Just when you’d think that the Costa Concordia story could not get any weirder, this week the infamous Captain Francesco Schettino announced that he is writing a book about the events surrounding the disaster. He promises to tell a "completely different story" than what has been reported to date.
So what is the "shocking truth"
For the past week I have been visiting my sister in Oregon. She and her husband have a cottage on the McKenzie River outside of Vida, Oregon, some 30 miles to the east of Eugene.
The cottage is an idyllic location, nestled under towering Evergreens, overlooking the roaring McKenzie River filled with salmon and trout.
Everyone is talking about the disgraced Costa cruise captain Schettino’s outrageous lawsuit against Costa claiming that the cruise line wrongfully terminated his employment.
The outrage is appropriate. After all, this is a captain who interrupted dinner with his mistress only long enough to run his ship into the rocks and kill 32 of his crew and guests and then hop into a lifeboat and leave the
When most people think of Titanic, the movie, they think of the 1997 blockbuster love affair starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet written and directed by James Cameron.
But in truth Titanic was originally a German propaganda film made during World War II. It was commissioned by Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels to
The Royal Gazette newspaper in Bermuda reports today that a passenger from the NCL Norwegian Star was arrested as he tried to disembark the cruise ship with a painting described as the "size of a door."
The 43 year old passenger from Kentucky admitted that he stole the painting from the NCL cruise ship once
Lloyd’s List, the well respected shipping industry newspaper, issued its "Seafarer of the Year" award today. And to the surprise of many, the recipients were the crew members of the doomed Costa Concordia cruise ship.
Lloyd’s List explains that the media has painted the Costa crew with a broad brush as lacking competence
Newspapers in the U.K. and Australia are covering a horrific story involving a 28 year old man who was reportedly sailing on an Amsterdam "booze cruise" when he awoke in the ship’s bar on fire.
Cruise passenger James Bailey had what he describes as a "few drinks" and fell asleep in the cruise ship’s bar
The Sun newspaper in the U.K. published a photo this weekend of disgraced Costa Captain Francesco Schettino aboard a power boat in the Mediterranean.
The Sun reports that Captain Schetino "wore swimming trunks as he took to the waves near his home in Sorrento, Italy."
A friend of his was at the helm for a
And here’s some weird cruise news from China.
A new cruise ship under tow in China struck a passenger bridge in eastern China, causing damage to the vessel’s funnels.
According to the Xinhua News agency, the bizarre incident involved a newly constructed cruise ship, called the No. 7 Mingzhu Pearl cruise ship.
Four
Closed circuit television (CCTV) video helped the Sun Cruz Casino defend a claim made by a passenger who staged a fake accident at the bottom of a stairwell on the ship.
The video shows an elderly man walking repeatedly up and down a stairwell, apparently rehearsing how the accident will unfold. When no one is
There are lots of strange things that happen on cruise ships. I’ve written many articles about excessive alcohol consumption and aberrant conduct during cruises. I even created a category of "weird" cruise stories.
This morning I read an article which fits squarely in the "weird" category.
The New York Post writes about about "two pals"
This week there has been a whirlwind of media attention surrounding allegations by a masseur that John Travolta sexually harassed and assaulted him in Hollywood earlier this year. TMZ posted the lawsuit on line. The lawsuit reads like a pornographic paperback. Travolta denies the lurid allegations in what is being called the "massage
In one of the weirder cruise stories I have read in a time, Carnival Cruise Lines kicked off a passenger scheduled to speak on a "low carb diet" cruise on suspicion that he was going to explode dynamite or release Legionnaires virus on the ship.
The bizarre case involves a neurosurgeon from Tennessee who, ironically
Yesterday was one of the stranger days in the weird world of cruising.
Royal Caribbean reported a 40% drop in net income for the first quarter of this year. Its net income was $47 million, down from $78.4 million a year earlier. Royal Caribbean’s CEO Richard Fain attributed the decline in net income on the Costa
Is nature trying to tell us something?
First high winds and rough weather delayed the "Titanic Memorial Cruise" as 30 foot winds forced the Balmoral cruise ship to turn around with a little over 1,300 passengers aboard. Now news sources area reporting that a medical emergency involving a passenger has complicated matters. The
College students, booze and ships are often a recipe for bedlam. Being "cruise drunk" can lead to violence.
The media in the U.K. is reporting that around 200 college students headed to France on a skiing trip stripped naked, smashed glasses and overturned furniture during a drunken night of havoc on the P&O Spirit
"Please remove your tampon, I have a job to do."
I have heard some weird and outrageous cruise ship stories over the years, but if this one is true it takes the cake.
A lawsuit filed last month alleges that Carnival cruise employees suspected that a 17 year old girl on the Carnival Sensation
A member of Cruise Critic posted a photograph of some kind of device designed to prevent the insertion of a key card to unlock a passenger cabin door as well as to padlock the door handle from moving.
The passenger apparently sailed aboard an unidentified Royal Caribbean cruise ship last month, and invited the fellow
