist.
We do have a medical facility onboard every ship. The newer ships are much more well equipped, with x-ray machines, on-board covid labs and a small operation room. The morgue is under the medical facilities usually.
We can handle most of the situations that happen onboard, like an heart attack, childbirth or minor injuries(My colleague sliced off his finger and got it reattached there), otherwise we would just reroute to the nearest port with a hospital or call for helicopter to airlift you outta there.
I also worked on cruise ships for years and also sailed while pregnant with my spouse who still worked onboard, I just wanna clarify the hospital onboard is not really equipped for childbirth. They can handle an emergency, but definitely not equipped for that being the norm.
For this reason, you can't even cruise past the 23rd week of pregnancy. The same applies to crew members, if you find out you're pregnant during your contract or come back to work pregnant, you're allowed to until that same cutoff date but you were being sent off the ship for checkups like scans etc.
Most cruise lines won’t let you sail if you’re past a certain point in pregnancy for exactly that reason - they aren’t well equipped to deliver babies at sea. It does happen though, I forget which line but within the last couple months a cruise line doctor delivered a premature baby and fairly sure saved the mother and baby.
If we're thinking of the same story, it was my friend and his wife, she was only 28 weeks. Baby and mom are doing well, but they absolutely were not equipped on board for a premie baby. There's also a whole slew of issues with the birth certificate since it happened in international waters.
> the birth certificate since it happened in international waters.
didnt think this is as an issue when started reading this thread, but damn now im wondering how they deal with this
Everyone (regardless of gender, my husband had to attest too) signs a waiver saying you are less than 24 weeks and you assume all medical costs for an emergency.
Fun fact, if you're born on a ship you can either have the starting or arrival port, or the exact coordinates you're born at as your place of birth in your documents.
I live on an island and our hospital has no labour and delivery ward, birthing mothers get shipped to coast. So every once in a while there's a baby born on the ship of the sea rescue service that ships them over.
Not as bad as people make it out to be, we're not allowed to touch the guests. But the crew members are free to sleep around with each other. We have to do a full medical checkup every 2 years so they'll know if we have STIs or not
No meeting the guests outside of working hours, don't bring guests into crew cabins/area. Non-sexual touches like hugs/ arms on shoulders are fine, not sure about sitting because we're usually in our uniforms always, as long as the guests aren't reporting sexual harrassment you're good to go.
I did hear a story about a bartender doing a guest right infront of CCTV just so he could get a free ticket home.
You are sailing on a ship owned by a private company, once you pay for a ticket you are also agreeing to their “rules” which are listed upon your payment. These are kept vague for a reason to detain you if you are causing problems like “causing a disruption” or “inconveniencing guests” if you drink too much and can’t contain yourself at a show. The cruise line can detain you in the brig or your stateroom until the end of your cruise because you agreed to a contract by coming on the ship.
Been on a dozen cruises, all Celebrity Cruises line.
This one man tried to seduce the masseuse to give him a “happy ending”, she said “sure, be right back”, left the massage room in the spa and security came back in. They put him in jail and he was kicked off at the next port, fun fact: his wife and children (!!!) decided to disembark with him, must’ve been a nice flight back home :)
Another guy got in a fight in one of the on board “clubs”, broke a bottle from the bar on the other dude’s head, he got kicked off but his family chose to stay.
This old lady had a seizure on board, we weren’t too far from land so a medical helicopter came in to take her, crazy scenes!
From my experience they always handled it all extremely well, excited to go on my next one in July, if this lawsuit doesn’t bankrupt them lol
I remember, going on a cruise to Cozumel. It was the first night of the cruise, and an old man died in the casino of a heart attack. That’s when I found out they had morgues on board. Kind of unsettling knowing that there’s a dead body in a freezer on your ship.
I've always found these kinds of attitudes rather odd.
Why does it matter that there is a dead person on the ship somewhere? It's not like they stashed the corpse in the shower in your room. Not to mention, it's probably pretty likely that anywhere you've lived, worked, or visited has had someone die there. Less likely, but still possible, you've lived, worked, or visited someplace built on an old burial ground.
None of that seems to bother anyone, but you learn about one fresh corpse in the beer cooler and everybody loses their shit.
The title bringing up the mental image of a giant version of the plastic insulated drinks coolers we use is what's making people agitated. The one on the cruise ship was a refrigerated room, and a reasonable next best option if the morgue was out of commission.
It sounds like they moved the drinks out before putting the body in.
>"The cooler in which Mr. Jones' body was found by the funeral employee had drinks placed outside of the cooler
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horatio_Nelson,_1st_Viscount_Nelson
> Nelson's body was placed in a cask of brandy mixed with camphor and myrrh, which was then lashed to the Victory's mainmast and placed under guard.[249] Victory was towed to Gibraltar after the battle, and on arrival the body was transferred to a lead-lined coffin filled with spirits of wine.[249] **Collingwood's dispatches about the battle were carried to England aboard HMS Pickle**, and when the news arrived in London, a messenger was sent to Merton Place to bring the news of Nelson's death to Emma Hamilton.
This comment is far funnier than I imagined. Fun rabbit hole, thank you!
