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Rats...On Your Cruise Ship?

As the world starts to open back up and the cruise ship industry recovers from the global pandemic of 2020, it begs the questions of overall sanitation & safety on these ships - but have you ever thought about having to worry about   rats ? We explain...

As the world starts to open back up and the cruise ship industry recovers from the global pandemic of 2020, it begs the questions of overall sanitation & safety on these ships - but have you ever thought about having to worry about rats ? With many online threads share experiences of cruise ship-goers seeing rats or droppings on board (showing this is a serious concern), we explain the relationship between seaports and rats, the preventive measures historically taken and solutions to safely & effectively control these rodents if they happen to come aboard.

Seaports have a longstanding history of dealing with rats. They are attracted to ships due to the smell of fish, additional food resources and comfort of the heating & A/C. Because cruise ships have all of these boxes checked, they are highly desirable for rodents - if they can get on board. 

Another hazard that comes with rats is their motivation - they have the potential to chew through ropes, hoses, ship lines if they are hungry enough and this can cause serious dangers with the operation of a vessel. Rats can carry over 35 diseases worldwide , and rodents that stake their claim on a ship are no exception to these dangers.

Rat Prevention

If you’ve driven by ports or been aboard a cruise ship, you may be familiar with the disk-like mechanism that is attached to the ropes connecting the ship to the dock - t hese are actually rat guards that prevent rodents from climbing the ropes from the dock/port. They should be placed on the ropes immediately to prevent rodents from accessing the inside of the ship. The problem is that they aren’t always effective. See here for a recent (2019) violation where a Carnival Freedom cruise ship had ineffective rat guards (photo 13 of 30). Rodent traps and poisons have also been used to prevent rat activity on board. 

The CDC has a Ship Sanitation Certificate in the U.S., effective in 2007, for cargo vessel crew, vessel companies, port authorities, private companies and maritime government agencies. The CDC does not require certificates for ships arriving at U.S. ports but does reserve the right to inspect a vessel if there is a public health concern. This SSC replaced a previous “Deratting Certificate.” The CDC also has a Vessel Sanitation Program that focuses on the control/prevention of gastrointestinal illnesses on cruise ships as well as conducting random operational sanitation inspections. It is unclear if rodent activity is part of these inspections. If you have questions specifically about ship sanitation inspections on cruise ships, you can contact the CDC VSP at [email protected] .

How EcoClear Products Can Help

While there has been a rising concern and increased prevention of rodent activity on cruise ships/large vessels, chances are there will always be a potential for this problem. As toxic rodenticides have high dangers of secondary poisoning (and secondary kill), EcoClear Products has a solution.

Formulated using naturally derived ingredients, RatX™ attracts rats and mice with its scent and taste. Once ingested, the active ingredients in the pellets coat the rat’s stomach lining, blocking all messages from the stomach to the brain. This causes rats and mice to stop wanting water, leading to eventual dehydration and death. Oh yeah, and the best part? These ingredients ONLY affect a rat’s digestive tract, so there is NO risk of harming people, pets, wildlife or birds of prey - Just. Rats. 

RatX is poison-free and is effective for both indoor and outdoor use, working from the inside out to exterminate rats and mice, then drying them out after death to reduce odor by as much as 90% (one of the largest concerns with rodent extermination). For safe, efficient, effective, and environmentally friendly rodent control, choose RatX. If you’re interested in learning more about our non-toxic products, contact our team here at EcoClear Products by emailing [email protected] - or - use our Store Locator to find retailers near you.

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Horrifying final voyage of cruise boat that became 'cannibal rat-infested ghost ship'

The Russian cruise ship was plagued by problems until it was docked permanently in 2010 - but what happened next was far more gruesome

• 11:39, 19 May 2020

The MV Lyubov Orlova was built to have a glittering future on the ocean waves - named after a movie star and travelling to some of the most stunning places on the planet.

But instead the liner met a grisly end and mystery still surrounds its final resting place.

Built in 1976, the MV Lyubov Orlova was an ice-strengthened cruise liner so it could be used for Antarctic cruises.

Several renovations followed after her initial launch, one in 1999 and an extensive revamp three years later.

In 2006 the MV Lyubov Orlova ran aground in Antarctica and had to be towed to safety.

Just four years later the ship was seized in St John's, New Foundland, Canada, due to debts of £200,000 and because some of the crew hadn't been paid in more than five months.

For two years the giant vessel lay rotting in the dock until itwas finally taken out of service and was bought so it could be broken up and its parts sold.

It was as the ship was being moved from its port in Canada to a new home in the Dominican Republic that the journey was hampered by problems and it became nothing but a floating derelict.

A tug boat, the Charlene Hunt, was used to tow the ailing boat but just a day into the journey, the line connecting the two vessels snapped.

Battling huge storms, the crew of the Charlene Hunt tried desperately to reconnect the two boats but the MV Lyubov Orlova continued to drift away from the little tug.

However, the massive liner now posed a risk to oil and gas drilling in the seas off the coast of Canada and had to somehow be brought under control to prevent a disaster.

An offshore supply ship, the Atlantic Hawk, belonging to Transport Canada, managed to regain control of the MV Lyubov Orlova and pull her away from danger.

But once she was in international waters, she was cut free as she remained the responsibility of her owners.

The former cruise ship was now devoid of crew and passengers - almost.

As it floated aimlessly across the world's seas, with no guidance or steering, a new kind of guest had taken up home on the huge ship, which had previously been able to cater for 100 passengers at a time.

The MV Lyubov Orlova was now believed to be home to a crew of vicious 'cannibal rats'.

One expert explained: "This ship is thought to have been taken over by hordes of cannibal rats. "I mean there's nothing else to eat.

"So imagine this giant ship full of these ravenous hordes of cannibal rats appearing on your local beach right where you live."

There were even rumours the ship was slowly making its way across the ocean and heading directly for Britain.

There were reports of a sighting of a ship matching th description of the 300ft vessel off the coast of Scotland in 2016.

The following year, a wreck was beached on the Californian coastline, which many feared was the MV Lyubov Orlova - but this has now been rubbished by experts.

And there have been several other reports of the vessel close to Britain's shores.

Back in 2013, the MV Lyubov Orlova was spotted 1,300 nautical miles off the coast of Ireland and then again later in the year, with a warning issued to smaller ships.

In March that year, an emergency signal from the boat was recorded 700 miles off the coast of Kerry, but was still clased as international waters.

There have been no reported sightings of the MV Lyubov Orlova for several years, with experts believing she - and her gruesome crew of cannibal rates - now lie at the bottom of the ocean.

However, what the missing ship has left in its wake is years of financial hardship for both her owners and those who crewed her.

Many of the men and women who worked on board have never been paid, even after being virtually stranded on the MV Lyubov Orlova while she was docked in St John's.

At times they had even had to rely on food parcels from locals just so they could eat.

And after she was abandoned by humans - the rats moved in as dank and dark pools of fetid water gathered throughout her.

They are said to have remained on board when the MV Lyubov Orlova began her final journey, where she drifted aimlessly across the seas with her macabre crew before sinking to the dark ocean floor.

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No, an Abandoned Ship Full of Diseased Rats Is Not Floating Towards Britain

If you believe the headlines, a ghost ship full of cannibal rats is heading for England. Don’t believe the headlines

Rose Eveleth

Contributor

Off the coast of England there is a ship. Well, there are probably many ships, but this ship in particular is interesting because it has no people on it. It’s a ghost ship—a 1,400 ton ocean liner of a ghost ship. If you believe the headlines , it’s full of cannibal rats, and it’s heading for England. Neither of those things are true. 

The Lyobov Orlova disappeared on Febrauary 4th of last year while it was being towed from Newfoundland to the Dominican Republic. How and why the ship was cut loose is still a mystery, and for months, no one knew where it was. 

According to some sources, the ship is infested with “cannibal rats.” But this is more theory than fact, as no one has been on the ship in a year. The cannibal rat theory comes from Pim De Rhoodes, a Belgian salvage hunter, who told tabloid The Sun ,  “There will be a lot of rats and they eat each other. If I get aboard I'll have to lace everywhere with poison.” De Rhoodes has no actual information about whether there are rats on the boat, or whether they're diseased, cannibalistic or perfectly civilized.

According to the BBC , the ship has yet to be sighted off English waters. The Irish Coast Guard isn’t worried, nor is the U.K. Maritime and Coastguard Agency. For more Orlova sightings, the blog  Where is Lyubov Orlova  tracks sightings and theories about the ship. You can see  map of sightings , as well as the ship’s deck plan, and there are shirts and mugs on offer for the most intrepid Orlova hunters. 

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Rose Eveleth | | READ MORE

Rose Eveleth was a writer for Smart News and a producer/designer/ science writer/ animator based in Brooklyn. Her work has appeared in the New York Times , Scientific American , Story Collider , TED-Ed and OnEarth .

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How a 1,500-ton ocean liner turns into a cannibal-rat-infested ghost ship

The UK is alarmed—or at least its press is. “A ghost ship carrying nothing but disease-ridden rats could be about to make land on Britain’s shore, experts have warned,” frets The Independent .

The boat under discussion—the Lyubov Orlova—hasn’t been heard from since February and March 2013, shortly after the abandoned ship was cut loose from a tug line and went adrift. The headlines reflect  guesses that recent storms have sent the Lyubov Orlova reeling toward the UK. And the cannibal rats? Speculation about those come from Pim de Rhoodes, a Belgian salvage hunter, who noted the likely presence of  a starving rat colony  (paywall) aboard when he told the press the Lyubov Orlova is still “out there.”

How does an unmanned 1,565 ton (1,420 tonne) cruise ship just take off on its own like that?

The reasons are pretty simple. After Canadian authorities seized the craft due to her owner’s alleged  $250,000 in debts ,  seas peaking at 18 feet  (5.5 meters) snapped her towline while she was being taken to the Dominican Republic for scrapping. (She’s worth an estimated $1.1 million .)

In fact, ghost ships like Lyubov Orlova aren’t all that rare. In the last 15 years, sailors have come across at least seven “ghost ships.”

As for why the ship’s crew would disappear, the reasons could be anything from piracy to  psychiatric breaks  to  tax fraud  (link in Italian)—or just straight-up abandonment. Take, for example, one of the most famed ghost ships—the SS Baychimo, a 230-foot fur-trading steamer whose crew abandoned her in 1931 when she became stuck in Arctic ice. For nearly 40 years, people reported sightings of the Baychimo all up and down the Alaskan coast.

Some crew disappearances remain mysterious, though. Like the Mary Celeste— the original ghost ship —the disappearance of 25 people aboard the Joyita, a virtually unsinkable vessel found adrift in the South Pacific in 1955, has never been solved . In the last decade, the fate of the crews of a trio of vessels found off the Australian coast—namely, the High Aim 6 , the Jian Seng and the Kaz II —have been left largely unexplained.

Perhaps the more interesting question is how the 220 meter (720 foot) Lyubov Orlova could go missing for so long.

But both De Rhoodes and the Irish coast guard already tried to find the ocean liner a  slew of times last year  (paywall), to no avail, as the New Scientist reports. The New Scientist explains that surveillance equipment has some pretty big deficiencies when pitted against the ocean’s vastness.

There’s a decent chance no one can find her simply because a giant wave sunk her. From 2001 to 2010, an average of 146 ships  (pdf, p.10) went missing annually, 42% of which sunk. That possibility has a French environmental organization worried that the ship might release toxic elements like mercury, asbestos and fuel into the ocean.

However, the Lyubov Orlova was designed for extra buoyancy to withstand rough seas, reports the New Scientist. Plus, only two of her six lifeboats distress transmitters, which deployed upon contact with water, have gone off. So perhaps the Lyubov Orlova—and maybe even her cannibal rat passengers—are still adrift out there somewhere.

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“Rat infested” “hazardous” ghost ship disappears in Irish Sea

A 4,000 ton, rat-infested cruise ship that was lost somewhere off the coast of ireland, is still reportedly floa....

