Sounds more like a prison ship than a cruise ship,,,,

This one is more of a hiccup than a horror show.

Passengers strolling about the Dutch Caribbean town of Philipsburg told The Associated Press that the power and water were out for 10-20 minutes, contradicting media reports of longer outages and unsanitary conditions.

“We have toilets. We have water. It’s no different than a regular day at sea,” said 31-year-old Tasha Larson of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, after disembarking with her boyfriend to spend the day in St. Maarten.

Passengers Mary and Terry Washington of Tampa, Florida, said they were grateful because the malfunction gave them an additional day to spend in St. Maarten. “The plumbing is fine. The food is fine. Everything is fine,“ Mary Washington said.

http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/03/15/...anical-trouble/

The only question I have relates to the potential for a charge of "unlawful/forced detention" (kidnapping) of a passenger. Of course, we incomplete facts. Even so, if a passenger wants to disembark while the gangplanks, boarding walkways, or whatever they are call are deployed, then how can you tell them they can't?

Keeping people on board might be about passenger safety as much as anything. Or it might be a delay for customs formalities.

I imagine that the captain of the ship has this authority based on the jurisdiction the ship is registered in. I assume this is spelled out in the legal documents that passengers sign.

Depending on the situation, police from the local jurisdiction could conceivably be stationed on the land end of the gangplank.

If someone wants to jump overboard and swim to shore, no-one could stop them. But they would then have to work through the customs/immigration authorities in that jurisdiction. Potentially messy.

But this is hypothetical. It sounds like passengers were taking day trips on the island. Hardly a floating gulag.

Great points. I know that things are interesting on these excursions. The passengers have to be aware of the possible consequences of their actions. I was not intimating a gulag situation. My comments were triggered by the experience of a guy I knew that was working a cruise line operating around the Hawaiian Islands. Now, he was not a passenger, but an employee, so I am not sure how different it would be. Anyway, he got ticked off and quit. He gave them his badge and was going to just leave the ship. They (some other employee) physically blocked his departure from the ship and told his he could not leave before doing paperwork for the company and so on. He tried to alleviate the situation by asking a question about his right to leave the ship. It was docked and people were coming and going. So, as you can imagine, things got heated. He called 911 saying he was being held against his will. Needless to say, the guys with guns and badges showed up. When they sorted it all out, the guy was within his rights to make the call he did. He could have proceeded with legal action. As it stands, they let him off the ship, the company "reeducated" the employees about things along those lines.

Actually, I suspect it is very different.

The stories that leak out give the impression that cruise ship staff are treated as indentured servants rather than employees as we would understand the term.

Staff from first-world countries only put up with so much. Staff from other parts of the world probably put up with a great deal more. Particularly since, if you quit and get off the ship, you're on your own in terms of getting home.

This is all pure hearsay, of course. And from disgruntled employees. But then again, where there's smoke ...

If I want off the ship when it's stranded in port and the ship's crew won't let me, things are going to get unpleasant. I'm 100% willing to call the local constabulary and file charges. I'm equally willing to file a lawsuit on my home turf.

Based on Carnival's recent history I think I'd rather get my teeth drilled than go on a cruise.

I’ve been on a river boat once and on a ferry many times. I love being on the water, especially on a ferry out to sea. As Aurora put it, in The Story of Santa Claus, “I just love the sensation of high air velocity in my hair.”

I don’t know how it would be on a cruise ship.

Jeanette Isabelle

cruise ship = lots of people in a very urban environment. Not for this dude. Give me a kayak.

I think the coast guard has sole jurisdiction over ships at sea. wildman will know how it actually works but I assume the local coast guard commander has the last word on what happens.

There was an incident during Sandy when a cruise ship was refused permission to enter port and disembark passengers ahead of the storm: the coast guard commander judged it already too dangerous to disembark passengers and ordered the cruise ship back out to sea to ride out the weather there.