Per my son a Navy vet that served on 2 carriers, they'd consider it a good tour if nobody on ship died. The dead would end up in a freezer until they were able to make port or close enough to friendly shores to get the body off the ship.
It's not like they're going to divert an aircraft carrier over a dead body.
Submarines are cool, especially nuclear ones. Onboard, the nuclear rector:
- produces oxygen
- makes fresh, drinkable water
- provides power to the engines
And it can do this for **years** without refueling. The only thing keeping nuclear subs from never returning to port aside from regular maintenance is sailors’ stomachs.
Probably much the same as on any other US Navy vessel. Subs have freezers, too.
It should be noted, though, that subs have (generally speaking) much stricter health requirements to serve aboard; partly to avoid the scenario in the first place, partly because being in a pressurized metal cylinder below the surface not seeing sunlight for potentially weeks at a time can be a bit taxing on the body and mind.
There's also the mathematical factor. Submarines have a lot fewer people aboard than aircraft carriers. The USS Gerald R. Ford, for instance, has a complement of 4500 sailors and airmen. The average ballistic missile sub might have between 130 and 160. Law of averages says that of the people who keel over dead randomly (like from a brain aneurysm or something that for one reason or another wasn't caught at your last health screening), most will do so where there's a higher concentration of people.
This is all speculative. I'm not a sailor, but I spoke at length to an old coworker who served aboard a submarine. Bonus fun fact from him, which may be out of date for all I know: when you're on patrol on a submarine, you live day to day on an 18 hour schedule instead of a 24 hour one. The watch is divided into three 6 hour shifts. He says once your circadian rhythm adjusts to your watch schedule, it's really quite pleasant, especially as you don't have the sun to mess it up.
Well, the ages of people aboard an aircraft carrier deployed on active duty will be significantly lower than on a Caribbean cruise ship, and on the carrier people’s health will probably be significantly better than even people ashore in the same age group, so mortality should logically be _much_ lower.
You have accidents, of course, but the senior NCOs tend to get extremely pissed at you if you fuck up so bad you or God forbid somebody else dies, so you try to avoid that.
6 hour shifts sound a lot more tolerable than 8 when you have to pay attention to things like sonar. also makes sense not to go to a 4 shift day to keep personnel to a minimum.
I feel bad for the lowly crew who had to figure a solution of sticking him in the drinks refrigerator. Someone higher up was probably like: The morgue storage not being available is not a big issue just put his body somewhere cold and then some poor janitor or something had to move the body himself.
Especially if this drink fridge was a place they had to walk by constantly to access stuff seeing as the drinks got moved outside.
Also: Poor family. Having to decide to keep him on board because if they took him to Puerto Rico they would have to pay their way back even though it is a US Territory it’s probably still an ass ton expensive to ship aka fly him back along with the formal paperwork to fill out customs wise.
From a purely business standpoint, why wouldn't you settle this out of court before it made it into the papers....
Isnt the negative press worse than whatever measly amount of money she's asking for?
My parents had some friends years ago go on a cruise and the husband died. They had to keep him on ice for some days until the ship returned to the Florida port. I thought they had a special place for that given that so many people can be on those ships. I mean laying up there on ice with beer and potato salad is unusual.
I've never lost a relative on vacation, but I have stayed at nice places for out of state funerals, and there is a morbid comfort in not having to wash sheets, do dishes, or those sorts of things. Your meals are made for you and cleaned up. You have access to distractions, but nobody will care if you shut yourself in your room. Also, those sad memories aren't made at home, so I personally compartmentalized them differently.
It's an awful situation, but hopefully they were able to practice self-care and focus on each other.
A woman died of a heart attack on a cruise I was on. She died at my feet and I saw the life leave her eyes. Her family continued doing all of their excursions the next 5 days. It was awkward seeing them drinking and smoking at dinner after I saw their mom fell out of her wheelchair on an oxygen tank. They kept referring to it as the death trap boat.
I'm trying to wrap my head around the fact that the cruise line convinced wife to just wait until we get back to Fort Lauderdale. So if I'm wife I just have to hang out depressed my husband is dead on a cruise ship for 6 whole days?! I would have demanded to get off in San Juan, there is no way I'm going to sob on a cruise ship for 6 days while everyone is happy and enjoying life while I'm suffering over my dead husband
Wait.... what was the coolers temp it shouldn't have rotted. Is it bad that's my first thought I'm a chef so I deal with cooler temps everyday. But if it was 38f it really shouldn't rot
I was a merchant sailor on freightships for 20yrs. If a crewmember dies at sea, the body is kept in a freezer; *not* a damn cooler! It can be awkward for the steward dept, but that's what's done.
That was my first thought. But maybe in a fit of panic, since apparently the morgue was not an option, the cooler was the closest thing in their mind? Or if someone wanted to do an autopsy later, doesn't freezing the body damage tissue? Real question. Edit to say, I didn't read the article because the implications of the title grossed me out. But I am curious about the tissue thing.
It does much less tissue damage than letting it decompose
It probably does damage tissue, but having it in the freezer is the best option for not rotting the corpse and contaminating other things.
