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WATCH: Cruise Passengers Share Terrifying Videos from 'Nightmare' Storm at Sea

The Carnival Sunshine cruise ship made it back to port safely on Saturday after being stuck in a storm between the Bahamas and Charleston, S.C. for 15 hours

The Carnival Sunshine cruise ship made it back to port nine hours later than planned after sailing through a terrifying storm on Friday night.

The ship was on its way to Charleston, S.C. from the Bahamas when it got caught in severe weather, including nearly 80 mph winds. Passengers on board shared details and footage of the chaos and destruction caused by the storm on social media. Thankfully, Carnival told PEOPLE in a statement provided below that "no one was seriously injured."

Crew Center, a cruise ship information site, posted a video on Twitter showing a flooded hallway, torn-off doors and other debris and destruction on board.

"The aftermath aboard Carnival Sunshine after a severe storm," the post read. "The crew from Deck 0-4 evacuated to the theater, and anywhere they could rest… the crew bar destroyed."

brad morrell/storyful

Passenger Daniel Taylor told Newsweek that the captain made an announcement around 4:45 p.m. saying that they would be experiencing a delay due to "adverse weather conditions," expressing that they "would do everything they could to minimize discomfort.

By dinner time, public decks had been closed off, and plates and cups were flying off the buffet areas, he recalled.

By the early hours of Saturday morning, he said, "We were no longer able to see where we were going, how fast we were going, what the wind speed was, or anything. We were blind to what was going on." Swells were hitting the ship "over and over," said Taylor, who also recalled seeing crew members wearing life vests.

At that point, the internet was also out, so those on board couldn't get any additional information or reach loved ones.

Matthew Branham, who was also on board, told The Washington Post , that "waves were hitting the boat so hard that it was like an earthquake experience, jarring you like a really rough roller coaster — even in the middle floor."

TVs were falling off walls and glasses shattering. “You could not stand up in your room,” he said. “You could be thrown from the bed."

Another passenger, RJ Whited, wrote in a since-deleted Facebook post cited by Newsweek , "Our cruise ship last night was literally sideways and slung everything in our room breaking, people in the hallways throwing up and sleeping on the stairs."

Added Whited, "We also found out that they knew about the storm and instead of us staying back to ride it out a few hours they hit it head-on so we could make it back for the other cruise to be on time."

Finally, the ship made it back to Charleston around 7:30 a.m., though it couldn't immediately dock due to continuing rough weather.

At 5:30 p.m. on Saturday, the ship was able to dock.

Summing up the "nightmare" experience, passenger Christa Seifert-Alicea told NBC News 4 : "What we endured is indescribable, not only to feel it yourself but to hear and see it set in on every single person around you from adult, child and the elderly is something I will never forget."

In a statement to PEOPLE on Wednesday, Carnival said: "Carnival Sunshine's return to Charleston was impacted by the weather and rough seas on Saturday. The weather's prolonged impact on the Charleston area delayed the ship's arrival and as a result, the next voyage's embarkation was also delayed. We appreciate the patience and understanding of all our guests." The statement claims that "the ship's crew followed our protocols for rough weather" noting, "thankfully, no one was seriously injured."

"The weather was unexpectedly strong, causing conditions that were rougher than forecasted," the statement continues. "Given the circumstances as they were, the ship's officers and our Fleet Operations Center team using real time meteorology data coordinated to keep the ship in its safest location. Attempting to sail out of the large front could have been dangerous. The ship proceeded to the port as soon as the weather began to clear." The cruise line's statement also said that the captain "made several announcements about the weather and the delay" but noted "some of the worst weather occurred in the overnight hours when announcements are not typically made."

The Carnival Sunshine is already on its next voyage, the cruise line confirmed.

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The Worst Cruise Ship Horror Stories

Collision of Costa Concordia by Rvongher ( CC BY-SA )

Relaxation Gone Wrong

Cruises can be a low-hassle way to get away from it all. And while most voyages go off without a hitch, ferrying passengers to sun-soaked destinations while they enjoy a range of top-notch amenities , that's not always the case, especially now that COVID-19 is in the mix. But the pandemic isn't the only thing cruises have contended with in recent years. Storms, badly behaving passengers, fires, and even grounding (as happened with the Escape this year), have wreaked havoc with cruise vacations, sometimes with tragic results. Here are some of the most notable cruise ship horror stories and foibles of the past few decades. 

Related:  15 Types of People Who Shouldn't Take a Cruise

Ship Runs Aground in Dominican Republic

When a Norwegian Cruise Line ship, Escape, ran aground  in the Dominican Republic four days into the cruise, guests were hopeful the ship would find its way again. Instead, over 2,000 people were dumped at the Porta Plata airport and, without assistance from the cruise line, were shuffled onto charter flights back to Florida. When one of the flights was canceled due to mechanical issues, unlucky passengers had to scramble for hotel rooms or their own flights out of pocket. 

Cruise Disrupts Rocket Launch

Elon Musk probably isn't too happy about this one.   The U.S. Coast Guard has launched an investigation after one of Royal Caribbean's largest ships, Harmony of the Seas, sailed into an exclusion zone drawn around the planned flight path of a Falcon 9 rocket, which was supposed to be launched by SpaceX from Cape Canaveral on Sunday. Even worse: The launch, which was called off with less than a minute until liftoff, had already been scrubbed three times  thanks to bad weather, according to the New York Post. 

Related:  15 Historic Failures by Successful Billionaires

Ship Refuses to Dock in U.S. to Evade Authorities

For cruisers aboard a recent sailing of the Crystal Symphony, vacation came to an unexpected, dramatic, and inconvenient end. The ship was expected to dock in Miami, but it was diverted  to the Bahamas  in January 2022 in an effort to evade a federal order for U.S. Marshals to seize the vessel, part of a lawsuit over $4.6 million in unpaid fuel. Passengers were ferried to Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale a day after their scheduled return to Miami. In the meantime, Crystal Cruises has suspended sailings for the next few months. Its parent company, Genting Hong Kong, has filed for bankruptcy. 

Related:  Companies That Have Filed for Bankruptcy Since the Pandemic Began

Coronavirus Outbreak Turns Deadly

The Diamond Princess was placed under a two-week quarantine in Japan in February 2020 after several passengers tested positive for coronavirus. Testing later found at least 700 cases of the virus among the more than 3,700 passengers and crew members, and ultimately, at least seven passengers died. The quarantine was harshly criticized , with experts saying that keeping passengers and crew members confined on the ship only helped the virus spread faster. 

Related:  Everything You Need to Know About Taking a Cruise Right Now

Volcano Kills Cruisers

Excursions can be a highlight of cruising, but for several passengers, a much-anticipated stop to explore New Zealand's White Island became anything but. The island's active volcano, a tourist magnet, blew in December 2019, killing at least 21 people. Many were on an excursion from the Royal Caribbean Ovation of the Seas, which had departed from Sydney two days earlier. The company has since suspended tours of active volcanoes .

Related:   18 Ways Cruises Have Evolved in the Past 40 Years

Winds, Skipped Ports Trigger Mutiny

Cruise itineraries are always subject to the weather, but passengers on the Norwegian Spirit were especially unlucky  after departing in September 2019 for a two-week exploration of Scandinavia. High winds prevented stops in at least four ports, and fog made the Norweigian fjords impossible to glimpse. Toilets began to back up, food began to spoil, and angry cruisers demanded a refund. Norwegian ended up offering a 25% credit for a future cruise instead.

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Extreme Weather Forces Evacuations

Cruises aren't always smooth sailing, a fact that passengers on the Viking Sky learned the hard way in March 2019. The ship's engines lost power in bad weather  during a cruise along the Norwegian coast, and then the ship began to take on water and list so severely that furniture was tossed across the tilting floors. About half of the passengers were evacuated by helicopters before tugboats finally helped pull the ship and remaining passengers safely to port.   

Ship Takes a Terrifying Tilt

Veteran cruisers often reassure novices that they rarely feel the ship rock — after all, the boats are massive, with sophisticated stabilizers to keep things as steady as possible. But when one of those stabilizers malfunctioned  during an October 2018 cruise aboard the Carnival Sunshine, the ship tilted so severely that plates shattered, tables slid across the floor, and water ran into elevators. Though panicked passengers rushed for life jackets, the situation was soon under control. Not all passengers were satisfied with Carnival's offer of a $50 onboard credit, however, and some opted to leave the boat early when it next docked.

Baudy Crowd Takes Over Cruise

Fueled by booze and sun, some passengers get a little too raucous during their cruises. But there's nothing "little" about what happened on the Royal Caribbean Voyager of the Seas in September 2018, when a group of more than 1,300 men essentially commandeered the ship off the coast of Australia and turned it into a floating bachelor party . Passengers say the men, who worked for a data company based in India, harassed female passengers and brought aboard burlesque dancers. They also accounted for more than a third of the ship's 3,000 passengers. Royal Caribbean issued refunds and apologies after families complained that they were forced to stay in their cabins to avoid the debauchery.

Related:  1 in 4 Avid Cruise Goers: 'I'll Never Go on a Cruise Again'

Onboard Brawls Spiral Out of Control

A cruise can be a great place to grab a drink, a lounge chair, and some much-deserved relaxation. For passengers on the Carnival Legend in February 2018, a trip along the Australian coast was more "Fight Club" than zen retreat  after a series of brawls broke out on board, complete with screaming, broken glasses, and head injuries. Ultimately, authorities removed 23 people from the ship, and Carnival offered affected passengers a 25% credit for future sailings.

Cabin Fire Kills Retired Couple

For plenty of retirees, an exotic cruise is a reward for years of hard work and penny-pinching. So it was for a Nebraska couple who booked an Amazon River cruise with International Expeditions in April 2016. But on the first night of the voyage, a malfunctioning power strip touched off a blaze in their cabin , killing them both. Compounding the tragedy: The crew's lackluster response — it took 20 minutes for anyone to enter the cabin — and a 1920s law that limits cruise lines' liability after deaths occur in international waters.

Man Loses a Limb Thanks to Cruise Doctor

Most cruisers take comfort in the fact that ships are outfitted with medical clinics. Sadly, a waiter aboard the Norwegian Breakaway discovered that those clinics may not always be staffed with the best doctors. The man visited an onboard doctor with flu-like symptoms in March 2016, but ended up losing his arm to gangrene  after the doctor, described in court documents as "inexperienced," injected him with the wrong dose of the wrong medication. The waiter was awarded $4.6 million in a subsequent lawsuit.

Electrician Crushed to Death by Ship Elevator

Imagine excitedly making your way to an indulgent cruise dinner, only to be confronted by sheets of blood streaming down the elevator doors. It sounds like a horror movie, but one Florida family encountered exactly that aboard the Carnival Ecstasy in December 2015. The cause of the gruesome scene: An electrician who fell and was crushed to death during routine elevator maintenance. Investigators later found that he had disabled a safety system  before the fatal accident.

River Cruise Boat Capsizes, Killing Hundreds

Better safety regulations and systems have largely made Titanic-scale disasters a thing of the past, but they didn't stop one of the worst modern-day cruise disasters, the sinking of a Chinese river cruise ship, in June 2015. Close to 450 passengers enjoying a Yangtze River cruise on the Eastern Star were killed when the ship capsized during a storm. Though officials originally blamed a freak tornado  for the tragedy, investigators later said strong winds, heavy rains, and the crew's failure to send a rescue signal all contributed to the disaster.

Terrorists Gun Down Cruisers in Tunisia

A leisurely stop along the Tunisian coast turned tragic for passengers from the MSC Splendida and Costa Fascinosa in March 2015. At least 12 cruisers from the Splendida and 5 from the Fascinosa were killed  when terrorists opened fire at the Bardo National Museum in Tunis, a popular tourist destination. More than 20 others were injured in the incident, which included a three-hour hostage crisis. The attack was followed by a mass shooting at a beach resort a few months later, leading most cruise lines to scrub Tunisia from their itineraries for a year or more.

Norovirus Sickens Hundreds

Long before cruisers had to worry about coronavirus, norovirus dominated cruise-related headlines. There have been several outbreaks over the years, but the Royal Caribbean Explorer of the Seas dealt with one of the worst in January 2014. Close to 700 passengers and crew members  came down with the bug, which causes vomiting and diarrhea, forcing the ship to return to port early. Some guests were even confined to their staterooms. Royal Caribbean refunded all passengers half of their fares and offered half off a future cruise.

Fire Turns Voyage Into 'Poop Cruise'

There was nothing to celebrate aboard the Carnival Triumph in February 2013, when a fire in the engine room cut power to the entire ship  and left it adrift in the Gulf of Mexico for four days. Conditions deteriorated rapidly: Overflowing toilets left passengers to dispose of human waste in plastic bags, and many slept in makeshift tents on the decks to escape the smell and rising temperatures inside. Carnival refunded the cost of the trip, later nicknamed the "poop cruise," and offered $500 and a free cruise to passengers.

Rescue Boat Mishap Kills Crew Members

A safety inspection turned deadly while the Thomson Majesty was docked at La Palma, a port in the Canary Islands, in February 2013. Crew members were inspecting a lifeboat suspended alongside an upper deck of the luxury ship when it suddenly became untethered, plummeting 65 feet into the water. Five of the crew members drowned  after the lifeboat overturned when it hit the water, trapping them underneath.

Gunmen Rob Passengers During Excursion

Cruisers who went ashore for a guided jungle hike in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, got a different kind of adventure in February 2012. Nearly two dozen passengers from the Carnival Splendor were traveling back to port after the hike when masked gunmen boarded their bus  and robbed them of their cash, passports, and other valuables. Carnival suspended the excursion and reimbursed affected guests after the incident.

Ship Runs Aground in Italy, Killing 32

There were no rough seas to navigate when the Costa Concordia left the Italian port of Civitavecchia in January 2012, but that didn't prevent the ship from running aground, killing 32 passengers. The captain ordered the ship to steer close to a nearby island as a "salute," a decision that proved disastrous  when rocks ripped open the hull. An investigation later found that passengers weren't told to abandon ship for more than an hour after the ship hit the rocks. The captain was charged with manslaughter and abandoning ship, and Costa Cruises said the change in course had been unauthorized.

Ships Strand Passengers as Hurricane Looms

It's a cardinal rule of cruising: When in port, you'd better get back to the ship on time, or you get left behind . But in 2011, for passengers of the Royal Caribbean Serenade of the Seas and the Carnival Victory, keeping an eye on the clock didn't matter. Hundreds of cruisers  were left stranded in San Juan, Puerto Rico, when port authorities ordered the ships to leave hours early to avoid Hurricane Irene. While Carnival offered free hotel rooms and flights to its stranded customers, Royal Caribbean left most passengers to fend for themselves since the incident was weather-related.

