Recently, there have been a number of articles published about preparing cruise ships for attacks by pirates as the ships pass through the Strait of Bab-el-Mandeb into and out of the Gulf of Aden.
Cruise blogger Danielle Fear published, via Cruise Critic, an article yesterday titled Blackout on Black Watch: Pirates, Razor Wire and Water
Are cruise ships prepared for the threat of terrorism?
As I have contended for a long time, in my opinion no.
Cruise lines are still calling on dangerous ports. They are still sending passengers on unescorted shore excursions in buses without armed security personnel. Cruise ships can’t prevent terrorists from overpowering their unarmed security guards
MSC and Costa sailed their guests into danger in March when terrorists slaughtered cruise tourists as they exited into the Tunis museum excursion site from cruise buses transporting them from the port. The cruise lines neither provided nor arranged security for their customers or, for that matter, announced even a single warning of the risks
National Geographical’s ombudsman Christopher Elliott just published the article which I wrote for Yahoo Travel tilted Is Cruising Safe? A Chilling Look at an Industry Under Siege.
Elliott’s article is titled Terrorists Target Cruise Ships — Here’s What You Need to Know Now.
He asks this question at the end of the article:
Is
Newspapers are reporting that several gunmen stormed a popular museum in Tunis, Tunisia today killing 17 tourists, as well as a police officer and Tunisian civilians. Some news accounts report that as many as two dozen people were also injured.
Two cruise ships were in port and had sent thousands of passengers into the city on
One question I am asked frequently is whether Islamic terrorists pose a threat to cruise ships. I received a couple of such inquiries in the last week. One from a mother in the U.K. whose son works on a cruise ship sailing the Mediterranean, and another from the father of a family in the U.S.
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
There is a disturbing story today in CNN entitled "Documents Reveal al Qaeda’s Plans to Seize Cruise Ships . . ." The CNN article explains that an al Qaeda operative was caught with encoded digital data which, once deciphered, revealed some of the terror group’s "most audacious plots and a road map for future
Pirate attacks against cruise ships have occurred and will continue to occur in the future. It’s a subject we have written about: Cruise Line Liability for Injuries to Passengers and Crew Members Caused by Pirate Attacks, Are Cruise Lines Taking Adequate Steps to Protect Passengers from Pirate Attacks?, and Somali Pirates – A
This month is the 25th year anniversary of the death of cruise ship passenger Leon Klinghoffer, an American Jew, who was killed by Palestinian terrorists who hijacked the cruise ship he was sailing on with his wife in the Mediterranean Sea in 1985.
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Mr. Klinghoffer, age 69, was from New York City and was vacationing with his wife, Marilyn, and their friends when four heavily