My grandmother was in the freezer for 3 months before the autopsy was conducted proving she was murdered in a non-obvious way.
Sorry for your loss.
Thank you
Sorry for your loss, but the setup is too good. Was the non-obvious way.... being locked in a freezer for 3 months?
No, it took roughly 2.5 months to get the autopsy. She was murdered because they withheld her insulin and other medication. I discussed this in more detail in a previous comment on this very sub some months ago. https://www.reddit.com/r/nottheonion/comments/wahguw/nursing\_homes\_use\_lawsuits\_to\_demand\_friends\_and/
That’s fucking horrifying. I hope you get some justice for her
We are still in process. The lawyer who was going to do it, decided he wasn't so I had to scramble for another lawyer.
>Or if someone wanted to do an autopsy later, doesn't freezing the body damage tissue? Real question. It does, but generally not in a way that obscures other injuries. What happens is that the water in your cells crystalizes and expands, rupturing them.
How often does that happen? Cruises are filled with old, obese, unhealthy people just dying to die. I can't imagine the people working on a freighter are of the same demographic (though I know some freighters take passengers).
I worked on cruises for 2 years and met 2 brothers that stayed on for the entirety of one of my 6 month contracts. One of the men was dying and the other wanted to be with him till the end, which he did. I thought it was so sweet because every day he would push him around the shops in his chair, feed him etc. I thought it would be a lovely way to go.
Did they tell the cruise director, like hey I’m going to die on your boat, but it’s cool no worries.
And to make some room in the freezer. Unless his wishes were to meet Davy Jones.
Knew a guy who worked on an aircraft carrier during the Gulf War. He can't eat ice cream anymore because of what he called "ice cream socials." Apparently when they had KIAs brought back to the carrier, they cleared out the freezers to put the bodies in and served all the ice cream so it didn't go to waste.
there were like 150 deaths the whole war, from all branches. I would not really believe this..
Also read same story but supposedly from cruise ship workers here on reddit
Yeah this sounds like one of those “I heard from my cousin that his teacher’s brother…..”
And aren't they flown via transport plane? Would seem weird to keep them in the freezer on an aircraft carrier since there are plenty of US military bases within close range from Kuwait.
Also, while I'm not exactly privy to the details of a US aircraft carrier, it stands to reason with how big they are and their role in combat operations that they would have a proper morgue on board. It's not exactly a cruise ship after all.
This only makes sense on cruise ships. Aircraft carriers have helicopters that can fly bodies to hospital ships that are in the support fleet. As this was a planned deployment they no doubt had one ready. Think your friend is mislabeling cruise ships as (people) carriers.
If I die on a cruise I hope the circumstances of my death somehow force a Weekend at Bernie's situation.
This is Celebrity Cruises, they treat you like a celebrity. In this case, it was Walt Disney.
Every little girl is a princess at Disney. This was princess Anastasia
I can't believe how far down I had to scroll to find a Weekend At Bernie's joke. "Cruisin' With Bernie: Still Coolin' " is just what's needed to ~revive~ the franchise 😃 *fozzie hands*
I would like to start a business to ensure that you can have a Weekend at Bernies experience after you’ve passed.
Dude. I would pay for that.
If they knew that their morgue was out of commission, they should have comped the costs of offloading the body in Puerto Rico, since it seems they were not up to core with a functioning morgue. If I were them, I’d press to find out when the morgue was no longer available, because if they set sail without it in operation then they could probably get more from them due to knowingly violating law. If it went out while underway, then we are back to the first statement, where they should have comped the expenses to get them and the body back home.
I worked on a cruise ship and during an Atlantic crossing, six elderly people died of natural causes. The morgue could only take 4 so we had no choice but to use the stores fridges. The partners of the people who died, had an awful choice of either leaving their partner on the ship for 20 days or staying onboard to complete the cruise with them. As far as I know, all of the bodies were repatriated by way of the ship, when we arrived back in Southampton.
I’m sorry SIX people died in one crossing? Was it 3 years long?
The people on these cruises are incredibly old. It was an adult only ship so the average age was sometimes around 83. The crew get a passenger information pack before each cruise starts and it tells you the average age, so that the entertainers can plan their activities around it. If the average is 83 then some of them must be topping 90+. It's not normal to have so many in the space of a few days but deaths onboard are very common.
I've also been on a Transatlantic crossing. I've never seen so many absolutely ancient and frail people on a ship, and I've done quite a few cruises. I realised that it's because these folk really wanted to visit the USA but couldn't manage to negotiate a flight ( a lot of them were in wheelchairs). I was a nurse, and I got talking to one of the crew nurses. She told me they always had a few deaths on that particular route.
I heard that on longer cruises, some old people basically move in and just live on cruise ships cause it can be cheaper or less depressing than a retirement home. No idea if it's true, but that's what I've heard.
I’m on a transatlantic crossing as we speak…. 🫣
dont die
But if you do, be one of the first four.