Pirates Attack Luxury Ship

A luxury cruise along the African coast sounds like the adventure of a lifetime, but it's unlikely that pirate attacks ever made it into the brochures. Still, the Seabourn Spirit faced exactly that as it sailed down the Somali coast in November 2005. Passengers were sent below deck as heavily armed boats ambushed the cruise liner , firing machine guns and launching grenades. The Spirit was able to outmaneuver and outrun the pirates, though one crew member was injured by shrapnel.

Massive Wave Floods Cabins

Choppy seas are one thing, but passengers on the Norwegian Dawn got a true taste of Mother Nature's wrath in April 2005. During a voyage from the Bahamas to New York, the ship was battered by a freak seven-story  wave that flooded 62 cabins, ripped away whirlpools and tossed furniture. Four passengers were injured, and even the captain's offer of free drinks all night couldn't keep everyone on board — 300 left the ship early once it docked for repairs. All passengers received a 50% refund and half off a future cruise.

12 cruise ship horror stories that will make you want to stay on land

Cruising can be one of the most relaxing and enjoyable vacations a family can plan . With meals, entertainment, activities, and housekeeping included in the cost of your room, there is virtually nothing to worry about.

The popularity of cruises continues to rise. In fact, the latest State of the Cruise Industry report by Cruise Lines International Association estimated that 28 million passengers will cruise in 2018 . This is up from 26.7 million in 2017 and 25.2 million in 2016.

But with CLIA's report of nearly 450 cruise ships currently sailing worldwide and the unpredictability of mother nature, not every passenger on a cruise ship will experience the vacation of their dreams. In fact, in some cases, cruising can be a downright nightmare .

Here are some of the most unfortunate incidents that have happened on cruises in recent history.

More than 500 passengers became ill on Royal Caribbean cruises within 2 months.

In January, a spokesperson for Royal Caribbean Cruises announced that 47 passengers on The Grandeur of the Seas, which departed from Baltimore, reported symptoms of gastrointestinal illness . A cruise from Singapore to Australia had over 200 reported cases of illness, and 332 cases of illness were reported on a cruise from Florida.

50 staterooms were affected by a flood on a Carnival Cruise Line ship.

Nearly 100 passengers aboard a seven-day cruise on the Carnival Dream received a refund and 50% off of a future cruise after their staterooms and hallways were flooded.

Carnival Cruise Line provided a statement to INSIDER, which explained that the flooding was caused by a waterline break in the fire-suppression system of the cruise ship.

A crew member was killed during a lifeboat drill.

A cruise ship crewmember on Royal Caribbean’s Harmony of the Seas was killed in September 2016 during a lifeboat drill. He was sitting with four other crew members in a lifeboat when it disconnected from the ship and fell 33 feet from the deck into the water in Marseille, France.

Passengers got stuck on a "cruise to nowhere" during Hurricane Irma.

Passengers on Norwegian Cruise Line ships Sky and Escape had to make an early return to Miami in September 2017 due to Hurricane Irma. Because it was nearly impossible to find hotel accommodations, the cruise line allowed displaced passengers to board the Escape on a "cruise to nowhere" until the storm passed.

Luckily, they had access to food, water, and alcohol and were not charged for the trip.

A man fell off one cruise ship and was rescued by another.

In January 2015, a passenger on a Royal Caribbean cruise fell off of the ship near Cozumel, Mexico. A passenger sitting on his balcony on the Disney Cruise Line ship Magic heard screams for help. The Disney Magic rescued the man, who was treated and flown back home to the United States.

Elevators and toilets stopped working on a Carnival Cruise.

In March 2013, toilets and elevators stopped working halfway through a seven-day cruise on the Carnival Dream.

"There's human waste all over the floor in some of the bathrooms and they're overflowing — and in the staterooms," passenger Gregg Stark told CNN of the incident.

Carnival cruise lines had to fly passengers back to Florida. They received a three-day refund and a half-price cruise in the future.

A ship with more than 4,000 passengers became stranded after a fire.

A fire in one of the diesel generators of the Carnival Triumph killed its propulsion, causing the ship to become stranded back in February 2013. The passengers had limited food and few working toilets and elevators while they waited for the ship to be tugged to shore.

A cruise ship lost a passenger's dialysis machine, and then kicked her off the boat.

A passenger was checking in for her Jamaican cruise in May 2012 when Carnival told her that they couldn't find her portable dialysis machine . The passenger, who needed nightly dialysis, was then escorted off of the ship without an explanation. The ship proceeded to sail away with the rest of her luggage, and presumably the lost medical equipment, on board.

Carnival issued an apology, refunded her ticket, and offered her credit for a future cruise.

Men hired to mingle with passengers were booted off a gay cruise and marooned in a war zone.

In June 2012, a group of men were hired to mingle with passengers on a Holland America gay cruise. When passengers saw photographers and videographers filming the men, they worried that pornography was being filmed on the ship. The men were forced off the ship at the first port-of-call , which was Tunisia — in the middle of the Arab Spring uprising.

According to the Wisconsin Gazette , the men were hired models who had "limited money, no Tunisian visas, no means of return passage and no ability to speak the local language." The men sued RSVP Vacations and Holland America.

32 people died when the Costa Concordia ran aground and sank.

In January 2012, the Costa Concordia, a 4,200-passenger cruise liner, was brought too close to shore in Italy and struck rocks, which tore a giant hole in its side. The ship ran aground and sank.

The captain of the Concordia was eventually sentenced to 16 years in prison after 32 passengers died. His charges included delaying evacuation and abandoning ship before all of his passengers and crew had been rescued.

More than 1,300 people were stranded on a Viking Sky cruise ship.

In March 2019, over 1,300 people were stranded on a Viking Sky cruise ship after the ship experienced engine problems off the coast of Norway because of stormy and rough weather.

Some of the passengers were airlifted off of the ship individually and some had to wait 24 hours for relief, according to The Washington Post. Small boats could not be used because of the weather conditions and some passengers told the paper that waves got so rough that one broke doors on the ship and threw passengers across the room. 

Videos from people who said they were on the ship showed water inside of the ship and said that waves were 30 feet high. After evacuating 479 passengers by air , the conditions improved and the captain decided on a new plan, according to the AP. The ship was docked so the remaining passengers and crew could evacuate.

A cruise ship in Venice lost control and crashed into a smaller boat.

The MSC Opera, a massive cruise ship, crashed into a smaller tourist ship, the River Countess, after the Opera's engines reportedly got stuck.

The incident, which happened in Venice, Italy, in June 2019, left four people on the dockside injured . 

• Main content

Carnival passengers recount ‘nightmare’ cruise as storm floods ship

Videos showed the carnival sunshine cabins and hallways flooding and ceilings leaking.

Matthew Branham and his fiancée, Madison Davis, were lying by a Carnival Sunshine pool on Friday aboard a cruise returning to Charleston, S.C., from the Bahamas when an announcement came over the loudspeaker. The captain was expecting rougher weather that evening, but there was nothing to worry about. So Branham and Davis didn’t worry.

As the day went on, “We noticed it started getting cooler in the afternoon — much, much cooler,” said Branham, 25, of Castlewood, Va. “And then it was like a switch was flipped, and it literally turned into a nightmare.”

En route back to Charleston Friday night into Saturday, the Carnival Sunshine navigated into a strong storm system that battered the southeast over the holiday weekend. Videos emerged on social media showing cabins and hallways flooding, shop floors littered with destroyed merchandise and leaking ceilings . Passenger Brad Morrell snapped a photo of an automated instrument map reporting a 69 knot, or 79 mph, wind.

#CarnivalSunshine : Due to return to Charleston, South Carolina this Saturday, May 27, 2023, has been delayed due to severe weather. The ship is currently off the South Carolina coast and holding position, unable to return to the port because of high winds & rough seas. #cruise 🙏🏼 pic.twitter.com/2B6HlAn2yD — ∼Marietta (@MariettaDaviz) May 28, 2023

Carnival said in a statement that the weather was unexpectedly strong, causing conditions that were rougher than forecast, but that its fleet operations center team, which relies on outside meteorology resources for itinerary planning, “coordinated to keep the ship in its safest location.”

“Attempting to sail out of the large front could have been dangerous,” the statement continued. “The ship proceeded to the port as soon as the weather began to clear.”

Strong Southeast storm slams Carolinas

Carnival said the captain made “several announcements about the weather and the delay it caused in returning to Charleston, asking guests to use extra precaution while walking around the ship.” Additionally, “some of the worst weather occurred in the overnight hours when announcements are not typically made, but guests and crew were safe.”

The ship’s medical staff did help a “small number” of guests and crew members who needed minor assistance following the storm. Despite the significant damage and a delay in schedule, Carnival Sunshine embarked on its next five-day Bahama sailing on Saturday.

From their sea-view room, Branham and Davis watched as waves surged over their window and braced themselves as the 892-foot-long ship lurched in the storm.

“Waves were hitting the boat so hard that it was like an earthquake experience, jarring you like a really rough roller coaster — even in the middle floor,” Branham said.

They were told to stay in their cabins. Meanwhile, Branham said, TVs were falling off walls, and glassware was sliding off shelves and shattering on the floor. “You could not stand up in your room,” he said. “You could be thrown from the bed.”

They packed up their belongings when their floor started to flood and took shelter in a main lobby area.

“All of the employees were sprinting downstairs with life vests,” Branham said. “There were little kids besides us screaming and crying and throwing fits.”

Throughout the storm, Branham wondered why there weren’t more announcements from Carnival staff. Besides the warning of rougher seas earlier Friday and one Saturday morning after they’d weathered the storm, Branham said they weren’t given any official updates on their situation. When he asked workers what was going on, they told him not to worry.

⁦⁦ @CarnivalCruise ⁩ #carnivalsunshine still 75mph winds at 9:25am. Sitting and spinning in the Atlantic. pic.twitter.com/NITCO2l9Ss — FlyersCaptain™®© (@flyerscaptain) May 29, 2023

“But you see rooms flooded, and you can pick up a handful of sand and you’re kind of like, ‘What in the world? Why is nobody telling us anything?’” Branham said.

Jim Walker, a maritime lawyer and cruise industry legal expert, says his firm has been contacted by some Carnival Sunshine passengers who were injured during the storm, including a man who says he was struck by a door and broke his foot. Others have asked him about the potential for a class-action lawsuit.

While Walker said passengers should make their complaints known to Carnival, he doesn’t believe filing a lawsuit would be an efficient next step. Instead, impacted passengers can ask Carnival for a refund or a credit for another cruise, although there’s no guarantee the cruise line will grant such requests.

Pete Peterson, owner of Storybook Cruises , which is affiliated with Cruise Planners, said cruise ships keep a close eye on weather developments and will adjust their itinerary depending on the severity of the storm.

“Cruise lines monitor the weather all the time. They’re not going to put their passengers in harm’s way,” said Peterson, who has been a cruise adviser for more than 20 years and has sailed on nearly 60 cruises. “Obviously, some cruise lines are better at doing this than others.”

In 2016, Royal Caribbean’s Anthem of the Seas returned to port after cruising into a “bomb cyclone,” which damaged the ship amid winds gusting to 100 mph. The ship sailed into the remnants of Hurricane Hermine seven months later, causing additional problems.

To ensure the safety and comfort of its passengers, a cruise ship can alter its course and circumvent the rough weather system. In stormy conditions, the crew can deploy the stabilizers, which will prevent the ship from rolling and bucking.

“You don’t experience the up and down,” Peterson said. “It’s not as rough a ride.”

Both approaches can add to a cruise line’s expenditures, Peterson said. Stabilizers slow the vessel, thereby consuming more fuel. Sailing around the storm can take longer than the original route and disrupt the company’s cruise schedule, leading to delays or cancellations. The cruise line may have to reimburse passengers or provide them with future credits because of the inconvenience.

“When they do something like that, it’s going to cost them money,” Peterson said.

Craig Setzer , a meteorologist and hurricane preparedness specialist, said that even with the hurricane-like conditions and flooding, “I would never be in doubt of the vessel’s integrity,” he said. “Cruise ships are structurally very, very sound and can survive a lot. They’re really rugged.”

Matthew Cappucci contributed to this report.

More cruise news

Living at sea: Travelers on a 9-month world cruise are going viral on social media. For some travelers, not even nine months was enough time on a ship; they sold cars, moved out of their homes and prepared to set sail for three years . That plan fell apart, but a 3.5-year version is waiting in the wings.

Passengers beware: It’s not all buffets and dance contests. Crime data reported by cruise lines show that the number of sex crimes has increased compared to previous years. And though man-overboard cases are rare, they are usually deadly .

The more you know: If you’re cruise-curious, here are six tips from a newcomer. Remember that in most cases, extra fees and add-ons will increase the seemingly cheap price of a sailing. And if you happen to get sick , know what to expect on board.

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5 Cruise Specific Nightmares (And How to Avoid Them)

Caroline Morse Teel

Caroline Morse Teel is the Managing Editor for SmarterTravel Media. Follow her adventures around the world on Instagram @TravelWithCaroline.

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The viral video of a woman getting stuck on a waterslide suspended over the ocean aboard a Norwegian Cruise Line ship got us thinking about nightmare situations that can only happen on a cruise ship. 

From minor inconveniences like seasickness to bigger disasters, here’s how to avoid falling victim to five terrifying ship-specific scenarios.

Getting Stuck in a Waterslide Over the Ocean

Anyone with even the smallest amount of claustrophobia started sweating watching the recent video of a woman getting stuck in a section of the cruise ship’s enclosed water slide that was suspended over the ocean. However, the solution to not getting trapped in a waterslide might scare you even more—wear as little clothing as possible. 

According to Royal Caribbean , the trick to smoothly and quickly making it down a slide is opting for a small swimsuit (like a speedo) as more fabric (like rash guards or bathing suits with more coverage) will cause more friction and slow you down. 

The 10 Best Cruise Deals for 2022

Missing the Boat

You’ve spent hundreds or thousands of dollars on your dream cruise, but if you miss the boat, all that money will go down the drain—and you’ll have to pay even more to get yourself home. 

Cruise ships wait for no passengers, so never fly into port on the day that your cruise ship is scheduled to depart—if your flight is delayed or canceled, it’s highly likely that you’ll miss the boat. Always fly in a day or two early to give yourself a buffer (and to be able to explore the port city).

Likewise, when you’re off the boat for an excursion, be sure to double-check what time you have to be back, and plan to arrive well before the departure in case you run into traffic or other unexpected delays.