A 4,000 ton, rat-infested cruise ship that was lost somewhere off the coast of Ireland, is still reportedly floating on the high seas. The ghost ship, named Lyubov Orlova , left Canada last January bound for the Dominican Republic where it was to be used for scrap. But it broke away from tow ships three times off the coast of Canada earlier this year and then sailed off on its final unmanned voyage. The Irish Coast Guard told the press this week that the ship could now be floating anywhere between Ireland and the Faroe Islands off the coast of Scotland. The remaining oil on board is not thought to be hazardous because of its limited quantity. However, the number of suspected rats on board could prove to be a  serious biohazard, the coast guard told the press. Chris Reynolds, the Coast Guard director told the Independent: 'There's still a bit of lubricant oil and fuel on board but it's not huge because the ship would have been emptied because it was going to scrap. 'The ship was alongside the harbour in Newfoundland so we assume there are rats on board, and that's a biohazard. But it's not a major issue. 'We don't want rats from foreign ships coming onto Irish soil. If it came and broke up on shore, I'm sure local people wouldn't be very happy about it. 'If it is afloat, it's blacked out; there's no power and it's a hazard to shipping. The main hazard would be if it hit something at sea. The hope is that it's gone, that it's sunk, and we're hoping that the second alarm that went off was to say it had sunk.' According to the Independent the Irish Coast Guard picked up a mid-Atlantic distress signal from one of the ship's alarms last February, but the satellite found no trace of the ship. A second alarm was picked up two weeks later. The Irish Coast Guard believes the first signal came from a lifeboat that was tipped overboard, but it believes the second alarm came from the actual ship. The alarms activate when they come into contact with water. 'We'd never be able to prove that it sank,' Reynolds told the press. The Irish Coast Guard then expressed their frustration with Canadian authorities, who were slow to alert them to the lost vessel.   'It was over ten days from when it went missing to when we were told about it. It has no heat, it has no light, it's basically a black ship in darkness. 'We would have been much happier if they told us much earlier. We could have sank it or towed it in for salvage.' The Lyubov Orlova, named after a Russian screen goddess from the 1930's, was built in 1976 and chartered for expeditions to polar waters.

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Don't worry – a ghost ship crewed by cannibal rats probably isn't about to hit the British Isles

A ghost ship, crewed by cannibal rats, is reported to be heading towards the British Isles . Really? Well, the mystery of the Lyubov Orlova cruise liner has become a news story that has been circulating online and splashed in newspapers. Just imagine it: a shadowy vessel silently docking in the dark of night, while cat-sized killer pirate rodents descend and scurry around our cities, brandishing their fangs ready to gnaw at your bones – yes it's the stuff of nightmares. And with each new headline the rats have become bigger and bigger, so to speak. We relish the opportunity to tell a good ghost story, don't we? But is it true?

Chris Reynolds, director of the Irish Coast Guard , chuckles and says, "The problem you have now is that you can't prove something you don't know." It all began when the Yugoslavian-built ship – named in 1976 after a Russian actor – was abandoned for two years in a Newfoundland port after its owners were embroiled in a debt dispute. It was meant to be sold for scrap, at a value of around £600,000, to the Dominican Republic. But its tow-line broke loose on what was to be its final journey and it has been drifting in the Atlantic ever since. The reason why there's such a fuss is that an abandoned 4,000 tonne ship can be hazardous for other cruise liners and tankers in the sea, especially when it's dark, and it could also get tangled in oil rigs.

Reynolds explains that the Irish Coast Guard was alerted about the possibility of an abandoned ship heading its way and that in March 2013 the emergency beacons were alerted, which sent a signal to the coast guards. To repeat: that was early last year.

"We had a three-month drift prediction project using satellites and radar images trying to locate the ship, and did some modelling which showed that it could be heading to Norway or the south of England. But the ship had its transmitting monitors turned off. So you can't be 100% sure. We couldn't find it and there was no value to keep on searching. But we have to keep vigilant." So, this seems to be the only bit of evidence that the ship is on its way? Right. Also, with storms in the Atlantic, Reynolds now explains that he expects and hopes that the ship has sunk or has been pushed back on to rocks. If that's not enough, a spokesperson for the UK Maritime and Coastguard Agency said: "We have received no reported sightings of the vessel since April last year, but we will respond accordingly." OK, so that's sorted.

What about the cannibal rats on this ship though? It's reminiscent of the scene in Skyfall when ultimate villain Raoul Silva – his blond hair slicked back – toys with Bond, and recounts his childhood tale of how his grandmother taught him how to turn rats that had arrived on the island in fishing boats into killer rodents.

In response to the story, Dr Penny Hawkins, RSPCA senior scientific officer , explains that: "Rats have a really bad press and this doesn't help. These are animals that actually respond to one another in social distress." Hawkins adds that if this did happen on the ship with no food, "then it was in response to a highly stressful situation, even if it is very unrealistic. They are no more inclined to eat one another than humans."

So where did this whole story come from anyway? It was first mentioned last year in the Irish Independent , when Reynolds is quoted as saying: "The ship was alongside the harbour in Newfoundland so we assume there are rats on board, and that's a biohazard." He added: "We don't want rats from foreign ships coming on to Irish soil. If it came and broke up on shore, I'm sure local people wouldn't be very happy about it." So, there you have it: a single source can lead to a story going viral. Oh, and you can now follow the ship being lonesome on Twitter.

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What Are Those Metal Pieces Attached To A Cruise Ship Mooring Line?

Have you ever walked by a cruise ship and wondered what those metal pieces were that are attached to the mooring lines? Sometimes these are shaped like round discs and other times they have a more geometric pattern but one thing is for sure ... you'll always see them attached. The surprising answer is that these are an important first line of defense against rats and other rodents being able to enter the ship.

Most modern ports that cruise ships dock at will not have major rodent problems but historically, pier areas around the world were a haven for rodents due to crates of food, packing materials, and other items that both offered excellent homes as well as food to rats, mice and other rodents. In fact, rats became a global species due to finding their way onto ships as they traveled around the world.

This causes numerous issues for sailors as well as other ports since these vermin not only can easily spoil food and water and damage cargo, but they can also spread disease. 

Aside from hitching a ride on a pallet being loaded onto a ship, the easiest path of entry to a ship has historically been by scurrying along the mooring lines. Today's two dominante types of rats originated from India and China thousands of years ago and as global shipping expanded they quickly spread to virtually every city in the world. The only continent where rats do not currently exist is Antarctica.

Metal (and sometimes plastic) rat guards are now a virtually universal accessory for mooring lines ranging from smaller ocean going vessels to the largest cruise ships and cargo ships as well. While these seem a very low-tech solution that should have been implemented centuries ago, the earliest patents for moorign line rat gaurds didn't appear until the early 1900's and the ASTM Standard Specification for Rat Guards on ships wasn't established until 1960. Obviously these two events were well after rats established an irreversable foothold in every port city around the globe.

As you travel from port to port you may notice different vessels use different styles of rat guards. Some are round discs that close completely around the mooring lines so that the top as well as bottom of the line is covered, while others simply sit on top of the line. 

Unfortunately these rat guards are not a perfect solution - though they are nearly perfect when used properly. For instance, in 2019, Carnival Freedom was cited by the CDC's 'Green Sheet Score' for their rat guards on the forward mooring lines not being effective for the prevention of rats and other pests that may want to enter the vessel. This was due to the rat guards having a large gap under the line.

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This is very important to consider since it isn't good enough to simply throw a piece of metal on the lines. You must make sure that it fits properly so that a rodent can't squeeze its way past the barrier and enter the ship. Rats are very sneaking creatures and will take any advantage they can to find new environemnts filled with food and shelter.

While it is extremely rare, YES ... just as you will find bugs that manage to find their way onto a cruise ship, sometimes you'll find rats and mice on a cruise ship as well. This is very rare but it is one reason why these rate guards are still an important first line of defence. 

While cruise ship operators can't prevent rats from spreading, these rat guards are an important layer of protection that helps slow the spread of vermin and more importantly prevents the pests from interfearing with maritime operations.

So next time you walk by a cruise ship and see these devices, make sure to stop and take a look and think about the important role these guards play in keeping us safe and happy as we enjoy our cruise vacation.

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Do Cruise Ships have Rats & Mice?

By kalypso333 , March 8, 2015 in Ask a Cruise Question

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Just wondering this morning.

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micmacmissy

Oh, they have rats all right...we've seen them! They run the "art" auctions!

I've never seen one. If you will notice, they put up rat guards on all the lines when they dock alongside the pier.

Do people still go to those events? :confused:

Do cruise ships have rats and mice?

Only in the buffet at lunch time!

I once had a room steward (woman) tell of switching from a different line to Celebrity as the other had a bad rat problem. I imagine every ship has some - they don't need to go up the gang plank or ropes - they just hitch a ride in a container of supplies. :o

They have them on Disney. In fact they worship them by placing them throughout the ship. They even give them names.

I've only seen Celebrities,like Regis Philban, Shirley Jones, Richard Roundtree and Frank Shorter on Celebrity.

they have them on disney. In fact they worship them by placing them throughout the ship. They even give them names. I've only seen celebrities,like regis philban, shirley jones, richard roundtree and frank shorter on celebrity.

If you will notice, they put up rat guards on all the lines when they dock alongside the pier .

Wine-O isn't trying to be funny!

They really do put Rat Guards on the mooring lines.

That's what those big silver disk you see on them are.

We saw some funny ones once -- had big cats painted on them. :D

While I have never seen a rat on a cruise ship (not talking about the two legged kind), I did find a rat "dropping" on the floor of my cabin last year. I picked it up in a paper towel and took it to the front desk. Soon after, maintenance was checking all the air vents in my room.

I know that have Pork n Beans, but Rats n Mice??? Never seen it on the menu. LOL

They have them on Disney. In fact they worship them by placing them throughout the ship. They even give them names. .

Yes. I am one is totally icked out by the anthropomorphization of rodents.

I suppose the Creator had her reasons, the dissemination of seeds, perhaps.

OP, there's no need to wonder. Where there be humans, there be rats.

Light a cigarette on your balcony and see how many rats come out. :)

Along with the rats and mice there are cockroaches, lice, bed bugs, flies, birds, up dust mites, centipedes, spiders, fleas, and probably a whole lot of things that we may never see. Same as many houses, apartments, restaurants and etc.

A friend of mine bought same bird seed to feed the birds in the winter time, he stored the seed in his basement and discovered mice inside. He couldn't find any holes in the outside of the bag. I am sure that many critters get on board the same way.

happy crusing 🌊 🚢 🇺🇸 🌞

We've been on over 200 cruises and have never seen a rat or mouse of the rodent variety, nor their droppings.

We have seen many types of animals and fish of the human variety on board however, even a dinosaur or two.

I've seen a few rats putting towels down on pool chairs around 7:30am , but they then leave & don't reappear until the afternoon.

Interesting (but old) post on the topic:

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showpost.php?p=7985394&postcount=5

Now that is really funny!!!!!

Yes. I am one is totally icked out by the anthropomorphization of rodents. I suppose the Creator had her reasons, the dissemination of seeds, perhaps.   OP, there's no need to wonder. Where there be humans, there be rats.   Ew.

Well, it's not unreasonable to assume that =X= has rats aboard. After all, they had their own TV series several years ago - The Rat Patrol and we sometimes refer to the furniture as being a little ratty.

I have heard that Celebrity ships have a whole series of tiny little cabins just for them down somewhere on Deck 1. And that they booked under the 1-2-3 NO!!!!! package.

Everybody have a great day out there!!!!!

Never seen one, never seen any sign.

But I have to believe, as persistent and determined as they are, that there are few places they DON'T get. We've even seen one at Disney world and NOT Mickey.

The ships are very clean, far better than most hotels or restaurants I've visited.

Stateroom_Sailor

Well rather than letting people bring their Shih Tzu on board, time to set up a cats only policy? They could be just as effective as service animals for those with panic attacks. ;)

capecodder2

We had a small mouse on our Yangtze River cruise 12 yrs ago who visited us at night to eat a carnation that was in a little vase. He didn't bother us, we let him have the carnation.

simon stingray

Do Cruise Ships have Rats & Mice? Just wondering this morning.

I don't think that any of the major cruise lines or their ships have rodents onboard. They wouldn't achieve such high scores on their CDC inspections if there was even a hint of rodent activity.

http://wwwn.cdc.gov/InspectionQueryTool/InspectionResults.aspx

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://mrose.org/cc/rat%252520guards.JPG&imgrefurl=http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t%3D2037759&h=504&w=640&tbnid=Yfb4LgN1ELKLHM:&zoom=1&docid=NsIwnqy_xaZuRM&ei=v6v9VM2LOYidgwTp7IC4CA&tbm=isch&ved=0CB4QMygBMAE

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.swi-tec.us/image/cache/data/1122_Rattenschutz%252520Skizze_2-650x650.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.swi-tec.us/index.php?route%3Dproduct/product%26product_id%3D50&h=650&w=650&tbnid=o9O7TUAOkTfIpM:&zoom=1&docid=6G_BZdryRz21xM&ei=v6v9VM2LOYidgwTp7IC4CA&tbm=isch&ved=0CCAQMygDMAM

Blue Lagoon

It might be my fault that someone thinks there are rodents on board.

