Stranded in São Tomé

December 18, 2024 12:17 PM

They Missed Their Cruise Ship. That Was Only The Beginning. Nine stranded passengers made a mad dash across Africa to meet back up with their boat.
posted by gottabefunky (24 comments total)

The sad part isn't even the lack of regulation that allowed the captain to refuse the eight the chance to board or that left Julia stuck alone on shore after suffering a serious stroke.

The sad part is that they all seem to be true believers in cruises in general and Norwegian in particular, even after it was made abundantly clear that the company doesn't give two shits what happens to them.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 1:20 PM on December 18 [15 favorites]

I have family members who absolutely love cruising, and a friend who worked cruise ships for a bit. I find their stories from the ships kind of fascinating in the "I am very happy to observe this second-hand" kind of way. And this story just absolutely tanked what tiny smidge of extremely vague curiosity I had about taking a cruise for myself.
posted by EvaDestruction at 1:22 PM on December 18 [8 favorites]

I sometimes threaten my wife with taking her on a Disney cruise.

I feel at risk of COVID or food poisoning just thinking about it.
posted by Lemkin at 1:29 PM on December 18

I don't really enjoy traveling all that much, in part because of all the complications that can happen. This just shows that there's an even worse form of travel - cruising - where if something goes wrong, it goes *really* wrong.
posted by hydra77 at 1:31 PM on December 18 [1 favorite]

The absolute lack of accountability makes me think that it wouldn't be worth it at a tenth of the price. Poor Julia. She'd have been safer with the alligators.
posted by Halloween Jack at 1:34 PM on December 18 [4 favorites]

There's no excuse for Norwegian's negligence, and this only reinforced my desire to avoid cruises. But the cruisers' desire to return isn't totally crazy, since they actually like this kind of thing: There are more than 30 million passengers, and the cruise lines kill or incapacitate relatively few of them.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 1:37 PM on December 18 [1 favorite]

There are more than 30 million passengers, and the cruise lines kill or incapacitate relatively few of them.

Most of our passengers get there alive.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 1:48 PM on December 18 [3 favorites]

The sad part isn't even the lack of regulation that allowed the captain to refuse the eight the chance to board or that left Julia stuck alone on shore after suffering a serious stroke.

The “lack of regulation” you speak of is fines in the realm of tens of thousands of dollars per minute and civil and criminal penalties that can include imprisonment and seizure of the ship.

My sister spent 10 years at a cruise line dealing with people on the phone who were entitled enough to make comments on this, and let me tell you on her behalf that 10,000+ people all over the world in both the public and private sphere spent way over a year ensuring this boat left port at a certain time, and would tell anyone commenting “surely the captain could just wait…” to screw themselves except that anyone making such comments is obviously so ignorant of how things work, you can’t eget angry.
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 2:17 PM on December 18 [3 favorites]

My parents are true believers, and the stroke situation is one of my personal nightmares. If I show them this article they will assure me they're never late.
posted by warriorqueen at 2:19 PM on December 18 [1 favorite]

The “lack of regulation” you speak of is fines in the realm of tens of thousands of dollars per minute and civil and criminal penalties that can include imprisonment and seizure of the ship.

FTA:

The United Nations’ International Maritime Organization requires vessels to operate with a standard “duty of care” for passengers and cargo, but what that entails is deliberately murky. The rules it does make the IMO doesn’t enforce or punish operators for breaking.

My sister spent 10 years at a cruise line dealing with people on the phone who were entitled enough to make comments on this, and let me tell you on her behalf that 10,000+ people all over the world in both the public and private sphere spent way over a year ensuring this boat left port at a certain time, and would tell anyone commenting “surely the captain could just wait…” to screw themselves except that anyone making such comments is obviously so ignorant of how things work, you can’t eget angry.