Falling Overboard

Man-overboard incidents are extremely rare on cruise ships. Cruise ships are specifically designed to prevent people from falling overboard, with safety measures like high railings and other barriers in plance. According to the Cruise Lines International Association (CLA), there were 212 man-overboard incidents between 2009 and 2019. 

Falling overboard is extremely preventable on a cruise ship. Avoid drinking excessively (which can cause impaired judgment and coordination) and never climb or sit on railings on a cruise ship. Stay inside when there is bad weather or rough seas. 

You Can Now Buy or Rent an Apartment Aboard a Cruise Ship

Getting Seasick

Nauseous, vomiting, and dizzy—not exactly how you want to spend your vacation at sea. Unfortunately, if you’re prone to seasickness, this is how you might feel on a cruise. 

Follow these tips to avoid getting seasick:

• Pick a larger boat that is equipped with stabilizers, to minimize how much you’ll feel motion on board
• Skip itineraries that spend a lot of time crossing open ocean (opt for a Caribbean cruise vs. a transatlantic one, for example) 
• Choose a cabin in the middle of the ship on a lower deck
• Get fresh air
• Stay hydrated
• Avoid alcohol
• Try medications—both prescription and over-the-counter medicines are available to combat seasickness, so check with your doctor about which one is right for you before leaving for your trip
• Eat small amounts of bland food

At-Sea Quarantine

Whether it’s COVID-19 or Norovirus, viruses can spread quickly among large groups in enclosed spaces (like a cruise ship). If you come down with a contagious disease, you’ll likely be quarantined in your cabin for the remainder of the cruise, which will definitely put a damper on your vacation.

To avoid getting sick at sea, follow the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidelines :

• Wash your hands often
• Get plenty of rest
• Drink lots of water
• Leave the area if you see someone get sick
• Wear a well-fitting mask indoors and in crowded spaces
• Avoid touching your eyes, nose, and mouth

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Inside the Nightmare Voyage of the Diamond Princess

By Doug Bock Clark

1. Cruising

They had no idea about the danger. Not as they crowded around the famous champagne waterfall. Hundreds of delighted cruise passengers watched as golden bubbly, poured atop a pyramid of 300 glasses, filled the stemware below. Then the drinks were passed out. Hand to hand to hand. Guests clinked coupes and posed for photos, making the evening feel momentous. It was their fourth night aboard the Diamond Princess —a floating city of a ship that had been churning south from Yokohama, Japan—and they were all still unaware of how much their journey would transform them, and even the world.

The Four Amigos, as a pair of American couples called themselves, skipped the champagne waterfall, which happens on almost every Princess Cruises excursion. The 60-something traveling companions had seen it before on their annual cruises together. They were happy to turn in early for the evening, thankful for this two-week break from their busy lives. Carl and Jeri Goldman run a mom-and-pop radio station that broadcasts local news and high school sports to a suburb of Los Angeles. Mark and Jerri Jorgensen oversee a rehabilitation center that specializes in pornography addiction in the red rocks of St. George, Utah. This year especially they needed the respite of the cruise. Recently, Jeri Goldman’s father had died; Carl had struggled with his health. None of them had been paying much attention to the news as they flew to Japan to board the ship. When they landed in Tokyo, Carl noticed an abnormal number of people wearing face masks, but he thought little of it.

Indeed, for the first four days, there seemed to be nothing amiss as the 18-story ocean liner powered south through the East China Sea. As it did, the ship’s 2,666 guests luxuriated in a dozen or so different restaurants, a multitude of bars and nightclubs, four pools, a spa, a casino, and more. All the while, an army of more than a thousand crew members stood ready to gratify their every whim.

Five days into the voyage, the ship docked in Hong Kong, and as the Four Amigos disembarked, health officials scanned their foreheads for fever with thermometer guns. Apparently, a mysterious virus was scything through mainland China. At first the People’s Republic had attempted to cover up the flu-like disease, but things had gotten so bad that in the industrial city of Wuhan, nearly 600 miles north, some 11 million people were being quarantined and local hospitals were bursting with casualties. In Hong Kong, so far, the response was modest. Foreigners were being screened at the ports, schools were suspended, and several Lunar New Year events had been canceled. But as the Four Amigos toured the city and watched a light show dazzle the city’s skyline, the throngs weren’t noticeably diminished. After all, you couldn’t halt life.

For a week more, the Diamond Princess cruised on. The Amigos took a memorable kayak excursion in Vietnam, among the karst monoliths of Ha Long Bay. They enjoyed street food in Taiwan. But while there, panicky headlines and more temperature guns made the virus impossible to ignore. Still, they considered themselves safe, unaware that an 80-year-old passenger—a man who had coughed through the first third of the cruise before disembarking in Hong Kong—had been admitted to a hospital, where it was discovered that he was infected with COVID-19.

When the ship was two days away from returning home to Yokohama, a typo-riddled email from a Hong Kong port agent arrived in the inboxes of cruise line personnel, alerting them to the danger that had been found: “Would kindly inform the ship related parties and do the necessary disinfection in needed. Many thanks!”

Officials at Princess Cruises say the company had learned of the infected passenger hours earlier, when they were tipped off by a news report. Before long, they received another, clearer warning, this one sent by an epidemiologist from the government of Hong Kong. But seemingly nothing was done aboard the ship that aroused the concern of most passengers, including the Four Amigos. Cruise line officials maintain that the day after the ship received the first warning, its crew began sanitizing public areas more frequently, put out extra hand sanitizer, and switched buffet utensils more often.

Of course, such measures couldn’t be expected to do much against a virus that was currently crippling China—especially on a cruise ship, an environment designed to pack people in and then entertain them with communal activities. And the virus had already had ample time to attack people’s lung cells until they coughed it into the air, where it might linger in a mist for three hours. Then, if the virions weren’t inhaled, they could still settle on an elevator button or a roulette wheel and survive up to three days, waiting to hitchhike on an unsuspecting hand to an itchy nose. At this point in the cruise, the coronavirus could be anywhere and in anyone.

On what was supposed to be the cruise’s final night, February 3, while the Four Amigos were enjoying a multicourse meal in the mirrored Savoy Dining Room, they all agreed that they hoped the trip would never end. Suddenly the ocean liner’s intercom came to life. In his Italian-inflected English, the ship’s captain told all on board about the infected passenger. Accordingly, he said, when the Diamond Princess reached Yokohama, everyone would need to stay on the vessel for an extra day while Japanese health officials screened them. The Jorgensens gave each other a look that said: What does that mean for us? But soon enough, guests went back to their surf and turf. Before long, the baked Alaska was paraded out, accompanied by marching band music and diners festively waving their napkins.

The Four Amigos soon retired, but many of the other passengers continued their evening at the Skywalkers Nightclub or took in a show at the 740-seat theater. They were still on vacation, after all. Dealing with the real world could wait.

The Four Amigos: (from left) Mark and Jerri Jorgensen and Carl and Jeri Goldman.

2. Security

Growing up in claustrophobic Mumbai, India, Sonali Thakkar had been desperate to see the world. When a friend encouraged her to interview for a job with Princess Cruises, she hesitated. What Thakkar knew of cruises consisted of what she’d seen in Titanic —hardly an endorsement for a career at sea. But she ended up getting the job and loving it, spending her early 20s pinging between continents as a security patrolwoman aboard several Princess ships. The long hours she spent managing the gangway—monitoring those who boarded and disembarked—could be taxing, but after her shifts, she’d visit the top deck to take in the panoramic view of the ocean or a glamorous port city and the stress would melt away. Besides, she’d happily put up with a lot for the chance to earn about twice what she’d make at home.

Not long after the captain’s announcement, the 24-year-old Thakkar received an urgent call ordering her to the gangway. She had been off duty, but the ship had sped up to reach Yokohama early and now the city was in view. Soon she was standing at the weakly illuminated gangway, squinting into the liquid dark of the harbor while the ship anchored slightly offshore.

It was freezing outside, and down here by the waterline, Thakkar could hear none of the cheer of the parties going on hundreds of feet above. Her radio crackled, announcing the approach of several small Japanese boats, which drew alongside the hulking ocean liner. Even before the captain’s announcement, the crew had heard rumors of an infection, but Thakkar claimed that management told them not to worry. Now, as she counted roughly two dozen Japanese health care workers in protective gowns and masks being helped aboard by deck hands, she began to get an inkling of how bad things might actually be.

The Japanese officials were marched directly to the captain’s office. Not long before midnight, the captain reportedly returned to the intercom, finally ending the night’s revelry, ordering everyone back to their rooms.

In the morning, the Diamond Princess was subdued. The ship idled close to shore but never touched the pier, as if landing might infect Japan. Some of the guests still circulated between the restaurants, but many stayed close to their rooms as the Japanese health care workers fanned out across the ship to assess the virus’s spread. Passengers, including the Four Amigos, expected to disembark the following day. But when the next morning came, the captain’s voice again rang out from the speakers barnacled to the walls and the ceilings. Nine passengers and one crew member had tested positive for COVID-19. All passengers were to return to their cabins, where they would remain quarantined for two weeks by order of the Japanese government. Rather than release 3,700 potential vectors—who could infect Japan or their farther-flung homes—public health officials were transforming the Diamond Princess into a floating quarantine center.

Thakkar was given a mask and a new set of duties: patrolling the hallways in her naval-looking uniform. Guests would open their doors and, from their thresholds, ask what was going on. But all she could tell them was to go back inside and remain calm—she didn’t know anything more herself. Of course, Thakkar was concerned about contracting the illness. But she also told herself that she was no longer the timid girl who had never left India: She was a Princess Cruises security person, and she was going to do her duty—even if that had unexpectedly changed. Once she had guarded the passengers from the outside world; now she was protecting it from them.

The ship's crowded atrium during one of the cruise's many social events.

As Hong Kongers, Yardley Wong and her husband had been aware of the outbreak before many others on the ship—and the loss of a close friend to SARS, a similar virus, 17 years earlier, primed them to take this outbreak seriously. The 40-something couple had worn masks and practiced some social distancing measures since the start of the cruise; after the captain’s announcement, they locked themselves away in their cabin, even as many guests still roamed the ship.

While they waited anxiously for the Japanese health care workers to reach them, they ordered room service, and when it arrived, they sanitized the utensils before eating. Sometimes Wong heard the crinkle of plasticky protective gear in the hallway, and through the peephole in the door, she glimpsed blurry figures in surgical masks and gowns—though they always passed by.

Finally, around 11:30 p.m., officials arrived to take their temperature—and found no sign of fever, though it was hard to tell because the couple and the health workers barely spoke a common language. Wong and her husband went to bed thinking they were okay, but were woken by a knock at 4:30 a.m. This time the figures at the door had upgraded to hazmat gear: face shields, goggles, and shoe coverings. They swabbed the Wongs’ mouths. Wong then watched as her sample was inserted into a tray alongside what seemed like a hundred other vials—and she wondered what these tests meant about the virus’s spread. The pair managed a few more hours of restless sleep, until they were roused by another announcement from the captain. Everyone, he told the ship, would need to remain inside their cabins for the whole two-week quarantine.

For the Wongs, the world shrank to a room of about 150 square feet, much of that taken up by a queen-size bed. The cabin’s primary decoration was a big TV and two large mirrors hung facing each other to create the illusion of spaciousness. There were no windows, and this relatively cheap room was about as far from fresh air as possible: on an interior hall of a middle deck, near the laundromat. This wasn’t the sort of cabin highlighted in advertisements.

Wong and her husband might have endured this confinement easier if they hadn’t been traveling with their then six-year-old son, who was sharing their bed. To occupy him, they had the TV and an iPad, on which he played Fortnite . At first they used in-room exercise routines to burn off his energy, before passengers were eventually granted an hour each day on deck, during which time they tried to run him ragged while carefully staying six feet away from others.

But they couldn’t divert their boy's attention from the fact that the situation was quickly worsening. On the second day of the quarantine, the captain announced that the number of cases had doubled to 20. The following morning, February 7, there were 61. Fear stuffed the cramped room. The family still hadn’t heard back about the results of their tests and had to hope that no news was good news. Infected passengers, they had grasped, were being taken off the ship. Through their peephole, the Wong and her husband had watched neighbors be escorted down the hall with hastily packed bags by men in hazmat suits, presumably en route to Japanese hospitals.

The couple was terrified about what would happen if one of them tested positive. They were caring not only for their son but also Yardley Wong’s elderly parents in the cabin next door. The family worried about whether her frail father could survive an infection. A single vent supplied the Wongs’ room with air, which was so dry, Wong said, “you could make Italian cured ham with it.” The desiccated oxygen was giving her family raspy coughs—or was that the coronavirus?

Wong distracted herself by helping others. Using her fluency in English, Mandarin, and Cantonese, she acted as a one-woman switchboard for older passengers who didn’t know how to use the internet, taking messages from family and friends via social media and then relaying them through the ship’s telephone lines. She appreciated that Princess Cruises was trying to ease the situation, making the ship’s usually expensive Wi-Fi available for free and offering psychological counseling over the phone. The company had already promised to refund the trip and pay for guests’ journeys home. Still, passengers were growing restive, blaming the cruise line for everything from a lack of clean bedsheets to lost medications, including essentials like insulin.

Meanwhile, Japanese officials were struggling with their response. Lacking enough kits to test everyone on board, they reportedly left feverish Americans in their cabins for multiple days before finally sending them to hospitals where they tested positive. Passengers were given N-95 masks and alcohol wipes, but this seemed risibly inadequate, given the rapidly growing number of infections. Day five: 69. Day six: 135. Many passengers felt underinformed, left to glean details from news reports based on leaks from the Japanese health ministry. Some hung banners off the side of the ship—one apparent bedsheet was painted with the plea for help: “Serious lack of medicine, lack of information.”

Eventually, Wong’s son asked her, “Am I going to get it?”

Normally, Wong would have tried to ease his worry, but she couldn’t deny reality. “If either of us gets it, we may not be able to see each other for a while,” she said. Her son started crying.

Later he said, “Mama, I don’t want to be here anymore. I just want to go home.”

Now she wanted to weep. “Just a few more days,” she promised him. “Just a few more days.”

4. “The Passenger Is King”

From the glass-walled bridge of the Diamond Princess, Captain Gennaro Arma endeavored to protect the souls entrusted to him. He had brought them to harbor but not yet to safety. Arma had been with the cruise line for more than 20 years and looked like the movie-star version of a gracefully aged captain. He’d grown up on the Italian coast, enchanted by his seafaring family’s stories, and landed a job as a Princess Cruises cadet not long after graduating from maritime school. He rose rapidly through the ranks, and when the Diamond Princess made its maiden voyage, in 2004, Arma was its senior second officer. By 2018, he was the captain, steering the vessel through typhoons by pointing the bow into the oncoming storm.