When the soft serve ice cream machine runs out of vanilla, you can hear me say, 'Oh, rats!' :D

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50 Questions About The Abandoned Russian Cruise Ship Full Of Diseased Cannibal Rats

January 23, 2014 will go down in history as the day the world found out that there’s a huge abandoned Russian cruise ship full of diseased cannibal rats barreling toward Europe. That’s something that’s hard to forget. One day we’ll all be sitting around the iCampfire and our grandkids will ask us what we were doing when we first heard the news, and we will tell them, because we will remember. I’m sure of this. Unless it all turns out to be fake , which would devastate me in ways you can’t even imagine.

But until we have proof — real, actual proof — that there’s not a large empty boat containing thousands of rats with a taste for each other’s flesh, I choose to believe. And I have some questions .

Aren’t we all rushing to judgment a little bit here?

I mean, have any of you been on a runaway Russian ghost ship full of cannibal rats?

If you haven’t, can you really know what it’s like?

Don’t you think there’s a chance that those rats are having the time of their lives?

Like, what if they’re all just lounging by the pool and feasting on fresh seafood that they pull from the water every morning using huge nets they constructed out of sheets and towels and stuff they found in the boat?

What if the rats aren’t even cannibals?

What if there was one rat who was a cannibal, and when the rest of them found out they were horrified, but they gave him a fair trial and sentenced him to life in the ship’s rat prison, because they decided long ago to outlaw the death penalty because it was needlessly cruel and raised troubling ethical questions about whether killing a member of society in the name of justice made them just as bad as the killer himself?

I bet we’d feel pretty bad for labeling them all cannibals then, huh?

Do you think the rats have their own version of Nancy Grace who sensationalized the trial beyond recognition?

Do you think Nancy Grace Rat has her own little rat television show on the ship’s closed circuit system where she brings on guests and then talks over them and bombards them with blindingly stupid questions like “IF HE’S NOT GUILTY, THEN WHY DOES HE NEED TO HAVE A DEFENSE ATTORNEY ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS FOR HIM?” as though she doesn’t know that any Defense Attorney Rat worth a slice of Swiss cheese would never let his client appear on television with a hostile loon like her?

Do you think Nancy Grace Rat has also been cited for prosecutorial misconduct ?

What is Nancy Grace’s f*cking deal, anyway?

What if there’s one dude on the ship?

Do you think he made peace with the rats, or do you think they’re engaging in a never-ending battle between man and beast for control?

Do you think he’s become the King of the Rats?

Or do you think he just assumed he’d be the King, but then the rats were all “Ooooooooookay, buddy” and then they just ate him first?

What if the rats are actually zombies instead of cannibals?

What if the ship makes ground in England and London is IMMEDIATELY OVERRUN BY ZOMBIE RATS?

What kind of goddamn clown show is Syfy running that they don’t have a multi-film Zombie Rats Of London made-for-TV franchise starring Antonio Sabato, Jr. by now?

DO I HAVE TO DO EVERYTHING AROUND HERE, SYFY?

If I send over scripts for Zombie Rats Of London and Zombie Rats Of London 2: Polar Vortex by the end of next week, how soon can we get them on the air?

What would you do if you had an abandoned Russian cruise ship all to yourself?

You’d probably run around naked all day and, like, try to pee off the highest point on the boat to see if you could clear the railing and reach the ocean, right?

Who’s gonna stop you?

But what if you got sunburn on your … you know, downstairs parts?

Do rats get sunburn on the parts of their body that aren’t covered by fur?

I probably shouldn’t Google “sunburned rat penises,” huh?

I mean, I’m not planning to commit any crimes any time soon, but if I was falsely accused of something tomorrow and the police seized my computer, that’s not a search term I want them bringing up on the news, right?

How could I ever go out in public after that?

Do you think one of the rats made a tiny little captain’s hat for himself and is pretending like he’s steering the ship, and all the other rats are like, “Jesus Christ, Steve. You’re not the ship’s captain. Your little hands are too small to work any of the levers,” but Captain Steve just ignores them and is all “EASTWARD AT 20 KNOTS. FIRST MATE LOGAN, MAN THE CONTROLS. I NEED TO RADIO THE NAVY,” but his “radio” is just a staple that he pulled out of the ship’s bulletin board with his teeth and bent upwards so it looks like it has a tiny antenna?

Or do they all work together to steer the ship like the rats in the kitchen did when they were cooking in Ratatouille ?

Is that how they prepare all the seafood they pull up in those nets I was talking about earlier?

Do you think rats liked that movie, or do you think they got upset at the way Hollywood depicted them?

If so, do they have a spokesman who’s always popping up on Rat CNN with a petition for everyone to sign?

Do you think the rats have seen Skyfall ?

This scene probably hits a little too close to home for them, huh?

Speaking of Hollywood, doesn’t this whole thing sound kind of like the beginning of an episode of Scooby-Doo?

Like, one where they all think it’s a scary ghost ship and the rats pop up out of nowhere to scare Scooby and Shaggy, but then at the end they find out the whole thing was organized by Old Man Henderson from the amusement park, because after the ship made it to dry land he was going to turn it into a haunted house, but he needed to generate buzz first?

HOW WOULD THEY EVEN GET THE MYSTERY VAN ON THE BOAT?

Wasn’t it a little silly how Scooby and Shaggy got scared of the ghosts every single time even though they always turned out to be fake?

Do you think, if Scooby-Doo were real, the Today show would do some borderline hilarious scare segment aimed at out-of-touch parents where a 55-year-old white guy with glasses was all “They’re called ‘Scooby Snacks,’ and your child could be using them right now “?

Or do you think we’d all still be pretty hung up on the GIANT TALKING DOG WHO SOLVES MYSTERIES?

Probably that second thing, huh?

What do you think is a better name for a metal band: Cannibal Rats or Russian Ghost Ship?

Actually, isn’t Russian Ghost Ship a better name for a craft beer?

If you were out to dinner and the waitress listed off the beers they had on draft and one of them was called Russian Ghost Ship, wouldn’t you order it immediately?

Like, no questions asked?

Do any of you know how to brew beer?

If you do, ARE YOU READY TO BE RICH THANKS TO MY GENIUS BEER-NAMING IDEA?

Just to be clear, as far as this “Rats wandering around an abandoned boat” thing goes, we’re all picturing this, yes?

I thought so.

Crying Myself to Sleep on the Biggest Cruise Ship Ever

Seven agonizing nights aboard the Icon of the Seas

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Updated at 2:44 p.m. ET on April 6, 2024.

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MY FIRST GLIMPSE of Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas, from the window of an approaching Miami cab, brings on a feeling of vertigo, nausea, amazement, and distress. I shut my eyes in defense, as my brain tells my optic nerve to try again.

The ship makes no sense, vertically or horizontally. It makes no sense on sea, or on land, or in outer space. It looks like a hodgepodge of domes and minarets, tubes and canopies, like Istanbul had it been designed by idiots. Vibrant, oversignifying colors are stacked upon other such colors, decks perched over still more decks; the only comfort is a row of lifeboats ringing its perimeter. There is no imposed order, no cogent thought, and, for those who do not harbor a totalitarian sense of gigantomania, no visual mercy. This is the biggest cruise ship ever built, and I have been tasked with witnessing its inaugural voyage.

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“Author embarks on their first cruise-ship voyage” has been a staple of American essay writing for almost three decades, beginning with David Foster Wallace’s “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again,” which was first published in 1996 under the title “Shipping Out.” Since then, many admirable writers have widened and diversified the genre. Usually the essayist commissioned to take to the sea is in their first or second flush of youth and is ready to sharpen their wit against the hull of the offending vessel. I am 51, old and tired, having seen much of the world as a former travel journalist, and mostly what I do in both life and prose is shrug while muttering to my imaginary dachshund, “This too shall pass.” But the Icon of the Seas will not countenance a shrug. The Icon of the Seas is the Linda Loman of cruise ships, exclaiming that attention must be paid. And here I am in late January with my one piece of luggage and useless gray winter jacket and passport, zipping through the Port of Miami en route to the gangway that will separate me from the bulk of North America for more than seven days, ready to pay it in full.

The aforementioned gangway opens up directly onto a thriving mall (I will soon learn it is imperiously called the “Royal Promenade”), presently filled with yapping passengers beneath a ceiling studded with balloons ready to drop. Crew members from every part of the global South, as well as a few Balkans, are shepherding us along while pressing flutes of champagne into our hands. By a humming Starbucks, I drink as many of these as I can and prepare to find my cabin. I show my blue Suite Sky SeaPass Card (more on this later, much more) to a smiling woman from the Philippines, and she tells me to go “aft.” Which is where, now? As someone who has rarely sailed on a vessel grander than the Staten Island Ferry, I am confused. It turns out that the aft is the stern of the ship, or, for those of us who don’t know what a stern or an aft are, its ass. The nose of the ship, responsible for separating the waves before it, is also called a bow, and is marked for passengers as the FWD , or forward. The part of the contemporary sailing vessel where the malls are clustered is called the midship. I trust that you have enjoyed this nautical lesson.

I ascend via elevator to my suite on Deck 11. This is where I encounter my first terrible surprise. My suite windows and balcony do not face the ocean. Instead, they look out onto another shopping mall. This mall is the one that’s called Central Park, perhaps in homage to the Olmsted-designed bit of greenery in the middle of my hometown. Although on land I would be delighted to own a suite with Central Park views, here I am deeply depressed. To sail on a ship and not wake up to a vast blue carpet of ocean? Unthinkable.

Allow me a brief preamble here. The story you are reading was commissioned at a moment when most staterooms on the Icon were sold out. In fact, so enthralled by the prospect of this voyage were hard-core mariners that the ship’s entire inventory of guest rooms (the Icon can accommodate up to 7,600 passengers, but its inaugural journey was reduced to 5,000 or so for a less crowded experience) was almost immediately sold out. Hence, this publication was faced with the shocking prospect of paying nearly $19,000 to procure for this solitary passenger an entire suite—not including drinking expenses—all for the privilege of bringing you this article. But the suite in question doesn’t even have a view of the ocean! I sit down hard on my soft bed. Nineteen thousand dollars for this .

The viewless suite does have its pluses. In addition to all the Malin+Goetz products in my dual bathrooms, I am granted use of a dedicated Suite Deck lounge; access to Coastal Kitchen, a superior restaurant for Suites passengers; complimentary VOOM SM Surf & Stream (“the fastest Internet at Sea”) “for one device per person for the whole cruise duration”; a pair of bathrobes (one of which comes prestained with what looks like a large expectoration by the greenest lizard on Earth); and use of the Grove Suite Sun, an area on Decks 18 and 19 with food and deck chairs reserved exclusively for Suite passengers. I also get reserved seating for a performance of The Wizard of Oz , an ice-skating tribute to the periodic table, and similar provocations. The very color of my Suite Sky SeaPass Card, an oceanic blue as opposed to the cloying royal purple of the standard non-Suite passenger, will soon provoke envy and admiration. But as high as my status may be, there are those on board who have much higher status still, and I will soon learn to bow before them.

In preparation for sailing, I have “priced in,” as they say on Wall Street, the possibility that I may come from a somewhat different monde than many of the other cruisers. Without falling into stereotypes or preconceptions, I prepare myself for a friendly outspokenness on the part of my fellow seafarers that may not comply with modern DEI standards. I believe in meeting people halfway, and so the day before flying down to Miami, I visited what remains of Little Italy to purchase a popular T-shirt that reads DADDY’S LITTLE MEATBALL across the breast in the colors of the Italian flag. My wife recommended that I bring one of my many T-shirts featuring Snoopy and the Peanuts gang, as all Americans love the beagle and his friends. But I naively thought that my meatball T-shirt would be more suitable for conversation-starting. “Oh, and who is your ‘daddy’?” some might ask upon seeing it. “And how long have you been his ‘little meatball’?” And so on.

