Cruise ship crews beg to go home
Carolina Vasquez lost track of days and nights, unable to see the sunlight while stuck for two weeks in a windowless cruise ship cabin as a fever took hold of her body.
On the worst night of her encounter with Covid-19, the Chilean woman, a line cook on the Greg Mortimer ship, summoned the strength to take a cold shower fearing the worst: losing consciousness while isolated from others.
Vasquez, 36, and tens of thousands of other crew members have been trapped for weeks aboard dozens of cruise ships around the world – long after governments and cruise lines negotiated their passengers’ disembarkation. Some have become ill and died; others have survived but are no longer getting paid.
Both national and local governments have stopped crews from disembarking in order to prevent new cases of Covid-19 in their territories. Some of the ships, including 20 in US waters, have seen infections and deaths among the crew. But most ships have had no confirmed cases.
‘‘I never thought this would turn into a tragic and terrifying horror story,’’ Vasquez said in an interview through a cellphone app from the Greg Mortimer, an Antarctic cruise ship floating off Uruguay. Thirty-six crew members have fallen ill on the ship.
The US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said last month that about 80,000 crew members remained on board ships off the US coast after most passengers had disembarked. The Coast Guard said yesterday that there were still 70,000 crew members in 102 ships either anchored near or at US ports or under way in US waters.
The total number of crew members stranded worldwide was not immediately available. But thousands more are trapped on ships outside the US, including in Uruguay and the Philippines’ Manila Bay, where 16 cruise ships are waiting to test about 5000 crew members before they will be allowed to disembark.
As coronavirus cases and deaths have risen worldwide, the CDC and health officials in other countries have expanded the list of conditions that must be met before crews may disembark.
Cruise companies must take each crew member straight home via charter plane or private car without using rental vehicles or taxis.
The CDC requires company executives to agree to criminal penalties if crew members fail to obey health authorities’ orders to steer clear of public transport and restaurants on their way home.
‘‘The criminal penalties gave us (and our lawyers) pause,’’ Royal Caribbean international president and CEO Michael Bayley wrote in a letter to crew members this week, but he added that company executives agreed to sign.
Melinda Mann, 25, a youth programme manager for Holland America, spent more than 50 days without stepping on dry land before finally disembarking from the Koningsdam ship yesterday in Los Angeles.
For 21 hours a day, Mann remained isolated in 14sqm cabin. She read 30 books and was only able to leave her room three times a day to walk around the ship. Her contract ended on April 18, so she was not paid for weeks.
‘‘Keeping me in close captivity for so long is absolutely ridiculous,’’ Mann said in a telephone interview.
Earlier this week in Nassau, Bahamas, crew members from Canada aboard the Emerald Princess were told to prepare to be flown home in a charter plane. But the Bahamian government did not allow the ship to dock in the end.
For those aboard the Greg
Mortimer in Montevideo, desperation was setting in, crew members said.
The Antarctic cruise set sail from Argentina on March 15, after a pandemic had already been declared. The ship’s physician, Dr Mauricio Usme, said that when the first passenger fell ill, on March 22, he was pressured by the captain, the cruise operator and owners to modify the health conditions that had to be met for the ship to be admitted into ports.
Usme refused. The boat anchored in the port of Montevideo on March 27. More than half of its passengers and crew tested positive for Covid-19. Finally, on April 10, 127 passengers, including some who were infected, were allowed to disembark and fly home. Crew members were told to stay on board. The doctor was admitted to hospital in Montevideo, along with a Filipino crew member, who later died.
‘‘People are exhausted and mentally drained,’’ said Usme, now recovered and back on the Greg Mortimer. ‘‘You feel very vulnerable and at imminent risk of death.’’
CMI, the Miami-based company that manages the boat, said it has been ‘‘unable to get the necessary permissions’’ to let crew members of 22 nationalities go home but said they were all still under contract receiving pay.
Marvin Paz Medina, a Honduran man who works as the ship’s storekeeper, says his children keep asking him when he’s coming home.
‘‘We are trapped, feeling this anxiety that at any moment we can get seriously ill,’’ said Paz Medina. ‘‘We do not want this any more. We want to go home.’’