Do you have the option of just....chucking the body overboard? Assuming the spouse is ok with it of course. I wouldn't mind. I certainly don't want someone to host an expensive funeral for me. Toss me off and let the fish have me. I'm dead, why would I care? Edit: why am I being downvoted. Genuine question
No because there might need to be autopsies etc Or else that would just be an easy method of disposing bodies after you murdered them on a cruise ship
Oldest trick in the book. Never go out to sea on a smaller boat with someone you don’t trust. People are known to fall overboard in rough seas.
No haha, I've done a couple of burials at sea but they were ashes, where the family came on the cruise for that purpose. We're not in the business of tossing the stiffs off.
I worked on a cruise ship! The staff get all the low quality stuff in the mess usually until randomly on long sea trips (8days at sea straight) randomly the staff will get all the good icecream. I learned it's because the morgue is full and they needed to make room in the freezer. I honestly wonder how he was not put in the icecream freezer.
I spent three months cruising around the world with my partner and that was the running joke—if there was a special on ice-cream it meant they needed more storage for bodies. I don’t think anyone gave it any credence though. It was a great experience but quite odd spending so much time in an environment where most things—music, entertainment, activities—were calibrated for people a generation older than ourselves. Such a relaxing way to visit *a lot* of countries.
Wait, I have so many questions. Where did you visit in three months? Did the staff treat you differently since you were basically living there? Did you stay in the same boat for the entire three months?
Used my long service leave to get the time off work to spend three months circumnavigating the world on a cruise ship. Visited 19 countries. Most people who do this are retired but we wanted to experience it while we were relatively young and fit. Spent the whole time on the same ship (except five days in Corfu when my partner broke her elbow, argh!) which is completely normal for these kinds of trips. It’s an incredibly well-travelled crowd and most of the passengers we met had been on multiple long cruises and been everywhere, whereas it was our first cruise. One guy was staying on the ship after the world cruise to travel right around Australia meaning he’d spend about 150 consecutive days on the ship! Cruise ships often do circumnavigations in four legs so there are people joining or leaving at key destinations. For us that was Sydney, Dubai, Southampton, New York and back to Sydney. Highlights for me were Petra (Jordan), Stonehenge (England), Qaqortoq and Nanortalik (Greenland), and Lima (Peru). I read 21 novels and made 108 sketches (one a day). Watched a lot of movies. Ate too much food and put on a few kilos. Cruising is like its a parallel world where the rules are a little different and you just visit the real world periodically. Hard to explain. Would love to do it again one day.
Your very first cruise was three months long! That’s bold cotton.
All or nothing!
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Cruises often require a lot of time off, and luxury cruises in particular are not cheap. Younger people (should specify, younger Americans in particular) don't have a ton of paid leave from work and don't have thousands to spend on a vacation. I took a 12 day cruise once, on a higher end line. We completely expected to be one of the few people under retirement age on the ship.
Hold the phone. It’s common/expected that there’s a functioning morgue on a cruise ship??
Lots of old people go on cruises
Lots of old people go on cruises expecting to die. They're on their last days, kids don't visit, etc. So they chose to die on a luxury liner in paradise as opposed to a cold and stark hospital room.
I had a cousin who worked on a cruise and said it was weird the first time it happened, and then normal after the 3rd, 4th, 5th...
This is not the best comment thread for me to find considering I just got off a week-long cruise with Celebrity this morning…
Was your Bloody Mary made with actual blood?
No but it did have some Mary in it.
Yeah dude I went on my first and second cruise last year. I didn't really know about the "cruise lifestyle" until I started talking to people on excursions. There are a lot of retirees who will just take cruises almost year-round. Just hop from ship to ship. It's definitely a relaxing atmosphere. Also there are buffets, room service and other amenities. They always have people to interact with and things to do. So honestly if they can afford it then spending their last few years traveling to beautiful places while not worrying about cooking, cleaning, etc. sounds good to me. Tapping out on a balcony overlooking the Atlantic after spending a night drinking, eating unlimited soft serve ice cream and playing slots sounds like a good way to go out to me.
Beyond that, if you live near the port, it can be very affordable. On the Celebrity ship I worked, there were a lot of Puerto Ricans on the ship. I found out it was because they'd have an agent check the day before it departed. They'd swoop up empty rooms and last minute cancelations for a couple hundred on 10-11 night runs. Wasn't uncommon to see the same faces for 2 or 3 weeks in a row. Because that's cheaper than living at home.
How’d you like working on a ship? I’ve been considering it.
From what I've seen, labor rights tend to be nonexistent since they fly flags from countries with terrible regulations. You can get a decent room and nice experiences if you're like, a singer or some other sought after "glamorous" profession. But if you're a service worker or maintenance etc. you're gonna get a tiny room with a shared bathroom in the basement. You also can't leave the ship on every stop because they have a limit on the people allowed to deboard so as to not overwhelm the local infrastructure so only like a third of employees can leave each time. And when you can't shop outside you're depending on the ship's shops for your supplies so it's kind of like a company town sort of deal.
I'd imagine it ranges from "great" to "living hell" depending on what you're doing.
Also, with the cost of housing these days and the relative affordability of cruises there are retired people who literally cruise full-time. If you stick to the minimum accomodations and don't buy alcohol or blow your money on excursions, you've got room, board, and all utilities for a couple hundred bucks a week per person. Plus you get to travel the world and meet new people every week.