Arma was undaunted by high-stakes challenges—in fact, he relished them. But this was unlike anything he’d faced before. And now, rather than having the absolute authority that he typically had at the helm, he was following orders from both the Japanese government and his corporate command chain. He was working, he later told me, with “no playbook, no dedicated training, no dedicated protocol.” With the aid of Japanese officials and his crew, Arma was essentially trying to convert his ship into a colossal luxury hospital and oversee the logistics of food delivery, sanitization, and health care for a small city. In his daily P.A. announcements, he exhorted guests and crew alike to rise to the challenge, repeating the motto that it was only through pressure that coal became a Diamond Princess.

Ill-equipped workers tend to thousands of guests.

Most of the 1,045 crew members responded with enthusiasm to Arma’s leadership—at least at the beginning. Kitchen staffers pivoted from restaurant service to delivering three meals a day to 1,337 cabins. Dede Samsul Fuad, a gee-whiz 28-year-old Indonesian dishwasher, worked 15-hour shifts, scraping food off plates and steaming them in an industrial dishwasher. He had heard of doctors in Wuhan falling sick after working too hard, but the motto drummed into him by supervisors had always been “The passenger is king.” Fuad, Thakkar, and other members of the crew I spoke with took sincere pride in working hard during such a time of need. But it was also true that being a dishwasher or security guard on the Diamond Princess was a dream job that they couldn’t afford to lose—as it was for the other Indians, Indonesians, Filipinos, Ukrainians, Hondurans, Venezuelans, and other citizens of 48 mostly developing nations who made up the majority of the ship’s frontline staff.

Though masks and gloves were handed out, the crew had little training in dealing with a disease of this virulence. “Anybody would be scared for their life, because day by day more and more people were getting infected,” said an Indian crew member who asked for anonymity, as did other staff, afraid of retaliation from Princess Cruises. “And we knew people were dying.” The Indian man described colleagues delivering food and then running back to their cabins to jump into scalding showers or wash their hands in hot water until they hurt. As the days dragged on, the service workers began to question if their sacrifices were worth it.

Another Indonesian dishwasher described watching the virus tear through the large kitchen where he worked shoulder to shoulder with some 150 people—a number that declined as fewer showed up for work. A little less than a week into the quarantine, he started feeling ill. He wasn’t sure it was coronavirus, but he decided to quarantine himself in his tiny room for 15 straight days, reasoning that if Princess Cruises couldn't protect him, he’d protect himself.

Most of the crew were housed in quarters beneath the passenger decks. There were no giant windows with sweeping ocean views, no scintillating chandeliers. Hallways with exposed piping led to small rooms packed with bunk beds. The crew could quickly tell that their home was becoming a hot spot, especially the mess hall, where more than a hundred people at a time might visit the buffet. Later, a report released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention validated this fear, noting that in the early stages of the outbreak three-fourths of all the infected crew members were food-service workers—employees who could easily spread the disease to other crew and passengers.

Some staffers tried to take whatever precautions they could. An Indian man told me that he ate only packaged foods—and boiled all his own drinking water in his room with an electric kettle—and avoided getting sick. But he was lucky, and some of the employees accepted getting infected as inevitable. As the CDC report would later show, not long into the quarantine the disease was infecting more crew than passengers, who were hidden away in their cabins while the staff kept working.

For government officials and corporate leaders, the question of whether it was fair—or even safe—to quarantine the passengers but not the crew was obscured by the priority to keep the ship operational. And so the poor took care of the rich, and the citizens of less powerful nations served those from more powerful nations, and the Diamond Princess remained a miniaturized version of the global order—because what other way could things go?

Once all the passengers had been trained to stay in their rooms, Thakkar returned to her normal post at the gangway, where her main activity was now counting the infected passengers as they were escorted off the ship. Most of the infected walked to waiting ambulances, but some left on stretchers. On the eighth day of quarantine, she counted 39, bringing the total to 174. A native of the tropics, Thakkar had bundled up for the northern winter, but by the end of that shift, she was shivering—and coughing. She called the ship’s doctor, who ordered Thakkar to isolate herself in her windowless cabin.

Eventually, she tested negative, but her roommate was found to be positive and was taken away. Thakkar was left to worry what her own symptoms meant. She dreamed of home and the aloo paratha her mother made. On her phone, she scrolled through headlines about the virus’s dangers. Quarantines, it was becoming clear, are designed to protect only those on the outside—those on the inside have to fend for themselves.

Thakkar decided to take the situation into her own hands. She video-called an Indian news station. “We are requesting for help from Indian government,” she said in accented English, her face hidden by a surgical mask, her eyes bright with fear. She and other staff “do not want to stay in the same environment that we are, since we have found out there are coronavirus-infected people.”

Thakkar wasn’t the only one desperate enough to launch this kind of modern SOS, as a fellow Indian, a cook, had already been issuing video appeals via Facebook to the prime minister of India. Fuad, the Indonesian dishwasher, who was so resolute at the start, would also later beg his government to rescue him.

In making her plea, Thakkar joined hundreds of others broadcasting from the Diamond Princess, some with serious messages, others using their moment in the historical spotlight to write reviews of their every meal. Indeed, many passengers essentially streamed life on the inside with their smartphones. And what wasn’t being FaceTimed up close was being captured from afar by TV cameras set up onshore. Helicopters buzzed the ship and literal boatloads of journalists pulled alongside as international interest in the ordeal intensified. The world couldn’t look away because the coronavirus was now surfacing in scores of nations, and it was becoming clear that what Thakkar and the rest were suffering might provide a glimpse of what everyone would soon endure. Indeed, the number of Diamond Princess cases was exploding to such an extent that by day nine, when it reached 218, the ship had more cases than every nation in the world except China.

5. The Suite View

Six decks above where Thakkar was entombed, the Goldmans and the Jorgensens watched the drama unfold from their neighboring mini-suites. On their combined balcony, they had a view of men in hazmat suits marching passengers to ambulances, but it didn’t seem likely to them that they’d get sick. They were the kind of seniors who hit the gym rather than putting on pounds by the pool during cruises, who always took the stairs, and who still seemed to have more vigor than many people half their age.

Certainly the quarantine was an inconvenience: They had to frantically shuffle schedules and delegate business tasks back home. But they were able to work remotely, even if they had to wake up at 2 a.m. to account for the time difference. Otherwise, the quarantine had its bright spots: Fancy meals were dropped at their door, the balcony provided ample fresh air, and thanks to being in connected quarters, their best friends could come over whenever. Both couples’ suites contained two areas, each with its own TV, an essential convenience for the Goldmans, who could never agree on whether to watch sports (Carl Goldman) or the Hallmark Channel (Jeri Goldman) and would otherwise have (somewhat) jokingly bickered over the remote. Ultimately, the Americans recognized they were lucky, and they were determined to look on the bright side of things.

This mindful optimism was actually the origin of their friendship. The Goldmans and the Jorgensens had met about a decade before at a motivational life-coaching training. Together, all four now subscribed to a set of teachings that boiled down to “the law of nonresistance,” as they described it—fundamentally, making the best of the current moment. They had all used it to overcome the doldrums of middle age, and the Jorgensens taught a bit of it in their rehab center. Now, as Jerri Jorgensen said, “this is a chance for me to see if I’m ready to live what I’m teaching.”

To stay fit, they made an obstacle course and raced through their joined rooms, and they washed their laundry in the bathtub to reduce the workload on the crew. The four shared a similar, zany humor, and the husbands played goofballs to their deadpan wives to relieve everyone’s anxiety with laughter. Carl even began blogging his upbeat perspective of life on the ship: “My wife’s reaction to the toilet paper” being delivered “was like giving her a diamond ring.”

Unlike Thakkar, they never feared for their lives or livelihoods. They were healthy and had American passports and successful businesses, and a senator’s aide had personally assured them that their situation was being monitored. But as the four watched a movie on the evening of Valentine’s Day, not long before the quarantine was scheduled to end, Jerri Jorgensen became feverish. They didn’t call the ship’s medical center, figuring they’d see how she felt the next morning—and by then she was better.

Coincidentally, a knock rattled the door that morning. Several days earlier, the Jorgensens had been swabbed because Mark was taking immunosuppressants for a kidney transplant, putting him at increased risk for the coronavirus. Now the test results were being delivered by Japanese health workers in hazmat gear. They didn’t speak English, so they thrust a piece of paper toward Mark, showing a positive result. “Wow, okay, when do you need me?” Mark said. But the masked head shook no. It was Jerri Jorgensen who was being summoned. Jerri: a mountain biking and workout fanatic, who had her white hair done up in a fauxhawk, the Amigo who had always been the healthiest. On day 12, she became one of the 285 positives from the Diamond Princess.

Jerri wasn’t given long to load a backpack. She chose not to take anything sentimental—just her passport, wallet, some toiletries, and a book called The God Who Weeps. It taught an appropriate lesson for the time, she said, that “God is not this ruler with a magnifying glass, waiting for us to screw up so he can zap us, but sympathizes.”

It wasn’t an option for Mark to join her, and when the time came, Jerri told him, “See ya when I see ya,” trying to lighten the moment. Then, following the law of nonresistance, she let an ambulance bear her away, telling herself: Next adventure! She watched out the window as they drove four hours beyond Tokyo’s conurbation. The day darkened. Streetlights sharpened. She had no idea where she was being taken.

Not long after she left, the remaining Amigos found out that all of the 428 Americans aboard the “floating petri dish,” as Carl called it, were going to be evacuated by the United States government. Mark considered rejecting the offer, but eventually he and the Goldmans decided that there was no point in him waiting; he wouldn’t be able to see his wife in the hospital, anyway—and he could always fly back if she took a turn for the worse. For the first time, Carl’s lighthearted blog took on a dark tone. “We are shaken and devastated that we have been removed from our friend,” he wrote. “The next league of our journey may take days. I am uncertain when I will be able to post again.”

6. The Hot Zone

Even before the world’s attention fixated on the Diamond Princess, Dr. James Lawler knew what was coming. Lawler, a director at the Global Center for Health Security, had previously worked on pandemic preparedness in the White Houses of both George W. Bush and Barack Obama. As disturbing data had begun emerging from Wuhan, Lawler and numerous other infectious-disease experts and senior government officials had kept up a worried discussion on a private email chain titled “Red Dawn.” On January 28, while most of the world was oblivious to the exploding pandemic, Lawler had written darkly: “Great Understatements in History…Pompeii—‘a bit of a dust storm[,]’ Hiroshima—‘a bad summer heat wave[,]’ AND Wuhan—‘just a bad flu season.’ ”

But what, exactly, the federal government should do about the emerging pandemic, as well as the Americans trapped in increasingly dire straits on the Diamond Princess, was unclear. By early February, the Trump administration’s Coronavirus Task Force was debating responses to the spiraling catastrophe. The CDC recommended not bringing the American passengers home—the thinking being that they might carry the disease with them to the United States, which still had very few confirmed cases, and Japan could capably handle the quarantine.

Yardley Wong’s husband, Carlos Soto, and the couple’s young son on the ship’s deck during one of their rare moments outside of their cabin.

But as the number of infected ship guests exploded, one American passenger, Arnold Hopland, called his friend, Republican congressman Phil Roe of Tennessee. Hopland is a doctor, and his detailed testimony of the unfolding disaster convinced Roe that action needed to be taken. At a congressional briefing about the coronavirus, Roe managed to catch the attention of Robert Kadlec, a senior official in the Department of Health and Human Services, with promises of an “ace in the hole on this ship” who could offer “on-the-ground” intel.

An international conference call was arranged in which Roe and Hopland spoke with senior officials from the Trump administration, the CDC, and the State Department. From his room on the ship, Hopland made the case that he and other Americans could be safely repatriated and then quarantined in the United States. If they weren’t evacuated soon, he argued, they would be in danger. Congressman Roe backed Hopland up. “I’m an old country doctor,” said Roe, who once practiced as an ob-gyn, “and I was like, ‘Let’s get them off, or they’ll be infected.’ ” Kadlec and the others were convinced.

When the government decided to act, officials knew exactly whom to call: James Lawler, who combined years of scientific expertise with field experience in the world’s most dangerous hot zones. Along with a Harvard physician, Lawler took the reins of a squad of 15 professionals from Federal Disaster Medical Assistance Teams. Officials from the United States and Japan had already been discussing disaster-evacuation scenarios in preparation for the scheduled Summer Olympics in Tokyo. Now they activated those protocols to smooth the American medical team’s arrival. On Friday, February 14—around the same time Jerri Jorgensen was developing her fever—Lawler and his team assembled in the lobby of a Yokohama hotel.

Their plan was to test all the Americans aboard the Diamond Princess for the coronavirus—and then, 72 hours later, fly at least the uninfected ones out on chartered cargo jets. Those who tested positive would presumably be transferred to Japanese hospitals.

On Saturday morning, Lawler and three other American physicians followed a Japanese doctor onto the Diamond Princess. They were wearing special helmets and breathing oxygen fed from hoses via their hip-mounted respirators—high-end machines called PAPRs that Lawler considered so important that he had made a stopover in Los Angeles to acquire them on his way to Japan. But through his face shield, he watched their street-clothed guide “screwing around with” his surgical mask, surprised that another medical professional could be so cavalier.

As they marched through the cruise ship galleries—eerie as a circus turned into a crime scene—he noted that some of the Japanese health workers were not observing quarantine protocols. While a portion were outfitted in hazmat gear, others were simply wearing blue bonnets and surgical masks. He spotted passengers moving freely around some parts of the ship, and regularly clothed crew, wearing only masks, swabbing down the hallways. No wonder the disease had continued its wildfire spread. He began to worry about the Japanese health workers who were shuttling between the ship and the pier where the rest of his team waited. As soon as he disembarked, he warned the Americans to isolate themselves as best they could and to keep six feet away from the Japanese health care workers at all times.

Lawler wasn’t the only one who considered what he was seeing dangerous. Kentaro Iwata, an experienced Japanese virologist who visited the ship, later broadcast a video in which he described the quarantine as “completely inadequate in terms of infection controls.” Ultimately, at least six Japanese bureaucrats came down with the virus from the Diamond Princess, as did a Japanese health worker. And Japanese officials eventually acknowledged the quarantine was flawed.

On Saturday afternoon, Lawler learned that the evacuation planes previously scheduled to arrive Monday night were now going to be on the ground the next day—Sunday. His team’s ambitions to test everyone were reduced to making sure that all the passengers were healthy enough to endure long, uncomfortable flights home on cargo jets.

