A passenger on the Freedom of the Seas sent us a copy of the video that he took of the fire.
There are a couple of things to note.
First, as you can hear on the video, this passenger and his wife were on their balcony and had seen black smoke 15 minutes earlier. The
A number of Royal Caribbean crew members have contacted me complaining that they don’t feel safe because of ongoing construction on the Freedom of the Seas to install an advanced emission purification system (AEP), also known as a “scrubber system.”
Contractors from Harris Pye Engineering have been aboard the cruise ship retrofitting the ship with
A hoax is defined as a "deliberately fabricated falsehood made to masquerade as truth."
Royal Caribbean engaged in a hoax when it characterized the big, dangerous fire on the Freedom of the Seas which engulfed the little port of Falmouth with billowing black smoke as just a "small fire."
Cruise lines used to be able
Royal Caribbean started spinning the story on the Freedom of the Seas fire yesterday before the ship stopped burning, saying things like:
It was just a small fire that was quickly extinguished. All systems are operational. Passengers mustered only as a precaution. No injuries to passengers. Guests able to leave the ship to enjoy Falmouth
I have received several calls this morning from friends in Montego Bay and Ocho Rios that the Freedom of the Seas is on fire as it approached the port of Falmouth, Jamaica.
I also have friends / former Royal Caribbean crew members in Falmouth who are going to obtain photographs of the blaze on the
On January 14th I wrote an article about two passengers who arrived in Falmouth, Jamaica on January 12th, and did not return to the Carnival Victory when the cruise ship departed. Local newspapers in Jamaica said the two men "disappeared."
Carnival’s PR department subsequently contacted me and said essentially not to worry about it, saying
Newspapers in Jamaica are reporting that two U.S. citizens from a Carnival cruise ship are unaccounted for after disembarking in Falmouth on Monday, January 12th.
The two men are identified in the Jamaica Observer as 42-year-old Shelby Person and 45-year-old Tyrone Rideout, both of Weeping Willow, Maryland.
They disembarked from the Carnival Victory shortly after
The Jamaica Gleaner reports that 2 U.S. men aboard Royal Caribbean’s Navigator of the Sea, which docked in Falmouth Jamaica yesterday morning, are accused of raping a female passenger aboard the cruise ship.
The Gleaner says that the "men were accused of raping a female passenger who they were partying with the night before on
The last thing that a family going on vacation wants to think of is being victims of crime. Cruise lines spend literally hundreds of millions of dollars a year creating idyllic illusions of tropical vacations on beautiful Caribbean beaches. But behind that slick marketing facade lies danger.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime recently
There’s an interesting article today by the Associated Press about the lesser publicized side of cruise ship excursions entitled Jamaica’s "Ganja Tours Draw the Tourists" (with subtitle: "Cannabis connoisseurs can enjoy trips to hidden plantations and sample strains of the drug that inspired Bob Marley.")
Jamaican ganja like "purple kush" and "pineapple skunk"