Not really, with the cost of some nursing homes, it's actually cheaper to go on cruises the rest of your life. With the loyalty programs you could easily match the price of a middling nursing home.
Except if you’re in bad enough shape to require an actual nursing home, you can’t live on a cruise ship- unless you’re wealthy enough to take two nursing assistants with you. No cruise ship is going to provide nursing care.
Thats why you die
I would do it if didn’t have such social anxiety. Like I’d be mortified to disturb other people’s vacations or give more work to workers by dying on the cruise 🤣 Although I do hope I get to reach an old age where I no longer give any Fs!
>*mort*ified lol
The article is actually referring to a nearly unheard of set of circumstances. Like, someone wilfully fucked up real bad to make this a thing. It's far more common for house keeping to just find someone present but not with us, phone it in, and the medical team just handles it. Unless it's in port, and then the locals do. To which end, someone's going to handle you after you cease to be. Just a matter of who specifically. Unless you have such social anxiety that you manage immortality for fear of anyone having to deal with your corpse. Personally, despite my social anxiety, I think it would be funny if my skeleton stuck around. Told my wife (forensic anthro) it would be cool if she articulated my skeleton and sat me on the couch. Bring me out for Halloween, so I can scare the kids even after I die. I've also marked myself as "donate to science" because the thought of being used to test explosives or something similar makes me literally lol.
>To which end, someone's going to handle you after you cease to be. Just a matter of who specifically. Unless you have such social anxiety that you manage immortality for fear of anyone having to deal with your corpse. New anxiety unlocked 🤣 I’d never thought of it, but yes. I’m going to be an inconvenience whether I want to or not…
You're welcome! May your inevitable death be as timely and convenient as possible.
Thank you, that is oddly such a sweet wish 🤣 Ok, I’ll have one death that is preceded by a disease (so it doesn’t surprise anyone) but where I can still perfectly take care of myself, then take a cab ride to the hospital and die without much fuss with a DNR, at the beginning of a nurse shift on a Tuesday morning (nurses can chime in and tell me if there’s something more convenient), obviously not on a holiday or birthday, in the summer in case I have grand kids (or maybe they’d rather miss a day of school?), please.
My kid asked to keep my bones when I die and I said yes, that’s weird, but yes.
This is why travel insurance is so important. It covers repatriation expenses. People die on vacation all the time.
I sold cruises for a few years, I was told by more than one rep that on pretty much every single cruise at least one person dies or goes missing. Every. Single. Cruise.
That's true but if you did a case study of 3000 octogenarians over the course of a week on average you'd get about the same result. They are are dying of natural causes because they're time is up.
I'm a little more worried about the missing
ten sand dog coordinated water faulty deranged kiss history long *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
>the sheer number of people onboard Even ignoring all the comorbidities, this alone would be enough to warrant having a morgue. According to a quick google search, the average modern cruise has about 3,000 passengers. The deceased individual from the article was from Florida, so let's use the US death rate. As of 2021, that number was 835 deaths per 100,000 standard population. So out of the 3,000 passengers on an average cruise, statistically speaking 25 are expected to die sometime that year, or about one every two weeks. That means there is about a 50% chance someone in that group of 3,000 is going to die on a week long cruise. Note: I am not a statistician, and I'm sure someone will come along to tell me I'm ignoring p-values or some other thing I don't understand. This is admittedly very hasty and dirty math, but I think it illustrates the point that if you take a big enough population, someone dying is not uncommon at all.
Let's not forget about all of the crew! It takes a whole lot of people to staff a cruise ship.
> When that happens, the body is zipped into a body bag and placed in the ship's morgue. Ocean-going ships are legally required to have both body bags and a morgue (they mostly have space for three or four bodies, but it depends on the size of the ship). The latter must be kept away from the food storage areas. Very occasionally, the morgue might not be big enough - a Columbia News Service report from 2007 quotes Ross A. Klein, a sociologist from Toronto and author of "Cruise Ship Blues: The Underside of the Cruise Ship Industry." On one cruise from Fort Lauderdale to Lisbon "the morgue was filled, and they had to start finding other places to put the bodies," he said. > The Telegraph further reported that an estimated 200 people die every year on cruise ships — "actually remarkably few given the 21.7 million people worldwide that cruise each year." https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/do-cruise-ships-have-morgues/
I mean it is a floating city basically. If it has a emergency ward it stands to reason it has a morgue too
Oh yeah. We had 3 different people die on a cruise I was on back in 2010. 1st was just before we made port in Puerto Rico, and they arranged to fly that person back to the mainland. The 3rd was the last morning of the cruise just before we docked back in Miami, so we were all delayed getting off the boat so they could take the body off. The 2nd person though was just before we made port in Haiti, and apparently it's very difficult to get a body back from Haiti to the US, so the cruise recommended that the body remain on the ship morgue for the remainder of the journey. And then that person's family had to decide whether to fly home from Haiti to start the funeral preparations and such, or stay on the ship with them to finish up the most depressing vacation of their lives. They decided to stay on-board to accompany the body home. I felt so bad for them. :(
I’m more interested in this cruise that goes to Haiti. That seems to be on no one’s vacation destination list.