The next day, Sunday morning, Lawler’s response team divided into three units and spread out across the ship, checking the American passengers. Lawler estimated that he walked ten miles that day in his heavy gear. It was around 10 p.m. when Lawler tracked down the last American, in the crew quarters. When Lawler exited the Diamond Princess, his countrymen were filing off the ship in a cold rain, their luggage hauled toward a line of buses by Japanese in hazmat suits. Dozens of Americans decided to stay behind for various reasons, but those consenting to be evacuated were now headed to the airport.

As they left, Lawler rushed back to the hotel, packed, and then, together with the Harvard doctor, frantically searched the deserted streets for a taxi, worried they were delaying the evacuation flights. It was around 1 a.m. when they finally found a ride, and the cabbie earned a big tip by racing the wrong direction up one-way streets to the airport. But rather than missing their planes, the doctors found them empty, except for crew. Something was very, very wrong.

The confusing scene as the Amigos—now down to three—finally exit the ship and make their way to the airport for evacuation on a cargo jet .

7. The Goat Rodeo

The Amigos, reduced now to three, along with the 325 other American evacuees, were still waiting on the buses. They had spent three hours idling on the pier and then, once they drove to the airport, sat on the tarmac for two more hours. Now, as the delay extended into a sixth hour, the passengers were nearing revolt. They were exhausted. And more problematically for the largely elderly passengers: The buses had no bathrooms.

Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C., where it was still Sunday afternoon, the fate of the waylaid evacuees was being decided. Around the time the passengers were exiting the Diamond Princess, Japanese officials had blindsided their American counterparts with the news that some of the passengers boarding the buses had actually tested positive several days before. Soon many of the highest-level members of the Trump administration’s coronavirus response team, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, were arguing about what to do. Representatives from the CDC continued to fear spreading the virus. William Walters, the deputy chief medical officer for the State Department, wanted to bring everyone home anyway. Those urging the evacuation noted that the planes had been prepared with isolation units to contain the sick.

As the debate raged, the evacuees were demanding to be let off the buses, quarantine be damned, to find a bathroom. Carl was breathing so hard his masked breath fogged his glasses as he strained to control his bladder. Some seniors were crying. Finally, a few were allowed to relieve themselves in bottles beside the bus or were brought to a nearby terminal.

In the end, Walters and the State Department won the argument. Kadlec, the official from Health and Human Services, supported Walters and said later that “the notion of leaving Americans behind at that stage of the operation was not acceptable.” But the CDC, still worried about airlifting the virus to America, disagreed with the decision so vehemently that it refused to be named in the news release announcing it. (Officials from the CDC did not respond to multiple requests for comment.)

Finally, after the lengthy and complicated process of being cleared remotely by Japanese immigration, which contributed to the delay, the passengers rushed off the buses and made for the jets. From his vantage, waiting on one of the two planes, Lawler saw the incoming stampede of seniors. He had hoped for an orderly boarding, but instead the scene resembled “a goat rodeo,” he said, using a military term from his 20 years as a Navy doctor. “There was just chaos.”

As the crowd pressed onto the cargo plane, Lawler watched as sleep-deprived nonagenarians stumbled through rows of ancient airline seats, bolted into place across trip-hazard tracks that normally held pallets of supplies. Few people heeded his directions to sit. Instead, they fought toward four portable toilets that had been secured to the rear of each plane.

The holds of the toilets quickly filled; two soon reached capacity and were taped off. “The back of the plane just reeked,” said Mark. “People were throwing up back there. It was so disgusting.” Once in the air, Carl estimated, the line for the toilets on his plane ran about 50 people long and took 30 minutes to get through. Jeri Goldman said the “smell was unreal. We had to put ourselves under a blanket, it was so bad.” Jeri eventually escaped by knocking herself out with Benadryl, and Carl was so exhausted he fell asleep without aid.

But a few hours later, Carl woke, feverish. A temperature check, and then he was marched to the back of the plane, which had been cordoned off by a large plastic sheet, duct-taped to the fuselage. There he tried to ignore the coughs of the other passengers and the stench now emanating from right beside him.

Lawler was on the second plane, separate from the Three Amigos. During the 16 hours of flying, Lawler ministered to evacuees—continuing his two-day, nearly sleepless marathon of doctoring—and was not surprised when some started showing symptoms in the air. He had already guessed that many were still incubating, but once he had his orders that everyone was coming home, he thought this was for the best, given that America would have the capacity to quarantine and treat everyone effectively.

When the flights landed in America, CDC officials took over the care of the asymptomatic passengers, such as Mark, who deplaned and would be quarantined for two weeks on military installations. Meanwhile, the patients who’d tested positive at the last minute and mid-flight, as well as their spouses—including the Goldmans—continued on to Omaha, Lawler’s home base. When they arrived, Carl felt strong enough to deplane on foot, but he was instructed to get into a stretcher—which made for dramatic TV footage as he was wheeled across a tarmac packed with ambulances. Emergency vehicles convoyed the sick to the University of Nebraska Medical Center, where Carl was transferred into America’s only federal quarantine unit. Finally the goat rodeo could end, and Lawler and his team took command of every detail of his patients’ treatments. Still, he was forgiving of the improvised repatriation. “Overall, that’s a remarkable feat,” he said. “It was the best anyone could do, given the circumstances.”

8. Homecoming

Carl Goldman was sealed away in an isolation room on a special floor of a medical building in downtown Omaha. The unit had last been used during the Ebola outbreak of 2014 and soon housed more than a dozen of the most serious American cases from the Diamond Princess —approximately as many confirmed cases as there were in the rest of the country at the time. To access the negative-pressure ward, Lawler and other medical officials donned top-level protective gear—PAPRs, Tyvek jumpsuits, and double gloves—all the while being monitored by another staff member to ensure each step was properly performed. When they exited, they showered in a specialized room.

Most of the time Carl communicated with his doctors through a double-paned window or a computer monitor and microphone. It was by video that he was informed that he had been officially quarantined by a second government, his own. Carl’s experience of the disease was relatively mild—mostly a low fever and a cough—so he sweated and drank voluminous quantities of Gatorade while also trying to keep his life as normal as possible, keying away on his iPhone, calling into work, and resolutely updating his blog.

As Carl’s quarantine extended, the number of infections worldwide boomed exponentially—into the tens of thousands, then hundreds of thousands, and then, with the undiagnosed included, most likely into the millions.

Soon it was announced that two elderly passengers from the Diamond Princess had perished from the virus. Then a third. Then a sixth. “Our vacation,” Carl blogged, “has now turned beyond tragic.”

Carl Goldman is met by health care workers on the ground in Omaha after the lengthy evacuation flight from Japan.

A month blurred past. Carl’s fever faded, though it took longer for him to dislodge his cough. He paced, trying to regain his strength. As he improved, he was moved to a new room, which took him 14 steps to cross; eventually he was counting out 10,000 steps a day. He celebrated his 67th birthday with a cake slice topped by an unlit candle—no fire was allowed in the ward—and his doctors and nurses sang “Happy Birthday” over the camera feed. Lonely and homesick as Carl was, he considered himself fortunate, writing, “The blessing that tops the list is having total control of the television remote. That’s a first in my marriage.” As March progressed, he watched the coronavirus news constantly, trying to keep up with where the world was careening while he was in stasis.

Carl had long ago lost what the Four Amigos jokingly called “the Great Quarantine Race.” His wife, Jeri, had finished her quarantine nearby, but never tested positive, displaying a hardiness she attributed to a mushroom powder and four-times-a-week cryotherapy sessions. Before long, she was back in California, overseeing their radio station again, though feeling something like a leper, as her return sparked panic in their community.

The Jorgensens were also home. Jerri Jorgensen’s coronavirus infection had been luckily anticlimactic, and her greatest trial at the Japanese hospital occurred when Google mistranslated constipation while she was trying to communicate with her doctors. Once her 14 days were up, she flew home and was soon back to slickrock mountain biking. Not long after being quarantined on the military base, Mark Jorgensen had tested positive. He was airlifted to a hospital in Utah and then, as he had no adverse symptoms, eventually released to spend the rest of his quarantine at home, where he and Jerri cohabitated while wearing masks and staying six feet apart.

By the time Carl was released, in mid-March, the World Health Organization had declared the coronavirus a global pandemic. America’s longest-serving quarantinee was a different man from the one who’d left for his cruise—his hair grown shaggy as that of a prophet returning from the wilderness. When he arrived home, his dogs licked him and his wife hugged him, and the physical contact alone felt like winning the lottery. That night, Jeri handed Carl the TV remote, for the first time, he claims, in their entire marriage. He selected the nightly news, filled with predictions of economic depression, and of a death toll worse than any war. It wasn’t just that he’d changed; the world had changed too.

9. The Locked Church

By the time Carl left quarantine, Jan Swartz, the president of Princess Cruises, had spent weeks sleeping with her phone at hand. Her days of crisis management began early and ended late. From 6 a.m. to 11 p.m., she commanded the company's response from a situation room its California headquarters. Twice she flew to Japan to keep closer tabs on the operation and greet disembarking passengers. But even when the Diamond Princess was finally emptied in Yokohama, her trials continued.

In early March, an outbreak discovered aboard the Grand Princess required 2,000 passengers to be quarantined. Later that month, some 2,700 passengers who’d disembarked from another ship, the Ruby Princess, were asked by the Australian government to self-quarantine—at least 22 deaths would be connected to this outbreak, and a homicide detective would later be tasked with investigating whether the crew had misled authorities. (In a statement, Swartz said that Princess Cruises would cooperate, calling the inquiry “an opportunity for all to learn from this tragic event.”)

Reporters for Bloomberg Businessweek found that executives at Princess and Holland America Line—which are run by the same parent company, Carnival Corporation—kept ships sailing despite being aware of the coronavirus danger. Roger Frizzell, the chief communications officer for Carnival Corporation, said it was “utterly absurd to believe a cruise vacation company had any foresight that COVID-19 would become a global pandemic when…governments and experts around the world had no such insight at the time.” Cruise ships operated by other companies were similarly caught up in the crisis. Eventually, the CDC would find evidence of at least 25 ships incubating the coronavirus, and an investigation by the Miami Herald would link 2,592 infections and 65 deaths to cruise ship outbreaks, while emphasizing that the true number was probably higher.

In mid-March, the day after the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a worldwide pandemic, Swartz finally called a stop to all her cruises. Critics said the decision was long overdue. “We were making the decision as quickly as we could,” Swartz told me, “based on the information that we had.” Within a day, all other major cruise lines also called a halt. The cruise ship era had ground to a stop, and possibly ended forever, as the industry faces unprecedented legal and financial challenges.

Before long, Yardley Wong and her husband and son were settling back into a semi-normal version of life in Hong Kong—the whole family having dodged infection after their preemptive self-imposed quarantine. Hong Kong was successfully stamping out minor flare-ups of the virus, for after discovering its first case just three days after America found its own, it had quickly introduced many of the regulations that the United States would adopt only months later—social distancing, travel restrictions, and closing public institutions and schools. The decisive actions of Hong Kong and other places—such as Taiwan, South Korea, and New Zealand—meant they had just a tiny fraction of the cases in America. Their quick efforts had actually been informed by insights drawn from the Diamond Princess: As the ship became a self-contained floating experiment, it provided the world’s best data set on the virus, confirming crucial facts about how the disease spread, especially through asymptomatic carriers.

In late March, the CDC reported that out of the Diamond Princess ’s 3,711 passengers and crew, 712 had tested positive. Eleven Americans were still hospitalized in Japan. Nine people had died. These numbers were infinitesimal compared with the vast casualties steadily accumulating across the globe, but these were a few of the original germs from which a huge tragedy would grow.

Most regions were not dealing with their outbreaks as successfully as Hong Kong, especially America. “We’re prepared, and we’re doing a great job with it,” President Trump declared on March 10. “Just stay calm. It will go away.” Two days later, Lawler wrote to numerous senior government officials on the “Red Dawn” email chain and desperately urged implementation of stronger virus-control measures, similar to what “has worked in Hong Kong.” The 80-page email chain, first quoted in the New York Times, documents in extraordinary detail the White House’s failure to heed numerous warnings in time to stop the virus. “We are making every misstep leaders initially made…at the outset of pandemic planning in 2006,” Lawler declared. “We have thrown 15 years of institutional learning out the window and are making decisions based on intuition,” he wrote, predicting catastrophe. During his time working for Bush and Obama, Lawler had participated in simulations of similar pandemic scenarios, and what he was seeing now, he told me, was “kind of like watching a movie that you’ve watched before.”

When the time came for Captain Arma to leave the ship, the Diamond Princess was empty. Thakkar, Fuad, and many other crew members had been airlifted home by their governments—though long after the American evacuation, and only after they issued more pleas on social media.

Before bidding goodbye to the ship, Arma had stood alone on the glass-walled bridge. The normally stoic captain was emotional. He had been with the boat since it was built and had guided it safely through every storm, until this one. He felt like he understood what he called her “beautiful soul.”

One last time, he switched on the P.A., in order to speak to the ship itself. It wasn’t her fault, he told her. He promised that they would see each other again, and he wished her a good night, his words echoing in the vacant galleries and cabins. They had done their best, he and his ship—and like all good captains, he was the last person to leave. As he strode off the gangway in his crisp uniform, he was the very image of debonair fortitude. Except his true expression was hidden behind a protective mask.

It was a mid-March night when he returned to his seaside Italian hometown. Everything was locked down; the streets were deserted. At Italy’s overwhelmed hospitals, hundreds of patients were perishing every day. Arma asked his driver to stop at an ancient basilica, which held an icon that had succored seafarers for millennia, through medieval and modern plagues. In times like this, what more could a man do? The Catholic captain bowed his head, and outside the locked church, he prayed. For himself and his family. For the souls of his former passengers. For the dead, and for those still living.

Doug Bock Clark is a GQ correspondent.

A version of this story originally appears in the June/July 2020 issue.

They’d come to New Zealand’s Whakaari / White Island, a rugged fantasyland and active volcano, for stunning selfies and the thrill of danger. Then the worst-case scenario happened.

By Joshua Hammer

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CRUISE NIGHTMARE: Freestone County family recovering physically and financially from onshore accident in Mexico

WACO, Texas (KWTX) - Summer is peak season for cruise trips, but one family from Freestone County ended up in an emergency room in Mexico during their summer Carnival cruise, which was only the beginning of their nightmare.

The Daniels family spent over $50,000 in cash to pay for medical care in a Cozumel hospital and a private flight to the U.S. required by the Mexican government.

This all started when Michael and Navlet Daniels got into a motor scooter accident during one of the onshore excursions as a part of a Carnival cruise.