I put on my meatball T-shirt and head for one of the dining rooms to get a late lunch. In the elevator, I stick out my chest for all to read the funny legend upon it, but soon I realize that despite its burnished tricolor letters, no one takes note. More to the point, no one takes note of me. Despite my attempts at bridge building, the very sight of me (small, ethnic, without a cap bearing the name of a football team) elicits no reaction from other passengers. Most often, they will small-talk over me as if I don’t exist. This brings to mind the travails of David Foster Wallace , who felt so ostracized by his fellow passengers that he retreated to his cabin for much of his voyage. And Wallace was raised primarily in the Midwest and was a much larger, more American-looking meatball than I am. If he couldn’t talk to these people, how will I? What if I leave this ship without making any friends at all, despite my T-shirt? I am a social creature, and the prospect of seven days alone and apart is saddening. Wallace’s stateroom, at least, had a view of the ocean, a kind of cheap eternity.

Worse awaits me in the dining room. This is a large, multichandeliered room where I attended my safety training (I was shown how to put on a flotation vest; it is a very simple procedure). But the maître d’ politely refuses me entry in an English that seems to verge on another language. “I’m sorry, this is only for pendejos ,” he seems to be saying. I push back politely and he repeats himself. Pendejos ? Piranhas? There’s some kind of P-word to which I am not attuned. Meanwhile elderly passengers stream right past, powered by their limbs, walkers, and electric wheelchairs. “It is only pendejo dining today, sir.” “But I have a suite!” I say, already starting to catch on to the ship’s class system. He examines my card again. “But you are not a pendejo ,” he confirms. I am wearing a DADDY’S LITTLE MEATBALL T-shirt, I want to say to him. I am the essence of pendejo .

Eventually, I give up and head to the plebeian buffet on Deck 15, which has an aquatic-styled name I have now forgotten. Before gaining entry to this endless cornucopia of reheated food, one passes a washing station of many sinks and soap dispensers, and perhaps the most intriguing character on the entire ship. He is Mr. Washy Washy—or, according to his name tag, Nielbert of the Philippines—and he is dressed as a taco (on other occasions, I’ll see him dressed as a burger). Mr. Washy Washy performs an eponymous song in spirited, indeed flamboyant English: “Washy, washy, wash your hands, WASHY WASHY!” The dangers of norovirus and COVID on a cruise ship this size (a giant fellow ship was stricken with the former right after my voyage) makes Mr. Washy Washy an essential member of the crew. The problem lies with the food at the end of Washy’s rainbow. The buffet is groaning with what sounds like sophisticated dishes—marinated octopus, boiled egg with anchovy, chorizo, lobster claws—but every animal tastes tragically the same, as if there was only one creature available at the market, a “cruisipus” bred specifically for Royal Caribbean dining. The “vegetables” are no better. I pick up a tomato slice and look right through it. It tastes like cellophane. I sit alone, apart from the couples and parents with gaggles of children, as “We Are Family” echoes across the buffet space.

I may have failed to mention that all this time, the Icon of the Seas has not left port. As the fiery mango of the subtropical setting sun makes Miami’s condo skyline even more apocalyptic, the ship shoves off beneath a perfunctory display of fireworks. After the sun sets, in the far, dark distance, another circus-lit cruise ship ruptures the waves before us. We glance at it with pity, because it is by definition a smaller ship than our own. I am on Deck 15, outside the buffet and overlooking a bunch of pools (the Icon has seven of them), drinking a frilly drink that I got from one of the bars (the Icon has 15 of them), still too shy to speak to anyone, despite Sister Sledge’s assertion that all on the ship are somehow related.

Kim Brooks: On failing the family vacation

The ship’s passage away from Ron DeSantis’s Florida provides no frisson, no sense of developing “sea legs,” as the ship is too large to register the presence of waves unless a mighty wind adds significant chop. It is time for me to register the presence of the 5,000 passengers around me, even if they refuse to register mine. My fellow travelers have prepared for this trip with personally decorated T-shirts celebrating the importance of this voyage. The simplest ones say ICON INAUGURAL ’24 on the back and the family name on the front. Others attest to an over-the-top love of cruise ships: WARNING! MAY START TALKING ABOUT CRUISING . Still others are artisanally designed and celebrate lifetimes spent married while cruising (on ships, of course). A couple possibly in their 90s are wearing shirts whose backs feature a drawing of a cruise liner, two flamingos with ostensibly male and female characteristics, and the legend “ HUSBAND AND WIFE Cruising Partners FOR LIFE WE MAY NOT HAVE IT All Together BUT TOGETHER WE HAVE IT ALL .” (The words not in all caps have been written in cursive.) A real journalist or a more intrepid conversationalist would have gone up to the couple and asked them to explain the longevity of their marriage vis-à-vis their love of cruising. But instead I head to my mall suite, take off my meatball T-shirt, and allow the first tears of the cruise to roll down my cheeks slowly enough that I briefly fall asleep amid the moisture and salt.

I WAKE UP with a hangover. Oh God. Right. I cannot believe all of that happened last night. A name floats into my cobwebbed, nauseated brain: “Ayn Rand.” Jesus Christ.

I breakfast alone at the Coastal Kitchen. The coffee tastes fine and the eggs came out of a bird. The ship rolls slightly this morning; I can feel it in my thighs and my schlong, the parts of me that are most receptive to danger.

I had a dangerous conversation last night. After the sun set and we were at least 50 miles from shore (most modern cruise ships sail at about 23 miles an hour), I lay in bed softly hiccupping, my arms stretched out exactly like Jesus on the cross, the sound of the distant waves missing from my mall-facing suite, replaced by the hum of air-conditioning and children shouting in Spanish through the vents of my two bathrooms. I decided this passivity was unacceptable. As an immigrant, I feel duty-bound to complete the tasks I am paid for, which means reaching out and trying to understand my fellow cruisers. So I put on a normal James Perse T-shirt and headed for one of the bars on the Royal Promenade—the Schooner Bar, it was called, if memory serves correctly.

I sat at the bar for a martini and two Negronis. An old man with thick, hairy forearms drank next to me, very silent and Hemingwaylike, while a dreadlocked piano player tinkled out a series of excellent Elton John covers. To my right, a young white couple—he in floral shorts, she in a light, summery miniskirt with a fearsome diamond ring, neither of them in football regalia—chatted with an elderly couple. Do it , I commanded myself. Open your mouth. Speak! Speak without being spoken to. Initiate. A sentence fragment caught my ear from the young woman, “Cherry Hill.” This is a suburb of Philadelphia in New Jersey, and I had once been there for a reading at a synagogue. “Excuse me,” I said gently to her. “Did you just mention Cherry Hill? It’s a lovely place.”

As it turned out, the couple now lived in Fort Lauderdale (the number of Floridians on the cruise surprised me, given that Southern Florida is itself a kind of cruise ship, albeit one slowly sinking), but soon they were talking with me exclusively—the man potbellied, with a chin like a hard-boiled egg; the woman as svelte as if she were one of the many Ukrainian members of the crew—the elderly couple next to them forgotten. This felt as groundbreaking as the first time I dared to address an American in his native tongue, as a child on a bus in Queens (“On my foot you are standing, Mister”).

“I don’t want to talk politics,” the man said. “But they’re going to eighty-six Biden and put Michelle in.”

I considered the contradictions of his opening conversational gambit, but decided to play along. “People like Michelle,” I said, testing the waters. The husband sneered, but the wife charitably put forward that the former first lady was “more personable” than Joe Biden. “They’re gonna eighty-six Biden,” the husband repeated. “He can’t put a sentence together.”

After I mentioned that I was a writer—though I presented myself as a writer of teleplays instead of novels and articles such as this one—the husband told me his favorite writer was Ayn Rand. “Ayn Rand, she came here with nothing,” the husband said. “I work with a lot of Cubans, so …” I wondered if I should mention what I usually do to ingratiate myself with Republicans or libertarians: the fact that my finances improved after pass-through corporations were taxed differently under Donald Trump. Instead, I ordered another drink and the couple did the same, and I told him that Rand and I were born in the same city, St. Petersburg/Leningrad, and that my family also came here with nothing. Now the bonding and drinking began in earnest, and several more rounds appeared. Until it all fell apart.

Read: Gary Shteyngart on watching Russian television for five days straight

My new friend, whom I will refer to as Ayn, called out to a buddy of his across the bar, and suddenly a young couple, both covered in tattoos, appeared next to us. “He fucking punked me,” Ayn’s frat-boy-like friend called out as he put his arm around Ayn, while his sizable partner sizzled up to Mrs. Rand. Both of them had a look I have never seen on land—their eyes projecting absence and enmity in equal measure. In the ’90s, I drank with Russian soldiers fresh from Chechnya and wandered the streets of wartime Zagreb, but I have never seen such undisguised hostility toward both me and perhaps the universe at large. I was briefly introduced to this psychopathic pair, but neither of them wanted to have anything to do with me, and the tattooed woman would not even reveal her Christian name to me (she pretended to have the same first name as Mrs. Rand). To impress his tattooed friends, Ayn made fun of the fact that as a television writer, I’d worked on the series Succession (which, it would turn out, practically nobody on the ship had watched), instead of the far more palatable, in his eyes, zombie drama of last year. And then my new friends drifted away from me into an angry private conversation—“He punked me!”—as I ordered another drink for myself, scared of the dead-eyed arrivals whose gaze never registered in the dim wattage of the Schooner Bar, whose terrifying voices and hollow laughs grated like unoiled gears against the crooning of “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.”

But today is a new day for me and my hangover. After breakfast, I explore the ship’s so-called neighborhoods . There’s the AquaDome, where one can find a food hall and an acrobatic sound-and-light aquatic show. Central Park has a premium steak house, a sushi joint, and a used Rolex that can be bought for $8,000 on land here proudly offered at $17,000. There’s the aforementioned Royal Promenade, where I had drunk with the Rands, and where a pair of dueling pianos duel well into the night. There’s Surfside, a kids’ neighborhood full of sugary garbage, which looks out onto the frothy trail that the behemoth leaves behind itself. Thrill Island refers to the collection of tubes that clutter the ass of the ship and offer passengers six waterslides and a surfing simulation. There’s the Hideaway, an adult zone that plays music from a vomit-slathered, Brit-filled Alicante nightclub circa 1996 and proves a big favorite with groups of young Latin American customers. And, most hurtfully, there’s the Suite Neighborhood.

I say hurtfully because as a Suite passenger I should be here, though my particular suite is far from the others. Whereas I am stuck amid the riffraff of Deck 11, this section is on the highborn Decks 16 and 17, and in passing, I peek into the spacious, tall-ceilinged staterooms from the hallway, dazzled by the glint of the waves and sun. For $75,000, one multifloor suite even comes with its own slide between floors, so that a family may enjoy this particular terror in private. There is a quiet splendor to the Suite Neighborhood. I see fewer stickers and signs and drawings than in my own neighborhood—for example, MIKE AND DIANA PROUDLY SERVED U.S. MARINE CORPS RETIRED . No one here needs to announce their branch of service or rank; they are simply Suites, and this is where they belong. Once again, despite my hard work and perseverance, I have been disallowed from the true American elite. Once again, I am “Not our class, dear.” I am reminded of watching The Love Boat on my grandmother’s Zenith, which either was given to her or we found in the trash (I get our many malfunctioning Zeniths confused) and whose tube got so hot, I would put little chunks of government cheese on a thin tissue atop it to give our welfare treat a pleasant, Reagan-era gooeyness. I could not understand English well enough then to catch the nuances of that seafaring program, but I knew that there were differences in the status of the passengers, and that sometimes those differences made them sad. Still, this ship, this plenty—every few steps, there are complimentary nachos or milkshakes or gyros on offer—was the fatty fuel of my childhood dreams. If only I had remained a child.

I walk around the outdoor decks looking for company. There is a middle-aged African American couple who always seem to be asleep in each other’s arms, probably exhausted from the late capitalism they regularly encounter on land. There is far more diversity on this ship than I expected. Many couples are a testament to Loving v. Virginia , and there is a large group of folks whose T-shirts read MELANIN AT SEA / IT’S THE MELANIN FOR ME . I smile when I see them, but then some young kids from the group makes Mr. Washy Washy do a cruel, caricatured “Burger Dance” (today he is in his burger getup), and I think, Well, so much for intersectionality .

At the infinity pool on Deck 17, I spot some elderly women who could be ethnic and from my part of the world, and so I jump in. I am proved correct! Many of them seem to be originally from Queens (“Corona was still great when it was all Italian”), though they are now spread across the tristate area. We bond over the way “Ron-kon-koma” sounds when announced in Penn Station.