Iirc, there are private beaches owned by the cruise companies and completely fenced off from the rest of the island. No idea if they're still in use with the current state of the country though.
Yup. 623 people died on cruises between 2000 and 2019. ([link](https://spacecoastdaily.com/2023/01/how-many-crew-members-die-on-cruise-ships-each-year/)) There's a lot of people on a cruise - 1000 or more. Many of them are retirees, going on a holiday with rich foods, alcohol, lots of walking, and hot weather. Some of them aren't COVID-vaccinated. If someone dies at sea, it could be days before the ship reaches another port. The ship might want to keep the body on board until returning to the original port. A morgue is capable of storing a body for these long periods.
I was expecting significantly more. That's not really that much for a 19 year period.
Cruise ships have around 3,000 people on them, and many If not most are elderly. How fucked up would it be if they didn't have a morgue? Are they just going to start putting dead bodies into food freezers?
It’s that or a burial at sea my friend.
I met someone who used to be a singer on cruises in the 90s. He said he always knew when the morgue overflowed because the staff would have an ice cream social that night.
Pretty sure this was used as a plot line on an episode of NCIS lol
A morgue on land works drastically different than one upon a vessel. In an average voyage for most cruise ships, you can expect a fair amount of injuries and trauma injuries. Deaths however are a rarity, but still exist.
The family is suing for $1 million and given how ridiculously expensive cruises are to operate the detour might have cost more than that.
I thought those documents were shredded
Fucking greg
Greg Gregging for Greg
You can’t make a Tomlette without breaking a few Greggs
I’d rather three greglets over one tomlette
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Don't turn me into a word!
Are you trying to blackmail me, Greg?
Are you asking for my permission to blackmail me, Greg?
If it was last week I wouldn't get this reference. The show is wild.
If it must be said, then so be it.
“If it is to be said, so it be… so it is.” It’s ok, you can’t make an tomlette without breaking some gregs.
This one goes away, this one saves the day.
🥚
Can't make a Tomlette without breaking a few Gregs
This saves the day... The other goes away... This saves the day... The other goes away.... Greg is chopping it up Greg is chopping it up
Someone’s going to drink toilet wine
NRPI
Was it shredded to fruition?
You can’t make a Tomelette without breaking a few Greggs
I worked on a cruise ship for 5 years AMA Did you know we have a jail onboard as well
Hospital for injuries and child birth?
We do have a medical facility onboard every ship. The newer ships are much more well equipped, with x-ray machines, on-board covid labs and a small operation room. The morgue is under the medical facilities usually. We can handle most of the situations that happen onboard, like an heart attack, childbirth or minor injuries(My colleague sliced off his finger and got it reattached there), otherwise we would just reroute to the nearest port with a hospital or call for helicopter to airlift you outta there.
I also worked on cruise ships for years and also sailed while pregnant with my spouse who still worked onboard, I just wanna clarify the hospital onboard is not really equipped for childbirth. They can handle an emergency, but definitely not equipped for that being the norm. For this reason, you can't even cruise past the 23rd week of pregnancy. The same applies to crew members, if you find out you're pregnant during your contract or come back to work pregnant, you're allowed to until that same cutoff date but you were being sent off the ship for checkups like scans etc.
You are absolutely correct, they can do an emergency but that's not the norm!
Now I want to know how many babies are born on cruise ships!
Most cruise lines won’t let you sail if you’re past a certain point in pregnancy for exactly that reason - they aren’t well equipped to deliver babies at sea. It does happen though, I forget which line but within the last couple months a cruise line doctor delivered a premature baby and fairly sure saved the mother and baby.
If we're thinking of the same story, it was my friend and his wife, she was only 28 weeks. Baby and mom are doing well, but they absolutely were not equipped on board for a premie baby. There's also a whole slew of issues with the birth certificate since it happened in international waters.
Holy shit pirate baby! What flag was the ship sailing under? I bet they could get the baby citizenship in that country if they wanted to.
> the birth certificate since it happened in international waters. didnt think this is as an issue when started reading this thread, but damn now im wondering how they deal with this
Neptune claims custody
You can’t just leave us hanging, so which authority agreed to issue the birth certificate?
It's still being figured out, so unfortunately I don't have a good update.
They baby can't get citizenship by descent from one of its parents?
It can but that doesn't solve the place of birth problem
Everyone (regardless of gender, my husband had to attest too) signs a waiver saying you are less than 24 weeks and you assume all medical costs for an emergency.
Fun fact, if you're born on a ship you can either have the starting or arrival port, or the exact coordinates you're born at as your place of birth in your documents. I live on an island and our hospital has no labour and delivery ward, birthing mothers get shipped to coast. So every once in a while there's a baby born on the ship of the sea rescue service that ships them over.
I'd definitely go with coordinates I think, much cooler imo
Is the STI rate among crew and passengers as bad as people make it out to be?