Michael said the scooter was worn and in bad condition which was a reason he and his wife got in the accident.

However, Carnival says they are not responsible for any passenger’s safety when they leave the ship, including excursions.

“Guests engage in all such activities off the ship at their own risk,” according to Carnival’s additional terms and conditions for shore excursions on their website.

The Daniels were taken to an emergency room in Cozumel, and their son, Michael Daniels Jr., and daughter, Fruncheska Jenkins, eventually showed up as soon as they could.

Jenkins said she noticed that her father’s arm was injured and her mother was lying on her back, fading in and out of consciousness, not receiving any care or medical attention from doctors. As a nurse herself, Jenkins took charge and asked for a screening and tests.

However, the doctors demanded thousands of dollars in cash before proceeding with the screening and tests.

While she thought that was unusual, Michael Jr. got the cash and gave it to the doctors.

They said one doctor manipulated with Michael’s injured arm without pain medications.

But, soon, they were told they had to have a passport to stay with their parents. Jenkins did not have a passport with her on the trip, and Michael Jr.’s passports were on the ship. The ship was already waiting on them for about 30 minutes when Jenkins and Michael Jr. had to make a quick decision.

“He [a Carnival emergency manager] was like, ‘I’m responsible for 8,000 other people that pay money, so we are not waiting for you to gather your documents for your family,’ Michael Jr. said a Carnival cruise emergency manager said to him. “I was shocked.”

Michael Jr. was able to get his documents to be able to stay with his family, but Jenkins said she had to leave her parents behind.

After being forced to leave her injured parents in a foreign country, she said the trip back to the ship only made things worse.

“All of the people that have a balcony view from their room, they can see me coming down the long pier to get to the boat,” Jenkins said. “I hear the people yelling at me, ‘Hurry up! Run faster! You’re only 40 minutes late! At that point, I was very tearful because I just left my family, I don’t even really know what’s going to happen from there.”

She said the Carnival team shut the door immediately after she stepped on board and went back to work. She did say that some employees walked her to her room and said to let them know if she needed anything.

Meanwhile, Michael Jr. was with his parents. He said that the doctors at the hospital wanted to do surgery on Navlet, but he wanted to fly them back to America so that doctors there could do the surgery.

“Once the boat left, the hospital director told me, ‘Well, the only way to get back now is to get some money, and maybe they will fly you back across, you’re going to have to talk to the government,” Michael Jr. said.

He thought this meant an airline ticket, but he said the director told him that he would have to pay the Mexican government to rent one of their private planes because of Michael and Navlet’s conditions.

The hospital director, who had a friend in the government, told Michael Jr. that the flight would be $34,000.

“At this point, I’m desperate,” he said.

Michael Jr. got the price down to $28,000 and had to pay it in cash. In order for the hospital to release his parents, he had to pay an additional $11,000 to the hospital after paying several thousands of dollars for other procedures and care.

But, Michael Jr. was not in the clear yet. He said he had to pay $600 more because they had temporary passports. He also had to pay for other documents and stamps for money.

“I felt like it was all about, ‘let’s just see how much money we can get out of this family before we fly them back,” he said.

Once he and his parents finally got to the plane after more hurdles, they had to sit in the heat inside the plane for almost an hour until the government gave the pilot permission, but the government told him his documents were incorrect.

“Look, I’m out of money,” Michael Jr. said. “We’re just going to have to sit on this plan until they stamp whatever documents they need to fix.”

After waiting 30 minutes, the plane took off. It did not have air conditioning and was over 100 degrees.

“I look at the pilot, and he just was sweat dripping down his arms,” he said. “I look at my mom, and she is hot.”

Her oxygen levels were going down, but Michael Jr. said the medics acted like they did not know what to do.

“I asked them, ‘How long have you been a doctor?” Michael said. “He said he has been learning from hands-on experience. He had no schooling.”

There were not educated doctors on the flight, but, eventually, the Daniels finally made it to America.

Michael Jr. said, when they got to the hospital, the injuries were worse than they thought.

Now, the Daniels are at Jenkins’ house recovering, but they are unsure how they will recover financially.

The Daniels have recommendations for anyone who plans on taking an international cruise.

Michael recommended to check any equipment you use during excursions in foreign countries because he said it is sometimes not the greatest quality.

Navlet recommended always traveling internationally with your passport and important documents you would need in an emergency.

Jenkins hopes to spread awareness of her family’s experience because, while it is rare, she never imagined this happening during her family cruise vacation.

“You don’t plan on getting into a bad accident or anything like that when you go on vacation, but, on the off chance that it does happen, you’re in this other country,” Jenkins said. “I mean, you’re stuck in an ER, and receive the type of care that they received, it honestly just sucks to see something so inhumane.”

Jenkins started a gofundme for her parents and brother to help them recover financially.

Copyright 2022 KWTX. All rights reserved.

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Cruise ship nightmare: After measles, norovirus outbreaks, why does anyone still set sail?

I took my 5-year-old to see the live-action version of "The Lion King" last weekend. While we were waiting for the film to begin, we were subjected to a commercial for Disney's cruise line, sold as a family-friendly excursion with your favorite Disney characters. My son, of course, was ready to go tomorrow. I didn't have the heart to tell him that, as my child, he's never getting on one of those things.

I know plenty of people love cruises. The convenience of seeing a variety of places without having to plan them individually; the all-inclusive meals; the variety of entertainment options; and for those with kids, the special activities provided for youngsters. I get it. But as an individual trained in microbiology and infectious diseases, what I see when contemplating such an excursion is the potential to be trapped with thousands of others in a confined space, suffering from gastrointestinal aliments like norovirus and E. coli , respiratory infections including influenza and chickenpox , or, as a recent Scientology cruise demonstrated, measles . And that just doesn't sound like a fun vacation to me.

Granted, I could become ill via any type of travel, or even via a staycation with my kindergartener. But cruise ships take those risks of background infection and amplify them.

This is hardly a secret: Just this week it was reported that inspectors from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention gave the Carnival ship “Fantasy” one of the company’s worst ever sanitation inspection reports. (The Carnival Corp. & PLC made close to $19 billion in full revenues in 2018.)

Granted, I could become ill via any type of travel, or even via a staycation with my kindergartener. But cruise ships take those risks of background infection and amplify them due to the constant shared quarters of travelers onboard. The ships are notoriously difficult to clean when a case of norovirus is diagnosed. And norovirus is so infectious that it's almost impossible to avoid in close quarters — a mere 10 viral particles is enough to make someone sick. I've suffered through a travel-related norovirus illness alone in a hotel before and it was horrible. I can't even imagine how much worse it would have been if I was sharing that tiny room (and that nasty virus) with my family.

While norovirus is the key cruise ship pathogen, other stomach bugs can proliferate as well. Among the violations reported on Carnival’s “Fantasy,” for example, included “brown water discharged from two shower hoses in the medical center.” The medical center! The main pool gutters on the 855-foot ship were also not functioning correctly: “There was a visible film on the top of the water, and there was excessive visible debris floating on the water.”

And inspectors observed a general lack of attention to food safety throughout, including deficiencies “related to food equipment and facilities, protection of food and clean items, handling of waste and soiled items, food employee knowledge, and food employee managerial control.” Utensils for the buffets were stored in soiled water, or dirty ones were added in with clean utensils; water was leaking onto containers of vegetables; sneeze guards were missing or improperly used; breads with visible fly contamination were reused; and on and on.

Seriously, I’ll pass.

While this most recent inspection may be an outlier, the CDC investigates an average of 12 to 13 gastrointestinal disease outbreaks on cruise ships each year , monitored by the Vessel Sanitation Program ( VSP ). And while I can readily avoid local restaurants that have poor ratings from food inspections, once you're on the ship, you're basically stuck when it comes to dining options.

Have a response to a THINK piece that would make a good letter to the editor? Click here to find out how.

And the purview of the VSP is gastrointestinal infections — not all infections. Respiratory infections very likely go under-reported for a variety of reasons , including lack of diagnostic capabilities on the ship, and a lack of knowledge by employees or passengers that such illnesses should be reported to health officials. Such infections could easily be transmitted on the ship, and because their incubation period may be days or weeks, could go undiagnosed until after you return home.

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I realize that in the bigger picture, most cruise travelers will be just fine. The CDC notes : “From 2008 to 2014, 74 million passengers sailed on cruise ships in the Vessel Sanitation Program’s jurisdiction. Only 129,678 passengers met the program’s case definition for acute gastrointestinal illness and only a small proportion of those cases (1 in 10) were part of a norovirus outbreak.”

But personally, I’d rather not take the risk. (There’s also the small but very real chance you could get stranded, fall overboard or spend the trip without working plumbing.) For those of you who are cruise lovers and want to know how your ship rates, you can check the vessel’s inspection history before you book or travel to see if they have a history of brown water or fly-bagels. For those of you who abstain like myself, I'll still see you at the beach — I'll just drive or fly there instead.

Tara C. Smith is a professor of epidemiology at Kent State University, where she studies infectious disease. 

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Cruise tragedies: 4 times passengers fell overboard, turning vacations into nightmares

One cruise passenger was rescued on thanksgiving after being in the ocean nearly a day.

Passenger details nightmare on cruise ship: 'We felt trapped'

Kathleen Meenan, a passenger on Carnival Sunshine, shares how the ship was battered by 80 mph winds and rough waters on 'America Reports.'

The peak season for cruises is underway with many families eager to plan short getaways while kids are on summer vacation.

While cruise ships have made major advancements in passenger safety, an average of 19 people have fallen overboard per year between 2009 and 2019, according to a report from the Cruise Lines International Association. Of those who've fallen overboard, only a small number are rescued.

Here's a look at some recent incidents involving passengers falling overboard:

MAN FALLS FROM CRUISE SHIP OFF FLORIDA COAST: 'LIFE OF THE PARTY'

May 29, 2023

Ronnie Lee Peale Jr., 35, fell overboard from the Carnival Magic cruise ship May 29 around 186 miles east of Jacksonville, Florida.

Ronnie Lee Peale Jr. (GoFundMe)

A spokesperson for Carnival Cruise Lines told Fox News Digital security video shows the man leaning over the railing of his balcony and falling into the water at 4:10 a.m. Later that afternoon, his companion reported him missing, according to the spokesperson.

A GoFundMe created by Peale's fiancée, Jennilyn Blosser, says it was his "first cruise."

"We went on a cruise to celebrate my birthday and sadly he went overboard and still has not been recovered. Please keep our family in your prayers and thanks for your support. This was Ronnie’s first cruise and thankfully he had a great time and made plenty of friends. He is our social butterfly that was always on the move and loved to make friends with everyone," Blosser wrote.

COAST GUARD SUSPENDS SEARCH FOR MAN WHO FELL OVERBOARD FROM CARNIVAL CRUISE SHIP NEAR FLORIDA

Cruise ship Carnival Magic departing Port Canaveral, Fla. (Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

The Coast Guard suspended its search June 1 after searching more than 5,171 square miles.

"The Seventh Coast Guard District dispatched multiple search and rescue assets as soon as we were notified of the missing person. Our command center watchstanders provided search patterns to cutter crews and air crews who actively searched from Monday through Wednesday evening," Lt. Cmdr. Christopher Hooper, Coast Guard District Seven search and rescue mission coordinator, said in a statement. 

VIRGIN CRUISE PASSENGER FALLS FROM BALCONY AND LATER DIES

April 2, 2023

A passenger onboard the Virgin Voyages Valiant Lady died after falling from a balcony April 2, according to a spokesperson for the company.

"Yesterday evening, shortly after departure, there was a medical emergency involving one of our passengers," the spokesperson said. "This passenger went over their balcony onto a lower deck and, despite receiving immediate medical attention, has passed away."

Virgin Voyages Valiant Lady moored at Liverpool Cruise Terminal (Peter Byrne/PA Images via Getty Images)

Following the incident, the ship returned to its departure port in Miami, Florida.

"We are deeply saddened by this loss of life, and our hearts and thoughts are with this person’s loved ones," the Virgin Voyages spokesperson said.

COAST GUARD SUSPENDS SEARCH FOR MISSING AUSTRALIAN CRUISE PASSENGER WHO WENT OVERBOARD HAWAII-BOUND SHIP

April 26, 2023

An Australian passenger onboard Royal Caribbeans Quantum of the Seas went missing after going overboard April 25.

The U.S. Coast Guard received a report regarding a missing person around 11:03 p.m. April 25, and the cruise remained within the area where the person went overboard to search for two hours before resuming the cruise.

The Coast Guard said the search was being conducted 500 miles south of Kailua-Kona, Big Island.

In this March 14, 2020, file photo, a Royal Caribbean International cruise ship is docked at PortMiami in Miami.   (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson, File)

Kevin Cooper, a search and rescue mission coordinator for the Joint Rescue Coordination Center Honolulu, said April 27 the search was suspended.

"After reviewing all relevant information of the case and discussing it with the next of kin, the Coast Guard has made the difficult decision to suspend the active search for the passenger aboard the Quantum of the Seas," Cooper said.

November 23, 2022

James Grimes went overboard from the Carnival Valor cruise ship just one day before Thanksgiving Nov. 23, 2022, according to WWL.

He was reported missing after leaving a bar to use the restroom close to 11 p.m.

FOX 8 New Orleans reported the missing passenger was rescued around 8:25 p.m. Thanksgiving night after going missing nearly a day.

He was discovered around 20 miles south of the Southwest Pass, which is a channel south of Louisiana located at the mouth of the Mississippi River.

CARNIVAL CRUISE SHIP PASSENGER HAD SECONDS LEFT 'BEFORE WE LOST HIM COMPLETELY,' COAST GUARD DIVER SAYS

The Coast Guard airlifted a Carnival cruise ship passenger who fell overboard into the Gulf of Mexico Thursday.  (Coast Guard)

U.S. Coast Guard aviation survival technician Richard Hoefle told WWL Grimes had little energy left when he was found.

"Mr. Grimes had nothing left. He had no energy. He had nothing left to give," Hoefle said. "My best guess is that he had between a minute and 30 seconds left before we lost him completely." 

Fox News' Louis Casiano, Greg Wehner, and Greg Norman contributed to this report.

Adam Sabes is a writer for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to [email protected] and on Twitter @asabes10.

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The Real Stories Behind Scary Cruise Disasters

Need to get away from it all? Want to take a vacation from your problems? Well, perhaps you should book passage on a cruise ship . Or then again ... perhaps not. Cruise ships are basically floating disaster zones just waiting to happen, and over the years, thousands of unlucky passengers and crew members have found themselves at the mercy of pirates, nature, and incompetent captains.