“Everyone is here for a different reason,” one of them tells me. She and her ex-husband last sailed together four years ago to prove to themselves that their marriage was truly over. Her 15-year-old son lost his virginity to “an Irish young lady” while their ship was moored in Ravenna, Italy. The gaggle of old-timers competes to tell me their favorite cruising stories and tips. “A guy proposed in Central Park a couple of years ago”—many Royal Caribbean ships apparently have this ridiculous communal area—“and she ran away screaming!” “If you’re diamond-class, you get four drinks for free.” “A different kind of passenger sails out of Bayonne.” (This, perhaps, is racially coded.) “Sometimes, if you tip the bartender $5, your next drink will be free.”

“Everyone’s here for a different reason,” the woman whose marriage ended on a cruise tells me again. “Some people are here for bad reasons—the drinkers and the gamblers. Some people are here for medical reasons.” I have seen more than a few oxygen tanks and at least one woman clearly undergoing very serious chemo. Some T-shirts celebrate good news about a cancer diagnosis. This might be someone’s last cruise or week on Earth. For these women, who have spent months, if not years, at sea, cruising is a ritual as well as a life cycle: first love, last love, marriage, divorce, death.

Read: The last place on Earth any tourist should go

I have talked with these women for so long, tonight I promise myself that after a sad solitary dinner I will not try to seek out company at the bars in the mall or the adult-themed Hideaway. I have enough material to fulfill my duties to this publication. As I approach my orphaned suite, I run into the aggro young people who stole Mr. and Mrs. Rand away from me the night before. The tattooed apparitions pass me without a glance. She is singing something violent about “Stuttering Stanley” (a character in a popular horror movie, as I discover with my complimentary VOOM SM Surf & Stream Internet at Sea) and he’s loudly shouting about “all the money I’ve lost,” presumably at the casino in the bowels of the ship.

So these bent psychos out of a Cormac McCarthy novel are angrily inhabiting my deck. As I mewl myself to sleep, I envision a limited series for HBO or some other streamer, a kind of low-rent White Lotus , where several aggressive couples conspire to throw a shy intellectual interloper overboard. I type the scenario into my phone. As I fall asleep, I think of what the woman who recently divorced her husband and whose son became a man through the good offices of the Irish Republic told me while I was hoisting myself out of the infinity pool. “I’m here because I’m an explorer. I’m here because I’m trying something new.” What if I allowed myself to believe in her fantasy?

“YOU REALLY STARTED AT THE TOP,” they tell me. I’m at the Coastal Kitchen for my eggs and corned-beef hash, and the maître d’ has slotted me in between two couples. Fueled by coffee or perhaps intrigued by my relative youth, they strike up a conversation with me. As always, people are shocked that this is my first cruise. They contrast the Icon favorably with all the preceding liners in the Royal Caribbean fleet, usually commenting on the efficiency of the elevators that hurl us from deck to deck (as in many large corporate buildings, the elevators ask you to choose a floor and then direct you to one of many lifts). The couple to my right, from Palo Alto—he refers to his “porn mustache” and calls his wife “my cougar” because she is two years older—tell me they are “Pandemic Pinnacles.”

This is the day that my eyes will be opened. Pinnacles , it is explained to me over translucent cantaloupe, have sailed with Royal Caribbean for 700 ungodly nights. Pandemic Pinnacles took advantage of the two-for-one accrual rate of Pinnacle points during the pandemic, when sailing on a cruise ship was even more ill-advised, to catapult themselves into Pinnacle status.

Because of the importance of the inaugural voyage of the world’s largest cruise liner, more than 200 Pinnacles are on this ship, a startling number, it seems. Mrs. Palo Alto takes out a golden badge that I have seen affixed over many a breast, which reads CROWN AND ANCHOR SOCIETY along with her name. This is the coveted badge of the Pinnacle. “You should hear all the whining in Guest Services,” her husband tells me. Apparently, the Pinnacles who are not also Suites like us are all trying to use their status to get into Coastal Kitchen, our elite restaurant. Even a Pinnacle needs to be a Suite to access this level of corned-beef hash.

“We’re just baby Pinnacles,” Mrs. Palo Alto tells me, describing a kind of internal class struggle among the Pinnacle elite for ever higher status.

And now I understand what the maître d’ was saying to me on the first day of my cruise. He wasn’t saying “ pendejo .” He was saying “Pinnacle.” The dining room was for Pinnacles only, all those older people rolling in like the tide on their motorized scooters.

And now I understand something else: This whole thing is a cult. And like most cults, it can’t help but mirror the endless American fight for status. Like Keith Raniere’s NXIVM, where different-colored sashes were given out to connote rank among Raniere’s branded acolytes, this is an endless competition among Pinnacles, Suites, Diamond-Plusers, and facing-the-mall, no-balcony purple SeaPass Card peasants, not to mention the many distinctions within each category. The more you cruise, the higher your status. No wonder a section of the Royal Promenade is devoted to getting passengers to book their next cruise during the one they should be enjoying now. No wonder desperate Royal Caribbean offers (“FINAL HOURS”) crowded my email account weeks before I set sail. No wonder the ship’s jewelry store, the Royal Bling, is selling a $100,000 golden chalice that will entitle its owner to drink free on Royal Caribbean cruises for life. (One passenger was already gaming out whether her 28-year-old son was young enough to “just about earn out” on the chalice or if that ship had sailed.) No wonder this ship was sold out months before departure , and we had to pay $19,000 for a horrid suite away from the Suite Neighborhood. No wonder the most mythical hero of Royal Caribbean lore is someone named Super Mario, who has cruised so often, he now has his own working desk on many ships. This whole experience is part cult, part nautical pyramid scheme.

From the June 2014 issue: Ship of wonks

“The toilets are amazing,” the Palo Altos are telling me. “One flush and you’re done.” “They don’t understand how energy-efficient these ships are,” the husband of the other couple is telling me. “They got the LNG”—liquefied natural gas, which is supposed to make the Icon a boon to the environment (a concept widely disputed and sometimes ridiculed by environmentalists).

But I’m thinking along a different line of attack as I spear my last pallid slice of melon. For my streaming limited series, a Pinnacle would have to get killed by either an outright peasant or a Suite without an ocean view. I tell my breakfast companions my idea.

“Oh, for sure a Pinnacle would have to be killed,” Mr. Palo Alto, the Pandemic Pinnacle, says, touching his porn mustache thoughtfully as his wife nods.

“THAT’S RIGHT, IT’S your time, buddy!” Hubert, my fun-loving Panamanian cabin attendant, shouts as I step out of my suite in a robe. “Take it easy, buddy!”

I have come up with a new dressing strategy. Instead of trying to impress with my choice of T-shirts, I have decided to start wearing a robe, as one does at a resort property on land, with a proper spa and hammam. The response among my fellow cruisers has been ecstatic. “Look at you in the robe!” Mr. Rand cries out as we pass each other by the Thrill Island aqua park. “You’re living the cruise life! You know, you really drank me under the table that night.” I laugh as we part ways, but my soul cries out, Please spend more time with me, Mr. and Mrs. Rand; I so need the company .

In my white robe, I am a stately presence, a refugee from a better limited series, a one-man crossover episode. (Only Suites are granted these robes to begin with.) Today, I will try many of the activities these ships have on offer to provide their clientele with a sense of never-ceasing motion. Because I am already at Thrill Island, I decide to climb the staircase to what looks like a mast on an old-fashioned ship (terrified, because I am afraid of heights) to try a ride called “Storm Chasers,” which is part of the “Category 6” water park, named in honor of one of the storms that may someday do away with the Port of Miami entirely. Storm Chasers consists of falling from the “mast” down a long, twisting neon tube filled with water, like being the camera inside your own colonoscopy, as you hold on to the handles of a mat, hoping not to die. The tube then flops you down headfirst into a trough of water, a Royal Caribbean baptism. It both knocks my breath out and makes me sad.

In keeping with the aquatic theme, I attend a show at the AquaDome. To the sound of “Live and Let Die,” a man in a harness gyrates to and fro in the sultry air. I saw something very similar in the back rooms of the famed Berghain club in early-aughts Berlin. Soon another harnessed man is gyrating next to the first. Ja , I think to myself, I know how this ends. Now will come the fisting , natürlich . But the show soon devolves into the usual Marvel-film-grade nonsense, with too much light and sound signifying nichts . If any fisting is happening, it is probably in the Suite Neighborhood, inside a cabin marked with an upside-down pineapple, which I understand means a couple are ready to swing, and I will see none of it.

I go to the ice show, which is a kind of homage—if that’s possible—to the periodic table, done with the style and pomp and masterful precision that would please the likes of Kim Jong Un, if only he could afford Royal Caribbean talent. At one point, the dancers skate to the theme song of Succession . “See that!” I want to say to my fellow Suites—at “cultural” events, we have a special section reserved for us away from the commoners—“ Succession ! It’s even better than the zombie show! Open your minds!”

Finally, I visit a comedy revue in an enormous and too brightly lit version of an “intimate,” per Royal Caribbean literature, “Manhattan comedy club.” Many of the jokes are about the cruising life. “I’ve lived on ships for 20 years,” one of the middle-aged comedians says. “I can only see so many Filipino homosexuals dressed as a taco.” He pauses while the audience laughs. “I am so fired tonight,” he says. He segues into a Trump impression and then Biden falling asleep at the microphone, which gets the most laughs. “Anyone here from Fort Leonard Wood?” another comedian asks. Half the crowd seems to cheer. As I fall asleep that night, I realize another connection I have failed to make, and one that may explain some of the diversity on this vessel—many of its passengers have served in the military.

As a coddled passenger with a suite, I feel like I am starting to understand what it means to have a rank and be constantly reminded of it. There are many espresso makers , I think as I look across the expanse of my officer-grade quarters before closing my eyes, but this one is mine .

A shocking sight greets me beyond the pools of Deck 17 as I saunter over to the Coastal Kitchen for my morning intake of slightly sour Americanos. A tiny city beneath a series of perfectly pressed green mountains. Land! We have docked for a brief respite in Basseterre, the capital of St. Kitts and Nevis. I wolf down my egg scramble to be one of the first passengers off the ship. Once past the gangway, I barely refrain from kissing the ground. I rush into the sights and sounds of this scruffy island city, sampling incredible conch curry and buckets of non-Starbucks coffee. How wonderful it is to be where God intended humans to be: on land. After all, I am neither a fish nor a mall rat. This is my natural environment. Basseterre may not be Havana, but there are signs of human ingenuity and desire everywhere you look. The Black Table Grill Has been Relocated to Soho Village, Market Street, Directly Behind of, Gary’s Fruits and Flower Shop. Signed. THE PORK MAN reads a sign stuck to a wall. Now, that is how you write a sign. A real sign, not the come-ons for overpriced Rolexes that blink across the screens of the Royal Promenade.

“Hey, tie your shoestring!” a pair of laughing ladies shout to me across the street.

“Thank you!” I shout back. Shoestring! “Thank you very much.”

A man in Independence Square Park comes by and asks if I want to play with his monkey. I haven’t heard that pickup line since the Penn Station of the 1980s. But then he pulls a real monkey out of a bag. The monkey is wearing a diaper and looks insane. Wonderful , I think, just wonderful! There is so much life here. I email my editor asking if I can remain on St. Kitts and allow the Icon to sail off into the horizon without me. I have even priced a flight home at less than $300, and I have enough material from the first four days on the cruise to write the entire story. “It would be funny …” my editor replies. “Now get on the boat.”

As I slink back to the ship after my brief jailbreak, the locals stand under umbrellas to gaze at and photograph the boat that towers over their small capital city. The limousines of the prime minister and his lackeys are parked beside the gangway. St. Kitts, I’ve been told, is one of the few islands that would allow a ship of this size to dock.

“We hear about all the waterslides,” a sweet young server in one of the cafés told me. “We wish we could go on the ship, but we have to work.”

“I want to stay on your island,” I replied. “I love it here.”

But she didn’t understand how I could possibly mean that.

“WASHY, WASHY, so you don’t get stinky, stinky!” kids are singing outside the AquaDome, while their adult minders look on in disapproval, perhaps worried that Mr. Washy Washy is grooming them into a life of gayness. I heard a southern couple skip the buffet entirely out of fear of Mr. Washy Washy.

Meanwhile, I have found a new watering hole for myself, the Swim & Tonic, the biggest swim-up bar on any cruise ship in the world. Drinking next to full-size, nearly naked Americans takes away one’s own self-consciousness. The men have curvaceous mom bodies. The women are equally un-shy about their sprawling physiques.

Today I’ve befriended a bald man with many children who tells me that all of the little trinkets that Royal Caribbean has left us in our staterooms and suites are worth a fortune on eBay. “Eighty dollars for the water bottle, 60 for the lanyard,” the man says. “This is a cult.”

