Mindy Jordan
Posted on 05/17/2008 5:29:34 AM PDT by grjr21
The death of a Camden County woman who fell from a cruise ship Sunday night has recast a spotlight on an industry that has been criticized in recent years for its handling of onboard passenger mishaps.
Industry analysts say the public's fascination with such incidents is out of proportion to their occurence and may stem from the exotic nature of cruise ships, often described as international "floating cities."
Cruises are the safest vacation options available, analysts say, and most incidents are caused by passengers' own behavior.
That seems to be the case with Mindy Jordan, 46, of Pine Hill, who fell overboard while attempting to climb from the balcony of her stateroom to an adjacent balcony, according to the Norwegian Cruise Line.
But in recent years, critics of the industry have said the cruise lines do a poor job handling shipboard crimes and other major incidents. Some have accused the companies of covering up incidents and distorting crime statistics.
Ross Klein of the Memorial University of Newfoundland's school of social work has tracked cruise ship mishaps. According to his Web site, 99 people have gone overboard since 2000, including 22 in 2006 and 20 in 2007.
About 13 million people, 10.6 million of them Americans, went on a cruise last year, according to an industry expert.
Cruise lines are not required to report crime statistics against U.S. citizens to the FBI and have been reluctant to provide the data to outsiders, said Ken Carver, who co-founded the group International Cruise Victims after his daughter went missing on a ship in 2004.
"No one knows what the crime rates are because no one can get to the information," he said.
He pointed to congressional testimony from industry executives that 178 passengers on North American cruises had reported being sexually assaulted between 2003 and 2005.
But one cruise line, Royal Caribbean, said in internal documents turned over in a civil suit that at least 273 of its passengers reported sexual incidents in a shorter period of time.
Carver's group advocates for independent investigators, similar to sky marshals on airplanes, to travel on every cruise ship, among other measures.
People in or close to the industry say independent investigators either would not work or are not needed. Crime on ships is minuscule, they say, especially compared with crime rates on land.
"They think these ships are the Wild West and they're not," said Stewart Chiron, a former cruise sales and marketing specialist who is now an analyst for www.cruiseguy.com.
"It's still the safest vacation you can go on," Chiron said. "Cruise lines are not in the business of losing passengers and damaging ships."
Carolyn Spencer Brown, editor-in-chief of the independent Web site www.cruisecritic.com, said a survey by the site showed that 94 percent of passengers believe cruises are safe.
"But the cruise ships are no longer tiny villages. They're more like big cities," she said. "You have to use your common sense. You can't leave that at home."
The newer ships, which can handle as many as 7,000 passengers, have even more extensive safeguards to prevent accidents, and elaborate security and surveillance to prevent crime, Brown said. The Norwegian Dawn, on which Jordan was a guest, has cameras in its interior and exterior that captured Jordan's travels onboard.
"You really have to make an effort to fall overboard," Brown said. "Most of the time when people go overboard, they've done something they shouldn't have."
She and Chiron both cited the case of a drunken passenger who fell overboard while attempting to urinate off the boat. He survived and sued the cruise line. The Norwegian Cruise Line has suggested that Jordan's death was also an accident of her own making. Jordan fell from the Norwegian Dawn four hours after it left New York City for Bermuda.
The Norwegian Cruise Line said Tuesday that Jordan was attempting to climb from one balcony to an adjacent one when she fell "straight into the water." Her family initially suspected foul play, but the cruise line said that surveillance cameras showed that she was alone at the time of the accident. Jordan's body has not been found.
The FBI investigated and agreed with the cruise line's interpretation of events, the company said. Despite that outcome, Carver said Jordan's death shows the need for investigators on board. FBI agents were not able to begin an investigation until the ship reached Bermuda, three days after the incident. In the meantime, Carver said, there is no way to ensure that cruise ships - which could be held liable in a death - protect what could be evidence of a crime.
Brown said that in the past, cruise lines have done a poor job of "communicating when an incident happens."
Perhaps the most notorious was the case of George A. Smith IV, who disappeared from a Royal Caribbean ship on his honeymoon in the Mediterranean in 2005.
Bloodstains were found running from the balcony of his cabin to lifeboats, and a hand print was discovered on the side of the ship. No charges were filed and Smith's body was never found.
That incident sparked two congressional hearings organized by U.S. Rep. Christopher Shays (R., Conn.), who introduced legislation to improve the reporting of crimes against U.S. citizens on cruise ships.
Brown said the cruise lines have become much more sensitive to these situations, and praised Norwegian Cruise Lines' response to Jordan's death. "NCL has been very above-board," she said. "They were out front with the information."
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About 13 million people, 10.6 million of them Americans, went on a cruise last year, according to an industry expert.
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Carver's group advocates for independent investigators, similar to sky marshals on airplanes, to travel on every cruise ship, among other measures.