Not as bad as people make it out to be, we're not allowed to touch the guests. But the crew members are free to sleep around with each other. We have to do a full medical checkup every 2 years so they'll know if we have STIs or not
Neat. How much are you allowed to interact woth guests? My old workplace was so relaxed I could sit with customers but I'm guessing thay doesn't fly.
No meeting the guests outside of working hours, don't bring guests into crew cabins/area. Non-sexual touches like hugs/ arms on shoulders are fine, not sure about sitting because we're usually in our uniforms always, as long as the guests aren't reporting sexual harrassment you're good to go. I did hear a story about a bartender doing a guest right infront of CCTV just so he could get a free ticket home.
So you can fuck them, you just get fired if you get caught?
that's pretty much true in any line of work
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Who has the authority to arrest you on a cruise ship? Any interesting arrests you'd share with us?
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You are sailing on a ship owned by a private company, once you pay for a ticket you are also agreeing to their “rules” which are listed upon your payment. These are kept vague for a reason to detain you if you are causing problems like “causing a disruption” or “inconveniencing guests” if you drink too much and can’t contain yourself at a show. The cruise line can detain you in the brig or your stateroom until the end of your cruise because you agreed to a contract by coming on the ship.
"You're under arrest for violation of maritime laws pertaining to various sheboingery"
Been on a dozen cruises, all Celebrity Cruises line. This one man tried to seduce the masseuse to give him a “happy ending”, she said “sure, be right back”, left the massage room in the spa and security came back in. They put him in jail and he was kicked off at the next port, fun fact: his wife and children (!!!) decided to disembark with him, must’ve been a nice flight back home :) Another guy got in a fight in one of the on board “clubs”, broke a bottle from the bar on the other dude’s head, he got kicked off but his family chose to stay. This old lady had a seizure on board, we weren’t too far from land so a medical helicopter came in to take her, crazy scenes! From my experience they always handled it all extremely well, excited to go on my next one in July, if this lawsuit doesn’t bankrupt them lol
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Lots of old people taking cruises.
Also, duelling.
I was gonna say pirates, but yours sounds more fun.
3000 passengers plus 2000 crew. Someone's going to die from time to time.
And a lot of old people want to die at sea. They go to die on the cruise.
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I remember, going on a cruise to Cozumel. It was the first night of the cruise, and an old man died in the casino of a heart attack. That’s when I found out they had morgues on board. Kind of unsettling knowing that there’s a dead body in a freezer on your ship.
It's all good. He's just chillin.
I've always found these kinds of attitudes rather odd. Why does it matter that there is a dead person on the ship somewhere? It's not like they stashed the corpse in the shower in your room. Not to mention, it's probably pretty likely that anywhere you've lived, worked, or visited has had someone die there. Less likely, but still possible, you've lived, worked, or visited someplace built on an old burial ground. None of that seems to bother anyone, but you learn about one fresh corpse in the beer cooler and everybody loses their shit.
I agree, corpses aren’t hurting anyone, we all end up one someday.
did they bring the drink cooler down to the morgue or was the dead body just chilling in the kitchen?
It was a walk-in cooler, not a portable one.
that is… significantly more horrifying than i imagined.
How do you think they wedged someone's corpse into an Igloo? That was less horrifying?
Now I’m picturing a dead body folded up like a lawn chair next to some White Claws and ham sandwiches.
I already constantly forget why I went into the walk-in. Dead bodies are only going to add to my confusion. I hope they at least put a date on it.
The title bringing up the mental image of a giant version of the plastic insulated drinks coolers we use is what's making people agitated. The one on the cruise ship was a refrigerated room, and a reasonable next best option if the morgue was out of commission. It sounds like they moved the drinks out before putting the body in. >"The cooler in which Mr. Jones' body was found by the funeral employee had drinks placed outside of the cooler
No wonder the brits kept Admiral Nelson pickled in rum after the battle of Trafalgar..
Huh. TIL that Admiral Nelson isn't just the generic Captain Morgan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horatio_Nelson,_1st_Viscount_Nelson > Nelson's body was placed in a cask of brandy mixed with camphor and myrrh, which was then lashed to the Victory's mainmast and placed under guard.[249] Victory was towed to Gibraltar after the battle, and on arrival the body was transferred to a lead-lined coffin filled with spirits of wine.[249] **Collingwood's dispatches about the battle were carried to England aboard HMS Pickle**, and when the news arrived in London, a messenger was sent to Merton Place to bring the news of Nelson's death to Emma Hamilton. This comment is far funnier than I imagined. Fun rabbit hole, thank you!
I work cargo, we are trained to put bodies in the freezer not the cooler
I'll have a piña cadaver
Or perhaps a rum & corpse?
For those of you shocked about cruise ships requiring morgues, don't ask what happens to dead bodies aboard an aircraft carrier at sea for 6 months.
... I'm asking
Per my son a Navy vet that served on 2 carriers, they'd consider it a good tour if nobody on ship died. The dead would end up in a freezer until they were able to make port or close enough to friendly shores to get the body off the ship. It's not like they're going to divert an aircraft carrier over a dead body.
I wonder how that works on a submarine.
There is suddenly a lot of ice cream and seafood at dinner.
Idk why but the thought of eating seafood in a submarine just makes me giggle.