“Tell me about it,” I say. There is, however, a clientele for whom this cruise makes perfect sense. For a large middle-class family (he works in “supply chains”), seven days in a lower-tier cabin—which starts at $1,800 a person—allow the parents to drop off their children in Surfside, where I imagine many young Filipina crew members will take care of them, while the parents are free to get drunk at a swim-up bar and maybe even get intimate in their cabin. Cruise ships have become, for a certain kind of hardworking family, a form of subsidized child care.

There is another man I would like to befriend at the Swim & Tonic, a tall, bald fellow who is perpetually inebriated and who wears a necklace studded with little rubber duckies in sunglasses, which, I am told, is a sort of secret handshake for cruise aficionados. Tomorrow, I will spend more time with him, but first the ship docks at St. Thomas, in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Charlotte Amalie, the capital, is more charming in name than in presence, but I still all but jump off the ship to score a juicy oxtail and plantains at the well-known Petite Pump Room, overlooking the harbor. From one of the highest points in the small city, the Icon of the Seas appears bigger than the surrounding hills.

I usually tan very evenly, but something about the discombobulation of life at sea makes me forget the regular application of sunscreen. As I walk down the streets of Charlotte Amalie in my fluorescent Icon of the Seas cap, an old Rastafarian stares me down. “Redneck,” he hisses.

“No,” I want to tell him, as I bring a hand up to my red neck, “that’s not who I am at all. On my island, Mannahatta, as Whitman would have it, I am an interesting person living within an engaging artistic milieu. I do not wish to use the Caribbean as a dumping ground for the cruise-ship industry. I love the work of Derek Walcott. You don’t understand. I am not a redneck. And if I am, they did this to me.” They meaning Royal Caribbean? Its passengers? The Rands?

“They did this to me!”

Back on the Icon, some older matrons are muttering about a run-in with passengers from the Celebrity cruise ship docked next to us, the Celebrity Apex. Although Celebrity Cruises is also owned by Royal Caribbean, I am made to understand that there is a deep fratricidal beef between passengers of the two lines. “We met a woman from the Apex,” one matron says, “and she says it was a small ship and there was nothing to do. Her face was as tight as a 19-year-old’s, she had so much surgery.” With those words, and beneath a cloudy sky, humidity shrouding our weathered faces and red necks, we set sail once again, hopefully in the direction of home.

THERE ARE BARELY 48 HOURS LEFT to the cruise, and the Icon of the Seas’ passengers are salty. They know how to work the elevators. They know the Washy Washy song by heart. They understand that the chicken gyro at “Feta Mediterranean,” in the AquaDome Market, is the least problematic form of chicken on the ship.

The passengers have shed their INAUGURAL CRUISE T-shirts and are now starting to evince political opinions. There are caps pledging to make America great again and T-shirts that celebrate words sometimes attributed to Patrick Henry: “The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people; it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government.” With their preponderance of FAMILY FLAG FAITH FRIENDS FIREARMS T-shirts, the tables by the crepe station sometimes resemble the Capitol Rotunda on January 6. The Real Anthony Fauci , by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., appears to be a popular form of literature, especially among young men with very complicated versions of the American flag on their T-shirts. Other opinions blend the personal and the political. “Someone needs to kill Washy guy, right?” a well-dressed man in the elevator tells me, his gray eyes radiating nothing. “Just beat him to death. Am I right?” I overhear the male member of a young couple whisper, “There goes that freak” as I saunter by in my white spa robe, and I decide to retire it for the rest of the cruise.

I visit the Royal Bling to see up close the $100,000 golden chalice that entitles you to free drinks on Royal Caribbean forever. The pleasant Serbian saleslady explains that the chalice is actually gold-plated and covered in white zirconia instead of diamonds, as it would otherwise cost $1 million. “If you already have everything,” she explains, “this is one more thing you can get.”

I believe that anyone who works for Royal Caribbean should be entitled to immediate American citizenship. They already speak English better than most of the passengers and, per the Serbian lady’s sales pitch above, better understand what America is as well. Crew members like my Panamanian cabin attendant seem to work 24 hours a day. A waiter from New Delhi tells me that his contract is six months and three weeks long. After a cruise ends, he says, “in a few hours, we start again for the next cruise.” At the end of the half a year at sea, he is allowed a two-to-three-month stay at home with his family. As of 2019, the median income for crew members was somewhere in the vicinity of $20,000, according to a major business publication. Royal Caribbean would not share the current median salary for its crew members, but I am certain that it amounts to a fraction of the cost of a Royal Bling gold-plated, zirconia-studded chalice.

And because most of the Icon’s hyper-sanitized spaces are just a frittata away from being a Delta lounge, one forgets that there are actual sailors on this ship, charged with the herculean task of docking it in port. “Having driven 100,000-ton aircraft carriers throughout my career,” retired Admiral James G. Stavridis, the former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe, writes to me, “I’m not sure I would even know where to begin with trying to control a sea monster like this one nearly three times the size.” (I first met Stavridis while touring Army bases in Germany more than a decade ago.)

Today, I decide to head to the hot tub near Swim & Tonic, where some of the ship’s drunkest reprobates seem to gather (the other tubs are filled with families and couples). The talk here, like everywhere else on the ship, concerns football, a sport about which I know nothing. It is apparent that four teams have recently competed in some kind of finals for the year, and that two of them will now face off in the championship. Often when people on the Icon speak, I will try to repeat the last thing they said with a laugh or a nod of disbelief. “Yes, 20-yard line! Ha!” “Oh my God, of course, scrimmage.”

Soon we are joined in the hot tub by the late-middle-age drunk guy with the duck necklace. He is wearing a bucket hat with the legend HAWKEYES , which, I soon gather, is yet another football team. “All right, who turned me in?” Duck Necklace says as he plops into the tub beside us. “I get a call in the morning,” he says. “It’s security. Can you come down to the dining room by 10 a.m.? You need to stay away from the members of this religious family.” Apparently, the gregarious Duck Necklace had photobombed the wrong people. There are several families who present as evangelical Christians or practicing Muslims on the ship. One man, evidently, was not happy that Duck Necklace had made contact with his relatives. “It’s because of religious stuff; he was offended. I put my arm around 20 people a day.”

Everyone laughs. “They asked me three times if I needed medication,” he says of the security people who apparently interrogated him in full view of others having breakfast.

Another hot-tub denizen suggests that he should have asked for fentanyl. After a few more drinks, Duck Necklace begins to muse about what it would be like to fall off the ship. “I’m 62 and I’m ready to go,” he says. “I just don’t want a shark to eat me. I’m a huge God guy. I’m a Bible guy. There’s some Mayan theory squaring science stuff with religion. There is so much more to life on Earth.” We all nod into our Red Stripes.

“I never get off the ship when we dock,” he says. He tells us he lost $6,000 in the casino the other day. Later, I look him up, and it appears that on land, he’s a financial adviser in a crisp gray suit, probably a pillar of his North Chicago community.

THE OCEAN IS TEEMING with fascinating life, but on the surface it has little to teach us. The waves come and go. The horizon remains ever far away.

I am constantly told by my fellow passengers that “everybody here has a story.” Yes, I want to reply, but everybody everywhere has a story. You, the reader of this essay, have a story, and yet you’re not inclined to jump on a cruise ship and, like Duck Necklace, tell your story to others at great pitch and volume. Maybe what they’re saying is that everybody on this ship wants to have a bigger, more coherent, more interesting story than the one they’ve been given. Maybe that’s why there’s so much signage on the doors around me attesting to marriages spent on the sea. Maybe that’s why the Royal Caribbean newsletter slipped under my door tells me that “this isn’t a vacation day spent—it’s bragging rights earned.” Maybe that’s why I’m so lonely.

Today is a big day for Icon passengers. Today the ship docks at Royal Caribbean’s own Bahamian island, the Perfect Day at CocoCay. (This appears to be the actual name of the island.) A comedian at the nightclub opined on what his perfect day at CocoCay would look like—receiving oral sex while learning that his ex-wife had been killed in a car crash (big laughter). But the reality of the island is far less humorous than that.

One of the ethnic tristate ladies in the infinity pool told me that she loved CocoCay because it had exactly the same things that could be found on the ship itself. This proves to be correct. It is like the Icon, but with sand. The same tired burgers, the same colorful tubes conveying children and water from Point A to B. The same swim-up bar at its Hideaway ($140 for admittance, no children allowed; Royal Caribbean must be printing money off its clientele). “There was almost a fight at The Wizard of Oz ,” I overhear an elderly woman tell her companion on a chaise lounge. Apparently one of the passengers began recording Royal Caribbean’s intellectual property and “three guys came after him.”

I walk down a pathway to the center of the island, where a sign reads DO NOT ENTER: YOU HAVE REACHED THE BOUNDARY OF ADVENTURE . I hear an animal scampering in the bushes. A Royal Caribbean worker in an enormous golf cart soon chases me down and takes me back to the Hideaway, where I run into Mrs. Rand in a bikini. She becomes livid telling me about an altercation she had the other day with a woman over a towel and a deck chair. We Suites have special towel privileges; we do not have to hand over our SeaPass Card to score a towel. But the Rands are not Suites. “People are so entitled here,” Mrs. Rand says. “It’s like the airport with all its classes.” “You see,” I want to say, “this is where your husband’s love of Ayn Rand runs into the cruelties and arbitrary indignities of unbridled capitalism.” Instead we make plans to meet for a final drink in the Schooner Bar tonight (the Rands will stand me up).

Back on the ship, I try to do laps, but the pool (the largest on any cruise ship, naturally) is fully trashed with the detritus of American life: candy wrappers, a slowly dissolving tortilla chip, napkins. I take an extra-long shower in my suite, then walk around the perimeter of the ship on a kind of exercise track, past all the alluring lifeboats in their yellow-and-white livery. Maybe there is a dystopian angle to the HBO series that I will surely end up pitching, one with shades of WALL-E or Snowpiercer . In a collapsed world, a Royal Caribbean–like cruise liner sails from port to port, collecting new shipmates and supplies in exchange for the precious energy it has on board. (The actual Icon features a new technology that converts passengers’ poop into enough energy to power the waterslides . In the series, this shitty technology would be greatly expanded.) A very young woman (18? 19?), smart and lonely, who has only known life on the ship, walks along the same track as I do now, contemplating jumping off into the surf left by its wake. I picture reusing Duck Necklace’s words in the opening shot of the pilot. The girl is walking around the track, her eyes on the horizon; maybe she’s highborn—a Suite—and we hear the voice-over: “I’m 19 and I’m ready to go. I just don’t want a shark to eat me.”

Before the cruise is finished, I talk to Mr. Washy Washy, or Nielbert of the Philippines. He is a sweet, gentle man, and I thank him for the earworm of a song he has given me and for keeping us safe from the dreaded norovirus. “This is very important to me, getting people to wash their hands,” he tells me in his burger getup. He has dreams, as an artist and a performer, but they are limited in scope. One day he wants to dress up as a piece of bacon for the morning shift.

THE MAIDEN VOYAGE OF THE TITANIC (the Icon of the Seas is five times as large as that doomed vessel) at least offered its passengers an exciting ending to their cruise, but when I wake up on the eighth day, all I see are the gray ghosts that populate Miami’s condo skyline. Throughout my voyage, my writer friends wrote in to commiserate with me. Sloane Crosley, who once covered a three-day spa mini-cruise for Vogue , tells me she felt “so very alone … I found it very untethering.” Gideon Lewis-Kraus writes in an Instagram comment: “When Gary is done I think it’s time this genre was taken out back and shot.” And he is right. To badly paraphrase Adorno: After this, no more cruise stories. It is unfair to put a thinking person on a cruise ship. Writers typically have difficult childhoods, and it is cruel to remind them of the inherent loneliness that drove them to writing in the first place. It is also unseemly to write about the kind of people who go on cruises. Our country does not provide the education and upbringing that allow its citizens an interior life. For the creative class to point fingers at the large, breasty gentlemen adrift in tortilla-chip-laden pools of water is to gather a sour harvest of low-hanging fruit.

A day or two before I got off the ship, I decided to make use of my balcony, which I had avoided because I thought the view would only depress me further. What I found shocked me. My suite did not look out on Central Park after all. This entire time, I had been living in the ship’s Disneyland, Surfside, the neighborhood full of screaming toddlers consuming milkshakes and candy. And as I leaned out over my balcony, I beheld a slight vista of the sea and surf that I thought I had been missing. It had been there all along. The sea was frothy and infinite and blue-green beneath the span of a seagull’s wing. And though it had been trod hard by the world’s largest cruise ship, it remained.

