Covid-19 and cruise ships

The cruise ship Greg Mortimer is a niche cruise ship “home based” in Australia but registered in the Bahamas. It has been loitering off Uruguay with a 60% infection rate.
Passengers from Australia and New Zealand will board an emergency flight on Tuesday afternoon. The cost per passengers is about $9300 and the cruise ship operator has asked the Australian government for help with expenses.

1 Like

Sell the ship, sell the owner’s house and fly the Aussie and Kiwi passengers home.

The passengers may be stupid but the cruise ship owners should be criminally charged. This is what was happening in Australia the day the ship sailed:

The cruise parasites are hoping the government will help pay the repatriation costs on top of the hospital bills. They are telling the passengers that they are doing everything possible to reduce the cost to the passengers (except refund the cruise and fly back at company expense) … what kind of bastards are those people?

Naw. Give it a month and it’ll be fine.

Figure a week from now they could have universal infection - less if they intentionally make each other sick. Add two weeks for most infections to run its course. Add a week to be safe. The sick should be cared for on board until healthy or otherwise. Then they could all fly home like normal non-infected people.

It’s different than a mega cruise ship with thousands of souls. It would take too long for an onboard universal infection.

You’re probably right. An added benefit is that shipping corpses in body bags as cargo instead of live infected passengers is bound to be cheaper.

3 Likes

Maybe the Australian authorities that are being asked to bailout the Bahamian registered ship should forward the funding request to Nassau. WTF does that company’s problems have to do with Australia?
It’s not even a humanitarian issue, the ship is docked in a port thousands of miles away, and the owners have money to pay for flights.

I hope potential cruise passengers read about this crap.

1 Like

It would be nice if they did but I doubt it. A couple of senators objected to bail out money to the industry because they are heavy polluters, not because they’re FOCs. You’d expect senators to know better but both Trump and Pence, allegedly elected to protect US citizens’ interest, praised them as good American businesses. If the country’s leaders are blind to the industry’s true nature Joe Average isn’t likely to know better. Joe proved it when he and this loved ones bought the sales pitch and followed the rest of the sheep up the gangway in the middle of a pandemic.

2 Likes

They contribute to the economy. They rent office space in Sydney so they can call themselves an Australian company. :roll_eyes:

3 Likes

I was of the impression that a Govt.'s first duty was to take care of it’s citizens?:

Maybe this does not apply to all Govt.?:

BTW The Greg Mortimer belongs to company in Florida called SunStone Ships Inc.:
But is on hire to Aurora Expeditions:

A fair dinkum Aussie company as far as I know.

Yeah, another Scandinavian carpetbagger.

1 Like

Is it a government’s responsibility to unfuck the stupid? I say ‘No’. If citizens want to be reckless then may God help them and keep them safe… because that’s not the responsibility of the State.

Are you saying that only stupid people goes on cruise?
Or that Govt. should not help anybody that is stupid, or does stupid things?

Does not apply to everybody apparently:

In Trump’s case it does not apply to those who might influence enough votes to keep him out of prison next year.

America excels at hypocrisy, nothing new there.

1 Like

Being BFFs means looking out for each other. Micky gets his bailout one way or another.

(Huff Post)

By addressing one of Trump’s big current fixations, the Saudis may have secured undue influence on the president and U.S. foreign policy ― another quid pro quo for a president who’s proven transactional in his approach to global affairs.
Trump said at a March 19 briefing that he’d discussed the coronavirus crisis with Arison, Carnival’s chairman and founder, who helped sponsor the president’s old television show “The Apprentice” and is also the owner of the Miami Heat. The president praised Arison ― and the company’s share price rose by 7.5% that day.
On March 6, Trump privately told donors gathered at his Mar-a-Lago resort that he wanted to protect cruise companies, The Washington Post reported. And at a press conference on March 26, he applauded cruise lines as “big,” “great” and “very important” ― adding the following week, “we have to get those cruise ships moving along.”

Micky Arison, CEO of Carnivore cruise lines and his wife Madeleine out on a date with Trump and the lovely Melania.

1 Like

The press refuses to get this right. The cruise line has a sales office in Sydney to attract Australian customers. It doesn’t make it an Australian ship, it’s registered in the Bahamas and that makes it a Bahamian ship.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/virus-infected-australian-cruise-ship-arrives-at-montevideo-port/ar-BB12sgnV?li=BBnb7Kz

Yes it is a Bahamian registered ship, owned by an American company. She is on long term charter to, and operated by, an Australian company, with their registered office and HQ in Sydney,NSW.

BTW; She was built in China, from a design and equipment packet delivered by Ulstein Group, a Norwegian company, crewed by people of many different nationalities. As is the Pax she carries on cruises in the Arctic, around Antarctica.and to many other destinations around the world.
She use “bases” (turn-around ports) in the region where she operate at the time. (Anywhere that offer good communication and facilities)

NOTE!! Shipping is an international business, as it should be…

PS> Do you expect the media to get things right when they report on anything maritime??

1 Like

Easy to say as a international gun for hire. Ordinary workers need protection from predatory corporations.

8 Likes

Shipping IS an international business and is not likely to return to anything resembling the 1960s ever again.
Even then, ships were built in different countries from that of their flag state and operated in international trade w/o ever calling at their home port.

The Greg Mortimer is an example of how the shipping business, not only the Cruise segment, work today.
It is very similar in the Offshore segment. as well as in the ordinary shipping business.

I have worked in various positions in shipping and the offshore industry all my life. Most of it w/o “protection” of nationality requirement or Union and never by cabotage laws

OK, so I have not had a “normal” seafaring career, having operated many years as a freelancer in various positions. mostly in the offshore oil & gas industry, lived and worked internationally and for companies of many different nationalities.
My views are obviously coloured by that background,

Protection you can find by working for good companies on permanent employment contracts, with regular work schedule and benefit packet.

Not all is that lucky. That is not today’s reality for many seafarers and offshore workers that is on short term contracts w/o guaranteed time off. or re-hire.

2 Likes

Good companies dont exist anymore, the downturn in oil broke their back, and covid-19 and Russian - Saudi oil war is the coup de grâce.

2 Likes

One of the founder of RCCL, Arne Wilhemsen has died:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-12/royal-caribbean-cruises-co-founder-arne-wilhelmsen-dies-at-90

His brother Gjert Wilhemsen, also a co-founder of RCCL, died in 2018:

So a victim a Covid-19?