<Snip>
The newer ships, which can handle as many as 7,000 passengers, have even more extensive safeguards to prevent accidents, and elaborate security and surveillance to prevent crime, Brown said. The Norwegian Dawn, on which Jordan was a guest, has cameras in its interior and exterior that captured Jordan's travels onboard.
<Snip>
"You really have to make an effort to fall overboard," Brown said. "Most of the time when people go overboard, they've done something they shouldn't have."
I so want to be a Cruise Ship investigator.
If about 1 in 650000 fall of a ship and I'm on a ship that carries 7000 , working 50 weeks a year ( gotta take two weeks for vacation) then an investigator will have to work about once every other year and more than likely will spend an entire career without having to come to a conclusion other that the person who went overboard was a drunken idiot
Who cares if people opt to be human chum? I don’t. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Cruise Ship = Booze Barge
Darwin-Award-By-Proxy.
The George Smith case is interesting because both he and his wife were drunk as skunks the night he disappeared. Mrs. Skunk was so intoxicated, she passed out in a hallway outside of a crewman’s cabin and had to be taken back to her room in a wheelchair. The next morning, instead of being a tad bit curious about hubby’s absence (they were on their honeymoon), she went to a spa to freshen up. She still got a million bucks, though.
Jamaica is an especially bad place to let your guard down.
Good work if you can get it. My best friend’s girlfriend in college was assaulted on a cruise with her family, she got drunk and then came-to with a crewman on top of her finishing the act.
End of the day they didn’t even fire the guy, he said it was consensual and there wasn’t a darn thing anyone could do about it.
She learned a very hard lesson I guess. He was from the far east somewhere, Thailand I believe, and she ended up taking HIV tests for about a year because of it.
Some people think that a cruise is an excuse to overeat, get drunk, dance and party all night, and “have sex”. Those actions don’t lead to safe trips.
My wife and I honeymooned on a cruise, Norwegian Cruise Line. It was not long after a hurricane so they changed our itinerary from one island to another, Tortola I believe it was.
Even the crew was wary of getting off the boat alone, everyone was told to stay in pairs minimum and to keep an eye out. Fortunately at the time a British mine sweeper was anchored off the coast and there were plenty of MP’s around the area, but the place was an armpit that’s for sure.
Sorry to hear that .
It is a hard lesson and the best thing we can do is let other young people know and hope for better results
I have 2 teenage daughters, I explained what happened to her if gory detail and how it could have been avoided.
Hope it sunk in.
For that reason many cruise lines no longer stop there. Belize is the substitute, it seems. But what you have to realize is that even in tamer ports like Cancun and Cozumel, the people are poor, crime is rampant, and richer-by-comparison cruise ship passengers are tempting targets, especially when they are intoxicated and their guard is down.
Are they really? Not being a wise-apple, just asking. Never been on a cruise but have toyed with the idea now and then. But from what I'm reading here, and the fact that both hubby or I only very rarely partake of adult beverages...well...hummmm....
Call it 100 people in 8 years.
In those 8 years, we had 8x13M = 101 million passengers.
That's one in a million.
One would almost think that they were trying to sensationalize the issue.
Check out some websites and see which lines cater to your demographic. Some are geared toward the geriatric set, others are luxury lines, etc.
My brother is a retired police officer (due to a near deadly accident on the job, so is is still relatively young) who was point man on a SWAT team and head of an inter-departmental narcotics taskforce. He is also a former marine who served in the far east and, of course, visited all of the wonderful cities our fighting men in the region visit on their leaves. In short, he’s been in some pretty rough spots.
He and I went on a cruise that stopped in Jamaica and he said it was the only place he has ever been that he felt uneasy.
Are they really? Not being a wise-apple, just asking.
It depends on the ship and you. I’ve gone on Carnival & Princess. Carnival goes after a younger crowd & is much more a party ship. Princess is geared for a more mature crowd. It also depends on the cruise. Carribean cruises have much more drinking.
Cruise prices are cheap. They make their money from alcohol, gambling and excursions. A 3000 passenger ship will have 25-30 bars if I remember correctly. There is no cash used on board, everyone has a card that is tied to a credit card so it’s easy to spend. You should see some of the bills they put under peoples doors the last night!
Don’t be scared off, I don’t drink or gamble and I love to cruise, but never again on Carnival.
That is true and it also depends on the time of year.
I have 5 (soon to be 6) cruises under my belt, all on the "geriatric" Holland America Line. The vast majority of passengers on each of my cruises (but one) have been in the 50 - 60 year old range (hardly geriatric).
The exception was the cruise I took over a spring break a couple of years ago. The demographic was a lot younger with teens everywhere. Even then, I have never run into loud drunken parties, passengers throwing up in the hallways or doing unspeakable things in the pools - all of which I have heard about on lines like Carnival, Norwegian or Royal Caribbean.
I would recommend checking out websites like the cruisecritic.com mentioned in the article. There are sections for each of the major (and minor) cruise lines where users post threads, etc. I often see threads asking for someone to "Convince me why I should sail on this line", etc.
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