This article appears in the May 2024 print edition with the headline “A Meatball at Sea.” When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

• Ask a Cruise Question

Do Cruise Ships have Rats & Mice?

By kalypso333 , March 8, 2015 in Ask a Cruise Question

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Just wondering this morning.

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micmacmissy

Oh, they have rats all right...we've seen them! They run the "art" auctions!

I've never seen one. If you will notice, they put up rat guards on all the lines when they dock alongside the pier.

Do people still go to those events? :confused:

Do cruise ships have rats and mice?

Only in the buffet at lunch time!

I once had a room steward (woman) tell of switching from a different line to Celebrity as the other had a bad rat problem. I imagine every ship has some - they don't need to go up the gang plank or ropes - they just hitch a ride in a container of supplies. :o

They have them on Disney. In fact they worship them by placing them throughout the ship. They even give them names.

I've only seen Celebrities,like Regis Philban, Shirley Jones, Richard Roundtree and Frank Shorter on Celebrity.

they have them on disney. In fact they worship them by placing them throughout the ship. They even give them names. I've only seen celebrities,like regis philban, shirley jones, richard roundtree and frank shorter on celebrity.

If you will notice, they put up rat guards on all the lines when they dock alongside the pier .

Wine-O isn't trying to be funny!

They really do put Rat Guards on the mooring lines.

That's what those big silver disk you see on them are.

We saw some funny ones once -- had big cats painted on them. :D

While I have never seen a rat on a cruise ship (not talking about the two legged kind), I did find a rat "dropping" on the floor of my cabin last year. I picked it up in a paper towel and took it to the front desk. Soon after, maintenance was checking all the air vents in my room.

I know that have Pork n Beans, but Rats n Mice??? Never seen it on the menu. LOL

They have them on Disney. In fact they worship them by placing them throughout the ship. They even give them names. .

Yes. I am one is totally icked out by the anthropomorphization of rodents.

I suppose the Creator had her reasons, the dissemination of seeds, perhaps.

OP, there's no need to wonder. Where there be humans, there be rats.

Light a cigarette on your balcony and see how many rats come out. :)

Along with the rats and mice there are cockroaches, lice, bed bugs, flies, birds, up dust mites, centipedes, spiders, fleas, and probably a whole lot of things that we may never see. Same as many houses, apartments, restaurants and etc.

A friend of mine bought same bird seed to feed the birds in the winter time, he stored the seed in his basement and discovered mice inside. He couldn't find any holes in the outside of the bag. I am sure that many critters get on board the same way.

happy crusing 🌊 🚢 🇺🇸 🌞

We've been on over 200 cruises and have never seen a rat or mouse of the rodent variety, nor their droppings.

We have seen many types of animals and fish of the human variety on board however, even a dinosaur or two.

I've seen a few rats putting towels down on pool chairs around 7:30am , but they then leave & don't reappear until the afternoon.

Interesting (but old) post on the topic:

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showpost.php?p=7985394&postcount=5

Now that is really funny!!!!!

Yes. I am one is totally icked out by the anthropomorphization of rodents. I suppose the Creator had her reasons, the dissemination of seeds, perhaps.   OP, there's no need to wonder. Where there be humans, there be rats.   Ew.

Well, it's not unreasonable to assume that =X= has rats aboard. After all, they had their own TV series several years ago - The Rat Patrol and we sometimes refer to the furniture as being a little ratty.

I have heard that Celebrity ships have a whole series of tiny little cabins just for them down somewhere on Deck 1. And that they booked under the 1-2-3 NO!!!!! package.

Everybody have a great day out there!!!!!

Never seen one, never seen any sign.

But I have to believe, as persistent and determined as they are, that there are few places they DON'T get. We've even seen one at Disney world and NOT Mickey.

The ships are very clean, far better than most hotels or restaurants I've visited.

Stateroom_Sailor

Well rather than letting people bring their Shih Tzu on board, time to set up a cats only policy? They could be just as effective as service animals for those with panic attacks. ;)

capecodder2

We had a small mouse on our Yangtze River cruise 12 yrs ago who visited us at night to eat a carnation that was in a little vase. He didn't bother us, we let him have the carnation.

simon stingray

Do Cruise Ships have Rats & Mice? Just wondering this morning.

I don't think that any of the major cruise lines or their ships have rodents onboard. They wouldn't achieve such high scores on their CDC inspections if there was even a hint of rodent activity.

http://wwwn.cdc.gov/InspectionQueryTool/InspectionResults.aspx

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://mrose.org/cc/rat%252520guards.JPG&imgrefurl=http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t%3D2037759&h=504&w=640&tbnid=Yfb4LgN1ELKLHM:&zoom=1&docid=NsIwnqy_xaZuRM&ei=v6v9VM2LOYidgwTp7IC4CA&tbm=isch&ved=0CB4QMygBMAE

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.swi-tec.us/image/cache/data/1122_Rattenschutz%252520Skizze_2-650x650.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.swi-tec.us/index.php?route%3Dproduct/product%26product_id%3D50&h=650&w=650&tbnid=o9O7TUAOkTfIpM:&zoom=1&docid=6G_BZdryRz21xM&ei=v6v9VM2LOYidgwTp7IC4CA&tbm=isch&ved=0CCAQMygDMAM

Blue Lagoon

It might be my fault that someone thinks there are rodents on board.

When the soft serve ice cream machine runs out of vanilla, you can hear me say, 'Oh, rats!' :D

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A Russian cruiser with ‘cannibal rats’: What other ‘ghost ships’ could be out there?

Beleaguered mv alta on rocks in ballycotton not the first mysterious ship to haunt our shores.

A ghost ship was washed up onto the rocks off east Cork by Storm Dennis on Sunday, after drifting across the Atlantic over the last year. Video: Irish Coast Guard

The running aground of “ghost ship” MV Alta, on rocks near Ballycotton in east Cork on Sunday, was not the first time such a derelict vessel has haunted our shores.

In 2014 there were reports that the abandoned former Soviet cruise liner Lyubov Orlova was off the Irish coast bringing with it ominous headlines warning of “cannibal rats” aboard a “ghost ship” heading our way.

The Irish Coast Guard on Tuesday said it suspects the liner has probably sunk but is “still vigilant” in relation to it. The 4,200-tonne ship was once the glittering choice of Soviet holidaymakers and later wealthy Russians touring the Artic and Antarctic.

It is one of a number of ‘ghost ships’, unmanned but still afloat at last sighting, the whereabouts of which are now unknown.

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The 100m long Lyubov Orlova was seen adrift off the coast of Newfoundland in February 2013. The ship had been sold for scrap and taken under tow from St John’s, heading for the Dominican Republic. But less than a day into the journey the tow line broke and the ship drifted into international waters.

As National Geographic put it in March 2014, “somewhere in the vast expanses of the North Atlantic an empty Russian cruise ship has been lost and if it’s still afloat, its next port of call may be the coast of Ireland”.

Finding such a ship in the ocean is not easy. The International Maritime Organisation’s International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea requires international ships, with 300 or more gross tonnage and all passenger ships, to carry beacons which function as automatic identification systems (AIS).

Historical AIS data is also used for analysing the vessels movements on a global scale. In the case of the Lyubov Orlova, it would probably have its transponders off because power ran out. In addition, satellite recorders are not able to easily find a ship in the vast Atlantic unless they know a precise area in which to look.

In its efforts to find the cruise ship the Irish Coast Guard combined AIS tracking with radar allowing it to “see” the ghosts . First, radar satellites scanned vast areas of the sea surface, where vessels showed up as blips as on a radar screen. These were then cross-referenced with AIS satellite maps, which showed the positions of all the active ships. In theory, the ghost ship would be the only radar blip not broadcasting a signal. During efforts to find the Russian cruiser an illegal fishing vessel near Scotland which had its transponder turned off was discovered.

But all attempts to locate the MV Lyubov Orlova by the Irish Coast Guard proved unsuccessful.

In 2016 another unmanned vessel washed up on Irish shores. In November of that year a makeshift solar-powered houseboat landed on a beach in Co Mayo after drifting across the Atlantic from Canada. Authorities said the owner of the 20ft timber and polystyrene boat was intending to sail on the “floating caravan”, but was talked out of it before it broke loose from its mooring in Newfoundland. It turned out to have been built by Rick Small, a Canadian environmentalist who had given the boat away and had no idea how it ended up crossing the ocean unmanned.

In December 2000 a Spanish boat, Zorro Zaurre, drifted 140 miles to the southwest Irish coast before foundering on rocks yards from where its sister ship, Nuestra Senora de Gardotza, sank 10 years earlier at Roancarrig lighthouse in Bantry Bay, Co Cork. The 13 crew members had been airlifted a month earlier after the vessel sprang a leak.

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Nbc news channel, one dead after bus crashes at honolulu cruise ship terminal.

One person has died and several others were injured after a shuttle bus crashed into pedestrians and concrete barriers at a Honolulu cruise ship terminal. KHNL's Jolanie Martinez reports. April 13, 2024

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I’m a cruise ship worker — this is the disgusting act people partake in on our boats.

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High-seas hygiene is irrelevant for these filthy cruise ship passengers.

A woman who works for a cruise company has revealed the disgusting thing that some guests do while on her boat.

Lucy Southerton, 28, told the Daily Star that putrid passengers refuse to wear shoes and traipse barefoot around the vessel for the entire time they’re on board.

“Crew members generally make fun of passengers who deem it acceptable to walk around the cruise ship with no shoes on,” she stated.

“They will weave in and out of shops with no shoes on,” the cruise worker continued.

“They will even think it appropriate to go to the theatre with no shoes on because technically they are indoors.”

Southerton urged prospective passengers to put on footwear anytime they leave their cabins.

Not only is the practice more hygienic, it also means workers won’t mock you for being dirty.

Meanwhile, Southerton also revealed her hot tip for those who are hitting the high seas for a cruise.

“I think the biggest mistake that people can make when they are on a cruise is not being polite to every crew member,” she declared.

“You don’t know what you’re going to need and which crew member is going to be able to solve your issues and it has happened before where a passenger has been incredibly rude to a crew member that they have later needed during their cruise,” the expert continued.

Southerton said you’re more likely to score freebies and upgrades if you stay on friendly terms with staff.

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• Scientists went on a hunt for the elusive colossal squid — and brought cruise ship tourists with them

Scientists went on a hunt for the elusive colossal squid — and brought cruise ship tourists with them

• Kolossal hopes to film a colossal squid in its natural habitat, the waters around Antarctica.
• The squid is large but elusive and difficult to study since it lives thousands of feet underwater.

Over the course of four trips, tourists on an Antarctic cruise ship watched researchers lower a camera into the frigid, icy waters of the Southern Ocean. They had the same question every day: "Did you find it yet?"

The scientists were searching for the colossal squid, an evasive cephalopod that can weigh 1,100 pounds. Though fishing boats have found a handful of complete and partial specimens, researchers have had difficulty finding one in the wild.

Matthew Mulrennan hopes to change that with Kolossal, the nonprofit he founded to film a colossal squid in its natural habitat. The goal is to learn basic information about the sea animal , like how it hunts and looks in different life stages.

"I always like to say that it's an oversize poster species for how little we know about the ocean and how little we've explored it," he told Business Insider.

In 2022 and 2023, Mulrennan assembled a team of scientists to attempt to get footage of the squid aboard the Antarctic tourist cruises. Though he estimates the endeavors cost $500,000 in total, it was far cheaper than hiring a research vessel.

The cruise ship holds 200 passengers, each paying upwards of $6,720. While they expected lectures from geologists, marine biologists, and other experts, they didn't necessarily know there would be a full research station aboard.

The team's underwater camera filmed dozens of Antarctic species, including one squid resembling a young colossal.

The enigmatic colossal squid

Measuring about 46 feet with its tentacles spread out, the colossal squid is nevertheless hard to spot.

Adults live over 3,000 feet deep in the waters around Antarctica, putting them beyond the reach of even the most skilled technical divers. Submersible vehicles may scare them off.

They're also difficult to preserve for long-term study, and so a lot of the fundamentals about them aren't known, including how old they get, details of their reproduction , and the population size, Graham said.

"The bottom line is we just need to film it, and we can learn a lot off of just brief interactions," he said.

Combining science and tourism

Mulrennan first became interested in colossal squids in 2007 when he was studying abroad at the University of Auckland. Researchers dissected what he called a "monster specimen" captured by a fishing vessel.