Also FTA:

“We know the rules. We never asked a ship to wait for us,” Jay says. “It is absolutely ludicrous. No one’s ever asked the ship to wait for us. We asked the ship to let us on.”

posted by DirtyOldTown at 2:26 PM on December 18 [9 favorites]

Most of our passengers get there alive.
posted by DirtyOldTown

Always favorite Crazy People references!
(6.0 rating?? That's crazily low!)
posted by Greg_Ace at 2:36 PM on December 18

This is definitely the most sorry I've felt for a bunch of rich white people this week.
posted by signal at 3:17 PM on December 18 [3 favorites]

probably the most fascinating piece of writing about people trying to get on a cruise ship I'll ever read.
posted by sawdustbear at 5:53 PM on December 18 [5 favorites]

"Redwood City, a beach town south of San Francisco"

It is a small thing compared to everything else, but that's very much not how I'd describe Redwood City
posted by Carillon at 9:06 PM on December 18 [7 favorites]

This was a fantastic piece. Thank you so much for posting.
posted by capnsue at 10:53 PM on December 18

They were stuck on a remote island.

They were on São Tomé and Príncipe, an ex Portuguese colony. TAP Airlines runs daily direct flights to/from Lisbon.

So they missed their ship. Grab a flight to Lisbon and get some first-world healthcare for the stricken lady. Enjoy Lisbon.

The rest of this drama seems to only come about because they were insistent on getting back to their cruise. That, and given the the huge number of Sao Tome natives that would love to just be able to get on a flight to Lisbon makes it very difficult to empathize here.
posted by vacapinta at 5:42 AM on December 19 [5 favorites]

IMO codes have to be adopted by the host nation to be enforceable. Most of them are templates to do so. However this is voluntary by each nation. They do the ones that get them money, like the conventions on spills and accidents, but passenger safety and safe harbour ones can be down the list.
posted by bonehead at 6:06 AM on December 19

What I'm try to say is the IMO is the wrong place to look. They're a UN thing to harmonize regulations. It does not require regs and certainly does not police them. That all has to be done by national governments.
posted by bonehead at 6:16 AM on December 19

@vacapinta: yes, I agree that Lisbon would have made the most sense, but they weren't quite in their right state of mind, either. They literally had nothing with them but what they were wearing. I don't remember the details, but somehow they only had one working credit card amongst 8 people as well. There was also an issue of visas and passports, I believe. They could travel up the coast only if they could promise to get on the ship. Not sure if they could show up in Portugal without anything.
posted by hydra77 at 6:47 AM on December 19 [2 favorites]

>IMO codes have to be adopted by the host nation to be enforceable. Most of them are templates to do so. However this is voluntary by each nation. They do the ones that get them money, like the conventions on spills and accidents, but passenger safety and safe harbour ones can be down the list.

It's almost as if the Westphalian nation-state and its toothless international coordinating bodies are helplessly outmatched by and unable to protect humanity from murderous integrated world capitalism.
posted by Richard Saunders at 7:07 AM on December 19 [1 favorite]

Grab a flight to Lisbon and get some first-world healthcare for the stricken lady.

The article does cover this - the left-behind cruisers did successfully work to send Julia, the injured cruiser, to Lisbon and then back to America via the international flights out of São Tomé. It is somewhat remarkable to me that the other cruisers did not choose a similar option for themselves, perhaps even choosing to later take flights from Lisbon to a different port where they could rejoin the ship, something which seems almost certainly possible.

There was also an issue of visas and passports, I believe.

The article indicates the members of the party did have their passports, and assuming they were US passports, they would not have needed to get a visa for a brief tourist stay in Portugal and then Spain (which was the terminus of the cruise).
posted by I EAT TAPAS at 7:47 AM on December 19

The tone struck me as someone desperate to get back together with someone who stone cold dumped them
posted by gottabefunky at 8:38 AM on December 19 [1 favorite]

And moved out of town with all their stuff
posted by gottabefunky at 8:38 AM on December 19 [2 favorites]

Violeta had been delighted to be back in the Mediterranean (“White tablecloths, thank God”),

Imagine the indignity of having to spend almost a full week with colored tablecloths.
posted by signal at 2:57 PM on December 19