The Carnival Triumph cruise from hell

The Carnival Triumph was anything but. On February 10, 2013, a fire broke out in one of the engine rooms, knocking out the ship's power and condemning the 3,143 passengers to endure the cruise from hell. The blaze began courtesy of a leaky fuel line, and making things worse, only four of the Triumph 's six generators were working in the first place. Now, they were all fried, and the boat found itself without some pretty basic amenities, such as air conditioning, working lights, and a functional sewer system.

This is where the story starts to get pretty nasty. Stuck at sea for five days, the passengers were forced to use biohazard bags to store their, well, waste. According to reports, the decks were jam-packed with these bags. The stench coupled with the heat made things absolutely unbearable. Hoping for some sort of reprieve, the passengers camped out on the open decks and hallways, desperate for a bit of cool air.

Eventually, four tugboats towed the so-called "poop cruise" from its position off the Yucatan Peninsula to Mobile, Alabama. Although, there were a few hiccups, with a tow line and some tugboat equipment breaking along the way. As to why the cruise line didn't have the passengers switch over to another ship, that scenario would've been much too risky. In the grand scheme of things, five days isn't too long to wait for a safe trip home, even if the smell is unbearable.

Hoping to make up for the nightmare, the cruise line gave its passengers a refund, an extra $500 per person, and best of all, a free future cruise . We can't say for sure, but chances are good most people didn't take them up on that offer.

The attack on the Seabourn Spirit

Modern-day pirates are not a jolly bunch. Instead of peglegs and parrots, they're notorious for packing AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs). Many of these 21st century buccaneers work out of Somalia, looting any ship that tries to sneak by. And in November 2005, a group of Somali pirates decided it was a good idea to attack the Seabourn Spirit, a cruise ship carrying around 300 people. But as the cutthroats approached their target, they quickly realized they'd picked the wrong ship.

The Seabourn Spirit was heading for Mombasa, Kenya , when the crew noticed two boats were heading their direction. That's when Ship Security Officer Michael Groves went into superhero mode. The 41-year-old ex-cop ran up on deck and was almost immediately knocked down by an RPG blast. After making sure he still had all his digits, he fired at the pirates with a high-powered hose, forcing the Somalis to back off.

Of course, the pirates weren't giving up so easily, and soon they were back for round two. This time, the liner's Master of Arms, a Gurkha named Som Bahadur Gurung, decided to go sci-fi on the swashbucklers. Under fire, Gurung tried to blast the pirates with a Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD), a sonic cannon that can cause serious hearing damage. But as he tried to fire, Gurung took a bullet, dropping him instantly. Fortunately, Groves pulled his comrade to safety and began firing the LRAD at the pirates, causing the outlaws to beat a hasty retreat.

For their bravery, Groves and Gurung were presented to Queen Elizabeth , who awarded Groves with the Queen's Gallantry Medal and Gurung with the Queen's Commendation for Bravery. They also found themselves armed with one great story to tell at parties.

The hijacking of Le Ponant

A swanky ship called Le Ponant was between jobs and only carrying its 30 crew members when it sailed through the Gulf of Aden in 2008. The Gulf is prime pirate territory, so the crew readied itself accordingly, with pirate-repelling fire hoses and lookouts at port and starboard. Before the ship could make it safely out of the Gulf, it was attacked by a team of eight pirates.

When he spotted the pirate crafts coming his way, Captain Patrick Marchesseau ordered the crew to prepare for battle, but the veteran pirates expertly avoided his fire hoses and line traps (meant to tangle up their motors). Pulling up alongside the ship, the Somalis hooked a ladder to the side of the boat, and when Le Ponant 's doctor tried to knock the ladder off, the pirates began firing their machine guns. Soon, the Somalis were in charge, and the situation was made even more intense because the pirates were high on a stimulant called khat.

Luckily, the jittery pirates were only interested in money, and they directed Marchesseau to head for Somalia. Thinking on his feet, Marchesseau surreptitiously phoned CMA CGM, the Marseille-based company that owned Le Ponant , to let them know about the hijacking. Soon, the situation was being monitored by both the French and Canadian militaries , but this didn't deter the pirates for even one second.

As planned, Le Ponant anchored off the coast of Somalia, and soon, there were approximately 30 thugs on board, discussing how much ransom money they should demand. The pirates figured the crew was worth $3 million, but the folks at CMA CGM actually began haggling with the Somalis, convincing them to lower their price to $2.15 million. When all was said and done, the Somalis exchanged their prisoners for cash, and most of the outlaws escaped.

However, French helicopters chased down one vehicle carrying at least three confirmed pirates, and after shooting out the engine, the Somalis were taken into custody. Unfortunately, these three only possessed a fraction of the ransom money. The rest of the pirate band had disappeared, vanishing with the haul of a lifetime.

The disappearance of Rebecca Coriam

When you board a Disney cruise ship, you're hoping to find the happiest place on the ocean. But in 2011, things went from magical to mysterious when a Disney employee seemingly vanished off the face of the Earth.

Rebecca Coriam was a Youth Activity worker on Disney Wonder , a cruise ship taking tourists down the coast of Mexico. On March 22, 2011, the 24-year-old British citizen was caught on CCTV footage, talking on the telephone, appearing quite distraught. After hanging up and walking away, it was like Coriam stepped into another dimension. Hours later, after failing to report for work, Disney officials began searching the boat, but to no avail. Soon, both Mexican and American authorities were notified, and as Disney Wonder was registered in the Bahamas, a Bahamian official was sent to investigate.

The results were inconclusive. According to the investigator, it's likely Coriam was knocked off Deck Five of the ship by a wave. However, there's no CCTV footage of anyone falling overboard. Plus, journalist Jon Ronson wrote that it was unlikely she fell off Deck Five as a high steel wall would've prevented any such accident. And while some theorize she committed suicide, there are others—including high-ranking British politicians—who believe Coriam was murdered and possibly sexually assaulted. Some have even alleged that Disney knew of the killing and kept it quiet.

As for Coriam's family, they still hold out hope that Coriam is alive somewhere , but while they asked both the FBI and President Barack Obama for assistance, there haven't been any concrete answers. In 2016, the family reached an undisclosed settlement with Disney, perhaps ending the entire, enigmatic saga. Although there is one bit of additional info which makes the story stranger still: two months after after Rebecca Coriam disappeared, someone used her credit card.

The sinking of the SS Arctic

It was September 1854, and the steam-powered SS Arctic had recently left England, full of American tourists returning home. Near the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, the ship found itself plowing through dense fog, and instead of slowing down, Captain James Luce gave his paddle steamer, well, more steam.

As an employee of the Collins Line, Luce was simply following company policy. The idea was the faster you go, the sooner you're out of the fog. Evidently, the captain aboard the Vesta , a French steamer, had a similar idea, so the two ships were going pretty fast when they rammed into one another.

At first, everyone thought the Vesta was in worse trouble, so passengers began paddling to the Arctic for safety. But it quickly became apparent that the iron-huddled French ship had absolutely destroyed the Arctic 's wooden hull. As the American ship turned on its side, Luce ordered the ship to head for land, but as it chugged along, the boat quickly filled up with water. Soon, the Atlantic Ocean had washed into the furnaces, leaving the Arctic dead in the water.

That's when things descended into anarchy. The crew freaked out and abandoned most of the passengers, escaping in the lifeboats, and in the ensuing madness, many of these boats were capsized or destroyed. Now, the numbers are fuzzy, but of the approximately 400 people on board, it seems less than 90 survived. None of the women and children made it off the boat alive.

As you might've guessed, this tragedy marked the beginning of the end for the Collins Line, and perhaps the idea of Victorian gallantry, as well. If chivalry is dead, then maybe the SS Arctic killed it.

The Eastland tragedy

In 1912, the RMS Titanic famously struck an iceberg and went down in the North Atlantic. In total, 829 passengers were lost at sea. Then in 1915, in another well-known tragedy, the RMS Lusitania was torpedoed by a German submarine, claiming the lives of 785 passengers. But just a few weeks later, the SS Eastland topped both the Titanic and the Lusitania in a horrific accident that ended with hundreds of passengers floating lifelessly in Lake Michigan.

The date was July 24, and it was supposed to be a great day for the employees of the Western Electric Company. The Eastland had been chartered to ferry workers and their families from Chicago to a nice park across the lake, where they could spend the day eating, playing, and hanging out with friends and relatives.

In total, there were over 2,500 people aboard the ship, and on top of that, the Eastland was loaded down with lifeboats ... too many lifeboats. Even worse, all this extra weight was stored in the upper decks of the ship, making the Eastland incredibly top-heavy. Throw into the mix that the ship had a history of a nearly capsizing, and now you've got a surefire recipe for disaster.

According to Smithsonian magazine, the vessel began to list before it was even untied from the dock. In a matter of minutes, the Eastland had turned on its side, causing complete mayhem. Water began flooding into the ship, passengers were forced to dodge pianos and refrigerators—some unsuccessfully—and almost everyone on the upper decks was hurled into Lake Michigan. In total, 844 passengers died that fateful day, an absolute tragedy made worse because around 75% of the victims were younger than 25-years-old.

The Costa Concordia disaster

You know how the captain is supposed to go down with his ship? Evidently, Francesco Schettino didn't get that memo. In January 2012, the Italian captain was in charge of the Costa Concordia  (above), a ship carrying over 4,000 people . As the vessel passed the Tuscan island of Giglio, Schettino decided to get a closer look. Like, a lot closer.

Evidently, the captain steered the ship so close to the island that the Costa Concordia was less than 1,000 feet away from land. According to Schettino, he meant this as a respectful "salute" to Giglio. According to authorities, he was actually trying to impress his girlfriend .

Whatever the reason, the Costa Concordia ran into trouble when it smashed into a rock. As Popular Mechanics put it, the wreck left a hole the length of an "Olympic-size swimming pool" in the port side. The ocean began flooding in, killing the generators and causing the vessel to list. Schettino then ordered the crew to tell the passengers they were simply having electrical issues. The crew complied, but in fairness, most of them didn't know what was happening either.

Eventually, the Costa Concordia hit the shore and began to seriously roll. It was here—over an hour after hitting the rock—that Schettino ordered an evacuation. This was no easy task, as the passengers hadn't yet been told where to find the lifeboats. Complicating things further, the ship was seriously tilted, making escape difficult. But then, in a shocking turn of events, Schettino sailed away in a lifeboat, leaving hundreds of passengers behind.

In total, 32 people died in the disaster, and Captain Schettino was found guilty of manslaughter. He was sentenced to 16 years behind bars , possibly for trying to wow his girlfriend. We're pretty sure she wasn't impressed.

The Achille Lauro hijacking

It was October 1985, and the Italian cruise ship, Achille Lauro , was floating near Alexandria, Egypt, when four passengers pulled out machine guns and took over the boat. They were members of the Palestine Liberation Front, and they wanted the state of Israel to free 50 Palestinian militants. If Israel didn't comply, they threatened to kill all the American and British citizens on board, and if anyone tried to stop them, they would blow up the ship.

The terrorists then ordered the ship to sail for Syria, but when the Syrian government refused to let them dock, the militants decided it was time to send a message. The group grabbed a 69-year-old Jewish-American, wheelchair-bound man named Leon Klinghoffer, shot him in the head and tossed him over the side of the ship. Shortly after the execution, Egyptian officials convinced the group to surrender, in exchange for an airplane ride to freedom. But before the terrorists could make their escape, American fighter jets forced their getaway plane to land at a NATO base in Sicily.

While they'd committed murder, the terrorists all got off with surprisingly light sentences. Three were given between 15 to 30 years in prison, while the fourth was convicted separately from the bunch because he was a minor. Believe it or not, the whole bloody incident inspired an opera called The Death of Klinghoffer which raised quite a bit of controversy when it finally made its way to the stage. Yeah, ya think?

The SS Morro Castle fire

When the Morro Castle set sail in September 1934, it was cruising straight into disaster. First, Captain Robert Wilmott mysteriously died of a " heart attack and nervous stomach ." Then, with unprepared Acting Captain William Warms in charge, the ship was hit by a violent gale. Making things worse, as winds battered the ship, a fire broke out in the Morro Castle 's writing room. Soon, the blaze spread across the vessel, devastating the ship and killing 135 people.

Shortly after the fire, the Morro Castle ran aground on the New Jersey shore, but in the middle of all the tragedy, a hero emerged from the ashes. His name was George White Rogers, and he served as the ship's chief radio engineer. As smoke billowed across the ship, he sat at his radio and bravely sent out SOS distress messages. After the fire, Rogers became something of a national hero and even spoke about his heroic actions on Broadway. But if you dig a little deeper, it turns out that Rogers might not be so courageous after all.

You see, Rogers was something of a lifelong criminal . Before stepping on the Morro Castle , he was a rapist, a thief, and a dog-poisoner. Afterward, he tried opening a radio store in Bayonne, New Jersey, but when the enterprise proved to be unsuccessful, the store mysteriously burned down. Next, he got a gig working as a radioman at the Bayonne Police Department, but he was arrested after trying to murder a coworker with an explosive device. Then after he was released from prison, Rogers took a loan from a man named William Hummel, and when the guy wanted his money back, Rogers murdered both Hummel and his daughter with a sledgehammer.

In 1954, the hero of the Morro Castle was sentenced to life in prison, though he died after four years behind bars. His passing left a great number of questions unanswered. Did this psychotic criminal set fire to the Morro Castle ? Did he murder Captain Robert Wilmott? It seems we may never know for sure.

But the answer is yeah, probably.

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Cruise turns into nightmare as powerful storm floods ship and leaves passengers vomiting

Vacation dreams turned to nightmares for some Carnival Cruise Line passengers when torrential rains flooded the ship over the weekend.

Carnival Sunshine was returning to Charleston on Saturday after a six-day Bahamas cruise when the ship was set upon by a storm . Torrential rains flooded the hallways of the ship and rough sea conditions made some passengers nauseous.

"You could smell people being sick walking down the halls," one passenger told The Daily Mail .

A Carnival representative said all of the passengers were safe during the incident.

"Carnival Sunshine's return to Charleston was impacted by the weather and rough seas on Saturday. Guests on board the ship were safe. Our medical staff helped a small number of guests and crew members who needed minor assistance," the company told WCIV . "The weather's prolonged impact on the Charleston area delayed the ship's arrival on Sunday, and as a result, the next voyage's embarkation was also delayed. We appreciate the patience and understanding of all our guests."

Some guests who experienced the voyage seemed more frustrated than patient.

"We didn't wait it out. We sailed right into [the storm] and spent 11 hours pitching, diving, and rolling," Sharon Tutrone, a professor at Coastal Carolina University and a passenger on board the Carnival Sunshine said on Twitter. "We were surrounded by lightning and the ship took a huge hit by a wave and sounded like it split in two."