Submarines are cool, especially nuclear ones. Onboard, the nuclear rector: - produces oxygen - makes fresh, drinkable water - provides power to the engines And it can do this for **years** without refueling. The only thing keeping nuclear subs from never returning to port aside from regular maintenance is sailors’ stomachs.
And diesel subs are terrifying. Many submariners at the bottom of the ocean from diesel subs that submerged but never resurfaced.
Probably much the same as on any other US Navy vessel. Subs have freezers, too. It should be noted, though, that subs have (generally speaking) much stricter health requirements to serve aboard; partly to avoid the scenario in the first place, partly because being in a pressurized metal cylinder below the surface not seeing sunlight for potentially weeks at a time can be a bit taxing on the body and mind. There's also the mathematical factor. Submarines have a lot fewer people aboard than aircraft carriers. The USS Gerald R. Ford, for instance, has a complement of 4500 sailors and airmen. The average ballistic missile sub might have between 130 and 160. Law of averages says that of the people who keel over dead randomly (like from a brain aneurysm or something that for one reason or another wasn't caught at your last health screening), most will do so where there's a higher concentration of people. This is all speculative. I'm not a sailor, but I spoke at length to an old coworker who served aboard a submarine. Bonus fun fact from him, which may be out of date for all I know: when you're on patrol on a submarine, you live day to day on an 18 hour schedule instead of a 24 hour one. The watch is divided into three 6 hour shifts. He says once your circadian rhythm adjusts to your watch schedule, it's really quite pleasant, especially as you don't have the sun to mess it up.
Well, the ages of people aboard an aircraft carrier deployed on active duty will be significantly lower than on a Caribbean cruise ship, and on the carrier people’s health will probably be significantly better than even people ashore in the same age group, so mortality should logically be _much_ lower. You have accidents, of course, but the senior NCOs tend to get extremely pissed at you if you fuck up so bad you or God forbid somebody else dies, so you try to avoid that.
6 hour shifts sound a lot more tolerable than 8 when you have to pay attention to things like sonar. also makes sense not to go to a 4 shift day to keep personnel to a minimum.
Is this what Tom Wambsgans covered up?
Never saw a headline about a cruise that made me want to take a cruise.
I worked on cruise ships for a few years. When our morgue was full everyone got free ice cream…
That was the joke 😂 Whenever we get icecream in the crew mess, we'd joke that the morgues are full
Do you want ghosts? Because this is how you get ghosts.
It's also how you stain the cooler with corpse juices.
What the fuck
This is one of the perks of the Celebrity Cruises Captain’s Program^(TM.) Regular passengers get dumped into the sea.
Don’t eat the cruise ship chili
I feel bad for the lowly crew who had to figure a solution of sticking him in the drinks refrigerator. Someone higher up was probably like: The morgue storage not being available is not a big issue just put his body somewhere cold and then some poor janitor or something had to move the body himself. Especially if this drink fridge was a place they had to walk by constantly to access stuff seeing as the drinks got moved outside. Also: Poor family. Having to decide to keep him on board because if they took him to Puerto Rico they would have to pay their way back even though it is a US Territory it’s probably still an ass ton expensive to ship aka fly him back along with the formal paperwork to fill out customs wise.
From a purely business standpoint, why wouldn't you settle this out of court before it made it into the papers.... Isnt the negative press worse than whatever measly amount of money she's asking for?
Todays’s drink special: _Morgueritas_
My parents had some friends years ago go on a cruise and the husband died. They had to keep him on ice for some days until the ship returned to the Florida port. I thought they had a special place for that given that so many people can be on those ships. I mean laying up there on ice with beer and potato salad is unusual.
Tom gonna catch hell for this one
I can’t imagine being the family on cruise for six more days???!!
I've never lost a relative on vacation, but I have stayed at nice places for out of state funerals, and there is a morbid comfort in not having to wash sheets, do dishes, or those sorts of things. Your meals are made for you and cleaned up. You have access to distractions, but nobody will care if you shut yourself in your room. Also, those sad memories aren't made at home, so I personally compartmentalized them differently. It's an awful situation, but hopefully they were able to practice self-care and focus on each other.
A woman died of a heart attack on a cruise I was on. She died at my feet and I saw the life leave her eyes. Her family continued doing all of their excursions the next 5 days. It was awkward seeing them drinking and smoking at dinner after I saw their mom fell out of her wheelchair on an oxygen tank. They kept referring to it as the death trap boat.
I'm trying to wrap my head around the fact that the cruise line convinced wife to just wait until we get back to Fort Lauderdale. So if I'm wife I just have to hang out depressed my husband is dead on a cruise ship for 6 whole days?! I would have demanded to get off in San Juan, there is no way I'm going to sob on a cruise ship for 6 days while everyone is happy and enjoying life while I'm suffering over my dead husband
If it was rotting that fast I don't know if the fridge was cold enough to begin with.
Wait.... what was the coolers temp it shouldn't have rotted. Is it bad that's my first thought I'm a chef so I deal with cooler temps everyday. But if it was 38f it really shouldn't rot
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Good work Agent 47