Though Mulrennan wasn't involved in the dissection, he was hooked on learning more about the sea animal. In 2015, he made a goal to film the colossal squid within 10 years.

Chartering research vessels can cost tens of thousands of dollars a day. Similar expeditions have cost as much as $8 million, Mulrennan said.

Eventually, Mulrennan hit on the idea of getting on Intrepid Travel's Ocean Endeavor, a cruise ship that would already be traveling to Antarctica .

Once aboard, curious cruise-goers would stop by and watch brittle stars and other deep-sea life captured by an underwater camera . The passengers started referring to the researchers as the "squid heads," Mulrennan said.

"You're getting this kind of privileged access immediately on board, Graham said. "One of the comments I got the most was, 'Oh, I wish I had gone to school for marine biology .'"

In order to accommodate the cruise passengers' itineraries of seeing penguins and seals — what Mulrennan called "air-breathing cuties" — the researchers had to pull all-nighters when the ship was in the deep ocean .

Sometimes the passengers would complain about the smelly toothfish bait the scientists used to lure the squid. The researchers had to be flexible about lowering the underwater camera, especially when the waves churned ice nearby.

Once, the researchers had to take down their whole research station so passengers could use the nearby door for a polar plunge.

"You get 150 half-naked guests walking out doing vodka shots in your research station," Mulrennan said. "It's like bizarre stuff that can't happen on a normal vessel."

The future of the colossal squid search

During 58 days at sea, Kolossal's camera captured over 80 marine species , including giant volcano sponges, dragonfish, icefish, Antarctic sun stars, and — maybe — a colossal squid.

"We're not claiming this is the colossal squid, but it's also not not a colossal squid," Mulrennan said of footage of a translucent squid that the camera filmed.

Based on assessments of experts who have seen the footage, it's impossible to tell whether the animal is a young colossal squid or a full-grown glass squid.

Graham said she thinks it shows they're on the right track.

Mulrennan hopes to return to Antarctica during the next season, just in time for his self-imposed deadline of finding the colossal squid by 2025.

"We're closing in on a hundred years of our interaction with the species," Mulrennan said, "and we still know so little about it."

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Middle East crisis — explained

The conflict between Israel and Palestinians — and other groups in the Middle East — goes back decades. These stories provide context for current developments and the history that led up to them.

Israel shoots down missiles and drones after Iran launches unprecedented attack

Becky Sullivan

Israeli Iron Dome air defense systems launch to intercept missiles fired from Iran, in central Israel on Sunday. Tomer Neuberg/AP hide caption

Israeli Iron Dome air defense systems launch to intercept missiles fired from Iran, in central Israel on Sunday.

Booms and air raid sirens sounded across Israel and the occupied West Bank early Sunday morning, after Iran launched dozens of drones and missiles toward Israel, in an attack that marked a major escalation of conflict in the Middle East.

In Washington, President Joe Biden said U.S. forces had helped Israel down "nearly all" the drones and missiles, and pledged to convene allies to develop a unified response.

Israeli military spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said Iran fired more than 300 projectiles at Israel overnight, 99% of which were shot down, the "vast majority". Officials reported minor damage to a military base in southern Israel and one injury to a 10-year-old child, who was reported to be in critical condition.

"We will do everything we need, everything, to defend the state of Israel," Hagari said. He added that some of the launches came from Iraq and Yemen.

How Iran and Israel became archenemies

The Israeli War Cabinet planned to meet at lunchtime. In a statement Sunday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. does "not seek escalation" of the conflict.

G7 leaders are meeting on Sunday afternoon to coordinate on a diplomatic response to Iran's attack, and engage with officials across the Middle East. The United Nations Security Council is is also set to meet, after Israel requested the council condemn Iran's attack, and designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization.

Iran had vowed to retaliate after an airstrike on an Iranian consulate in Syria earlier this month killed seven Iranian military officials . It is the first time that Iran has launched an attack on Israel from Iranian soil, Israeli officials said.

U.S. forces in the region were active in shooting down drones, a U.S. defense official said. And interceptions by Israel's anti-missile defense system lit up the skies over populous areas including Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

The Israeli emergency medical service Magen David Adom reported that a 10-year-old child had been struck in the head by shrapnel in the area of Arad, a town near the southwestern edge of the Dead Sea. Paramedics also treated about 20 people who suffered from anxiety or minor injuries experienced while seeking shelter, the service said.

Saturday's attack, which was first announced by Israeli officials around 4 p.m. ET, was staged in waves and took hours to reach Israel, officials said.

In a statement broadcast on Iranian state television, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps described the attack as a "large-scale military operation" against multiple targets inside Israel.

In a post on the social media site X, Iran's permanent mission to the United Nations wrote that the attack was a direct response to the strike on the consulate and that "the matter can be deemed concluded."

Iranian commandos seize an Israeli-linked container ship near Strait of Hormuz

Following Tehran's overnight drone and missile attack on Sunday, Iran warned Israel of a larger attack on its territory should it retaliate, adding that Washington has been warned not to back Israeli military action.

"Our response will be much larger than tonight's military action if Israel retaliates against Iran," armed forces chief of staff Major General Mohammad Bagheri told state TV, adding that Tehran warned Washington that any backing of Israeli retaliation would result in U.S. bases being targeted.

The U.S. military was directly involved in the response, a senior U.S. defense official said. "In accordance with our ironclad commitment to Israel's security, U.S. forces in the region continue to shoot down Iranian-launched drones targeting Israel. Our forces remain postured to provide additional defensive support and to protect U.S. forces operating in the region," the official said.

Israelis were urged to take shelter

This video grab from AFPTV taken on Sunday shows explosions lighting up Jerusalem's sky during an Iranian attack on Israel. AFPTV/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

This video grab from AFPTV taken on Sunday shows explosions lighting up Jerusalem's sky during an Iranian attack on Israel.

Officials in Israel had explicitly urged residents of Nevatim, Dimona and Eilat — three cities in Israel's Negev desert region — and people in the northern occupied Golan Heights to take shelter. A major Israeli air base is located near Nevatim, and an Israeli nuclear research facility is located in Dimona.

Airspace over Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon was closed late Saturday, while some airlines announced the cancellation of some flights and the re-routing of others due to the attacks. Israel and Jordan reopened their airspace on Sunday morning.

Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based militant group, said that it had staged its own attack by launching dozens of rockets toward an Israeli military base in the Golan early Sunday.

In a Saturday night address to Israelis, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that his country was ready for "any scenario, both defensively and offensively."

"We have determined a clear principle: Whoever harms us, we will harm them. We will defend ourselves against any threat and will do so level-headedly and with determination," Netanyahu said.

After striking throughout the Middle East, Iran's proxies now become the targets

President Biden monitored the attack from the Situation Room alongside top defense and diplomatic officials. In anticipation of the attack, he had cut short a trip to Delaware in order to return to the White House.

Afterward, he spoke with Netanyahu and said Israel had "demonstrated a remarkable capacity to defend against and defeat even unprecedented attacks – sending a clear message to its foes that they cannot effectively threaten the security of Israel."

"At my direction, to support the defense of Israel, the U.S. military moved aircraft and ballistic missile defense destroyers to the region over the course of the past week" the president said. "Thanks to these deployments and the extraordinary skill of our servicemembers, we helped Israel take down nearly all of the incoming drones and missiles."

Iran blames Israel for an earlier attack on its consulate

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei speaks on March 1 in Tehran, Iran. Iran vowed to respond after an attack on an Iranian consulate in Syria. Majid Saeedi/Getty Images hide caption

Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei speaks on March 1 in Tehran, Iran. Iran vowed to respond after an attack on an Iranian consulate in Syria.

The attack on Israel comes four days after Iran's leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei vowed retaliation for an April 1 strike on an Iranian consulate in the Syrian capital of Damascus. Iran said the strike killed seven members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, including two generals, and it blamed Israel for the attack. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied being behind the attack, though the Pentagon said Israel was responsible.

By Saturday, as anticipation had grown over a possible retaliation, Israeli officials warned residents living in communities near Gaza and the Lebanon border to limit the size of gatherings and to work indoors or within reach of a shelter. Schools across Israel were closed through Monday.

Iranian officials accuse Israel of a deadly attack on Iran's consulate in Syria

U.S. defense officials told NPR Saturday that the U.S. military had moved assets around the region in anticipation of an attack, including aircraft, and had shored up defensive positions for forces in the region. The top U.S. military commander in the Middle East, Gen. Michael Kurilla, arrived in Israel Thursday to coordinate with the Israeli military.

In a post on Telegram on Sunday, Hamas expressed support for Iran's attack, calling it a "natural right" and a deserved response to the Israeli strike on an Iranian diplomatic compound in Syria this month. The militant group called on Arab and Islamic nations to continue their backing in its fight against Israel, according to the Washington Post.

Also on Sunday, a statement by Israel's intelligence agency Mossad announced that Hamas had rejected the latest hostage deal outline, which would have led to a six week pause in fighting between Israel and Hamas. They blamed the lapse in negotiations directly on Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.

The attack is a large escalation of hostilities in the region

The strike and retaliation represent an escalation of conflict in the region that many officials worldwide had expressed worry about ever since the outbreak of war between Israel and the Gaza-based militant group Hamas on Oct. 7, the day Hamas led an attack on Israel that left some 1,200 people dead.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said on Saturday that he condemned Iran's attack and was "deeply alarmed about the very real danger of a devastating region-wide escalation."

Egypt's foreign affairs ministry called Iran's attack a "dangerous escalation" and in a Saturday night statement urged "the exercise of the utmost restraint to spare the region and its people further factors of instability and tension." Jordan's Prime Minister said on Sunday any escalation in the region would lead to "dangerous paths", while United Arab Emirates foreign ministry called for the exercise of the utmost restraint to avoid dangerous repercussions.

Iran has long supplied Hamas with funds and weapons . The White House has not directly linked Iran to the Oct. 7 attack.

In the six months since Oct. 7, Israel has bombarded Gaza and conducted a devastating ground invasion that has left much of the territory in ruins and more than 33,000 Palestinians dead, according to Palestinian health officials.

The last time Iran launched a similar attack was in 2020 , when it fired ballistic missiles at the Ain al-Asad Air Base in Iraq, wounding dozens of U.S. troops, in retaliation for the killing of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani by a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad.

Additional reporting by NPR's Daniel Estrin and NPR's Carrie Kahn in Tel Aviv, NPR's Tom Bowman in Washington, D.C., and NPR's Jane Arraf in Amman. Alon Avital and Itay Stern contributed reporting from Tel Aviv.

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Man arrested for allegedly taking a decommissioned NYC fireboat for an overnight cruise

FILE - The fireboat John J. Harvey passes the Statue of Liberty, Oct. 28, 2011, in New York Harbor. A man was arrested Thursday, April 11, 2024, for allegedly taking the decommissioned New York City fire boat for an overnight cruise on the Hudson River, before becoming stuck and jumping ship. He then boarded a second stolen vessel, police said, which he sailed roughly one nautical mile (1.8 kilometers) south until he was taken into custody on its deck. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File)

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NEW YORK (AP) — A man was arrested Thursday for allegedly taking a decommissioned New York City fireboat for an overnight cruise on the Hudson River, before becoming stuck, jumping ship and stealing another vessel, police said.

He was charged with two counts of grand larceny, officials said. He had not been arraigned as of Thursday afternoon and it was not immediately clear if he had a lawyer.

The man commandeered the fireboat, known as the John J. Harvey, by untying it from its mooring at Pier 66 off the west side of Manhattan, according to authorities. The 130 foot (40 meter) long vessel, which now serves as a museum, earned local acclaim after it was used to evacuate survivors of 9/11.

Once aboard the fireboat, the man was able to drift a short distance into the Hudson River, police said, but quickly got stuck. He leapt overboard, plunging into the frigid waters and later emerging on a second stolen vessel, according to police.

He navigated that sailboat toward Pier 51, roughly 15 blocks south of the original location, police said. The department’s Harbor Unit responded to a 2:30 a.m. call about a stolen boat and arrested the man on the sailboat’s deck.

A spokesperson for the Hudson River Park Trust, which oversees Pier 66, said the fireboat is secure and being assessed for damage.

Built in 1931, the Harvey assisted in several dramatic marine rescues, helping to put out a potentially catastrophic fire aboard the El Estero, a munitions ship docked in the New York Harbor during World War II.

It was retired in 1994, but was called back into service on the morning of 9/11 to help pick up survivors and to pump water onto the site.

The boat’s caretakers offer occasional free public cruises along the Hudson River.