In a follow-up tweet, she tagged Carnival and suggested that "maybe you should have a pilot onboard so we didn't have to sit and drift for 6 hours waiting."

After 14 hours of high winds, rain and massive waves. The ship took a hit from a wave that sounded like the ship split in two. The @Carnival Sunshine is finally in Charleston. @Carnival maybe you should have a pilot onboard so we didn’t have to sit and drift for 6 hours waiting. — Sharon Tutrone (@SHARONTUTRONE) May 27, 2023

The aftermath aboard Carnival Sunshine after a severe storm. The crew from Deck 0-4 evacuated to the theater, and anywhere they could rest… the crew bar destroyed. pic.twitter.com/MqsDJYvrSG — Crew Center (@CrewCenter) May 28, 2023

Photos from the ship showed water rushing down hallways and stairwells, and on-board shops that look as though they've been ransacked due to the force of the storm.

Another traveler, Daniel Taylor, told The Daily Mail he went to see a show at an onboard venue shortly after the captain announced the ship would be traveling through inclement weather.

He recalled hearing the sound of the ship smashing against huge swells audible over the music.

"Stage lights mounted on the ceiling began to shake, the disco ball started swinging and the LED wall on the stage," which he estimated to be approximately 20ft wide and 3oft tall, "began rolling side by side on its own."

By 8pm on Friday evening the ship's crew began evacuating public decks. During the overnight hours between Friday and Saturday, the passengers lost internet connection, removing their ability to watch the weather on their own.

At 7:30am the next day, the cruise director reportedly confirmed to the passengers that the ship was at the harbour but needed to wait to dock.

The ship was finally docked again at 5:30pm on Saturday night, approximately nine hours past schedule.

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Inside Carnival cruise nightmare: Passenger describes deteriorating conditions

February 13, 2013 / 8:48 AM EST / CBS News

(CBS News) A four-day luxury cruise has turned into a week of misery.

An engine fire crippled the power supply of the Carnival Cruise Lines ship Triumph. Now, passengers say they're seeing disgusting conditions.

Cruise ship adrift in Gulf of Mexico for 3 days Conditions worsen on damaged cruise ship

With two tug boats and a Coast Guard escort, the Triumph is slowly crawling towards Mobile, Ala. The ship is currently 200 miles south of the Alabama city. It's expected to dock around noon on Thursday. But for passengers and their anxious families, it can't happen soon enough. The concern now is keeping people on-board healthy and safe.

Nick Ware's mom Kimberly is one of 3,000 passengers stuck on-board. She's kept in touch via text messages and told her son she had to wait in line for hours just to get a burger.

Ware said, "Trash is piling up, food's cold, hard to get, long lines, pretty miserable. ... The people who did actually have meat on their burgers, it was cold and the remainder of the people once they ran out of the cooked meat. It was basically just onions and things like that on the sandwiches."

The nightmare started Sunday when an engine fire knocked out power leaving the ship drifting in the Gulf of Mexico. Since then, passengers have complained about everything from the sweltering heat to sewage running down cabin walls.

Passenger Donnell King described the scene: "People are sleeping in hallways. I mean there's just mattresses and people collected everywhere."

Carnival Cruise Lines apologized Tuesday and said Triumph has running water and most of its 23 public bathrooms are now working. Gerry Cahill, Carnival Cruise Lines president and chief executive officer, said, "Let me assure you that no one here from Carnival is happy about the conditions on board the ship. We're obviously very, very sorry about what is taking place."

The tugboats are hauling the 900-feet-long vessel at about six miles per hour -- one third the normal speed. Coast Guard Cmdr. Greg Magee is monitoring the operation. He told CBS News over the phone, "One of the big challenges we have right now is that it's a very large ship with a lot of sail area, so it's a difficult vessel to tow."

The Coast Guard and the National Transportation Safety Board have also launched an investigation into the fire that started it all.

Ware said, "I absolutely think it should be investigated. I think if you have an event like this it strands that many people out there and it's handled in this manner. Something needs to be done. This needs to be prevented."

Once the ship docks, Carnival has to get 3,000 passengers back home, so they've rented 1,500 hotel rooms in New Orleans and Mobile for the night, and chartered 20 flights to take passengers to Houston the next day.

For Anna Werner's full report, watch the video in the player above.

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The 1970s Cruise Ship Nightmare That Ended in a Mutiny

By: Robert Klara

Published: June 24, 2019

It was a little after 3:00 a.m. on July 2, 1978 when those aboard the S.S. America realized the voyage was doomed.

Things had gotten off to an uneasy start nine hours before, when some 900 passengers assembled at Manhattan’s West 54th Street pier and found a problem with the tickets. Some paying customers had never received them, while others couldn’t find their names on the manifest. Finally, with the ship running late, a voice barked: “Get on board, tickets or no tickets!”

With crime rates soaring and its economy in the ditch, New York  was a difficult place to live in 1978. Little wonder so many locals in need of a summer escape noticed Venture Cruise Lines’ advertising for the S.S. America , a shopworn ocean liner restored to its prewar elegance. Venture promised no end of onboard pampering, but it was the ticket prices that seduced. Fares for a two-night cruise to nowhere started at $99—a fare so low it was hard to believe.

But now that the voyage was underway, passengers couldn’t believe the predicament they were in. Many discovered that faulty plumbing had flooded their cabins. Beds lacked bedsheets—and often mattresses, too. Toilets refused to flush. While dismayed passengers darted around trying to find a spot to settle, so did a phalanx of cockroaches and rats. S.S. America , one woman later said, was a “floating garbage can.”

Bad as the cabins were, the factor that tipped anger into chaos was this: at least 100 paying passengers never found cabins at all. Homeless at sea, they massed outside the purser’s office and began chanting: “We want to get off!”

Conditions deteriorated quickly. The angriest passengers picked fistfights with the crew. Harbor police boarded the ship. By now the America had dropped anchor near Coney Island, and the captain acceded to the mob’s demands. After the crew opened the hull’s watertight doors, 250 passengers clambered down rope ladders, jumping down to the decks of tugboats pulled up below. The tugs dumped the cruise refugees on Staten Island, then took off. Venture’s promise of chauffeured limousine rides home for everyone came to nothing.

The next morning, tabloids feasted on the overnight debacle. DREAM CRUISE LIKE NAUTICAL NIGHTMARE hollered the front page of the Daily News , which recounted the “mini-mutiny” in sordid detail. Without admitting the company had booked passengers on decks that were uninhabitable, a Venture representative said: “We goofed.”

For New York, a port city that had once berthed the most opulent passenger ships in modern maritime history, no incident would embody the postwar decline of ocean-liner travel like the one that took place aboard the S.S. America on that summer night in 1978. Not only was Venture’s “goof” the work of a company that had no business operating ocean liners, it had unfolded, paradoxically, aboard what had once been New York’s most prestigious one.

When First Lady  Eleanor Roosevelt christened the America on the last day of August in 1939, the 723-foot vessel was the largest, fastest and most luxurious American-built passenger liner afloat. But Hitler’s invasion of Poland on the following day augured a change of course. The Navy appropriated the vessel, renamed it the West Point , and used it as a troop carrier until the end of World War II .

But by 1946, the America was back to steaming from New York to Le Havre in “5 gay days,” quartering a who’s who of celebrities and power brokers in its spacious staterooms and feeding them Roast Philadelphia Capon in its two-story dining salon. For nearly two decades, the America promised “no finer food and service afloat.”

By the mid-1960s, the boat had changed owners and was running from Europe to Australia. As it aged, it became a liability. But for a new concern called Venture Cruise Lines, the prewar ocean liner looked like the perfect opportunity. 

Incorporated by a group of travel-agency executives, Venture paid $5 million for the ship in June of 1978, then threw another $2 million into repairs. Venture’s business plan was to make money on volume, using super-low rates to fill the ship’s hundreds of cabins.

“The $135 all-inclusive price you’re staring at in amazement is not a mirage,” cooed the glossy brochure. “It’s [a] very real, very low-priced cruise being offered as part of Venture Cruise Lines’ fabulous summer and fall program aboard the sensational 2,200-passenger SS America .” Venture promised no end of luxuries for those low rates, including swimming pools, shopping, a casino, nightclub shows, and six meals a day.

But marketing was one thing and nautical engineering another. Though the America ’s infrastructure was in need of serious work, Venture’s refurbishments were, at best, cosmetic. Shortly before the America ’s summer 1978 voyage, the writer and maritime historian Bill Miller slipped aboard at Pier 92. 

Almost immediately, Miller discerned “very serious problems” including rust, leaking pipes and corrosion holes. He found college boys—hired at minimum wage—charged with painting the ship. In the passageways, Miller walked past trash bags, soiled linens and old mattresses. There was also, he’d later write, “a stale stench—a foul mixture of kitchen odors, engine oils, and plumbing backups.” Miller found himself wondering if the America “might best be sent on to the scrappers.”

It would be sent to sea instead.

Though inadequate accommodations had touched off the mutiny of July 2, 1978, the torments that Venture administered to its customers had not stopped with deficient cabins. Promised amenities including the sauna, beauty salon and disco never materialized. The swimming pool was open, in a sense—but the crew had filled it with bags of garbage.

At dinner, one passenger noticed that, instead of washing the china, the staff made do with wiping the dirty plates off with towels. It came as little surprise that the captain’s table was conspicuously missing the captain. “Maybe he was afraid the passengers would make him the main course,” said one passenger.

Incredibly enough, on the heels of its first voyage to hell, Venture managed to repeat the performance a second time. On July 3rd, the New York Post ’s front page announced THAT SHIP IS BACK TO LOAD UP AGAIN, as the America —now dubbed the “mutiny ship”—took on passengers for a 5-day cruise to Nova Scotia. Near Martha’s Vineyard, as heavy seas slammed into the hull, the America ’s portholes began leaking, a water main fractured, and toilets backed up. When the ship finally limped into Halifax, the boarding health inspectors stepped aside for the droves of passengers who were, once again, abandoning ship.

Venture admitted that it “goofed” once more, but promised it would clean up its act and take to sea again. On the next voyage, Venture’s president promised, “you will see a shipful of happy people aboard a great lady named the S.S. America , about to have the time of their lives aboard a tip-top vessel.”

It was not to be. By now, State Attorney General Louis Lefkowitz had caught a whiff of the S.S. America , and confined it to port. (Later, he would charge Venture with “deceptive advertising and business practices.”) When U.S. Public Health Service inspectors boarded the ship, they gave it a sanitary score of 6 out of a possible 100. Cancelled bookings cost Venture close to $400,000. Then the U.S. Customs Service slapped the company with $500,000 in fines—$339,000 of it for having stood by as passengers literally jumped off the ship into tugboats. 

Its assets frozen, facing mounting lawsuits and angry creditors, Venture collapsed. At an auction on August 28, 1978, S.S. America sold for one-fifth what Venture had paid for it.

Perhaps inevitably, the America met an end as tragic as its maligned cruises of 1978. In January of 1994, while being towed to Phuket, Thailand, for conversion to a floating hotel, the ship broke loose of its towing cable south of Gibraltar. After floating free for two days, the abandoned vessel ran aground in the Canaries, where the pounding Atlantic surf snapped it in half.

READ MORE:  The True Stories That Inspired ‘Titanic’ Movie Characters

READ MORE:  One of America’s First Travel Trends Was Dining at George Washington’s Home

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‘nightmare’ cruise at center of controversy after ship forced to tour totally different country instead of original destination.

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An Australian company at the centre of a “nightmare” cruise where passengers were forced to tour Tasmania instead of New Zealand has been hit by further accusations.

A two-week New Zealand cruise by P&O Cruises Australia, euphemistically titled Pacific Adventure which began on November 20, was thrown into turmoil when the ship was rejected by NZ border control forcing the ship to change the itinerary at the last minute to a trip to Tasmania.

A spokesperson for the company confirmed to news.com.au the “itinerary has changed and unfortunately guests on this current voyage will no longer be visiting New Zealand.”

Guests were notified, according to the spokesperson, before embarking on their 13-day voyage that there could be “significant changes to the itinerary,” due to New Zealand’s strict biosecurity requirements.

“The ship left Sydney on Monday for hull cleaning off the Bay of Plenty, however the weather didn’t allow this to happen, so we apologize that the itinerary has had to be amended,” the spokesperson said.

“A change in the forecast conditions made it too dangerous for divers, and therefore we are unable to gain clearance to enter New Zealand.

“In lieu of sailing around New Zealand, Pacific Adventure is on her way to Tasmania, and we hope guests will enjoy their time in Hobart, Port Arthur and Eden.”

The spokesperson said guests had been offered “additional compensation” but did not specify what the compensation was.

An Australian man who had a family member on the cruise told news.com.au that P&O did not offer to refund passengers or the opportunity to reschedule.

“They mentioned the potential for the issues before the cruise set off but didn’t offer a refund so yes they did warn people but they didn’t give you an option to reschedule,” the man said.

A letter sent to passengers on November 24, viewed by news.com.au, revealed passengers were compensated with $300 ($197 US) on-board credit plus a future cruise credit of 50 per cent of the total cruise fare paid.

A man, who had previously travelled with the company told news.com.au that what happened was “nothing new to P&O”.

“The exact same thing happened to us on the same cruise last February,” he said.

“We had to spend two days at the Bay of Plenty while divers cleaned the hull. We lost all visits to the North Island and some of the South Island”.

The man said the company was “obviously aware” of the problem previously and described it as “very bad planning”.

Other Aussies vented on social media with one person declaring they wanted a “full refund” and to “get off this boat”.

“This is just a turd covered in gold glitter. My husband has requested ET bring him home,” said another.

“Honestly I just want to go back home,” another complained.

According to  The Australian  Biosecurity New Zealand’s northern regional commissioner Mike Inglis told NZ TV there had been “concerning levels of biofouling” on the Pacific Adventure vessel.

“Our biosecurity rules are in place to protect us against pests such as exotic caulpera, which can impact New Zealand’s environment, unique marine ecosystems, aquaculture industry, and economy,” he said.

He said the pictures sent by the ship’s operators showed “high risk organisms” which “could pose a risk to New Zealand if the ship cruised in our waters”.

“We appreciate that cleaning the hull of a cruise ship is a difficult and complex task often dictated by the weather,” he said.

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First Time Cruise Mistakes And How To Avoid Them

C ruising is an excellent way to enjoy a relaxing vacation, but certain mistakes can ruin the entire trip. Whether you are a first-time cruiser or have traveled before, it’s essential to learn and avoid common mistakes that can turn your dream cruise into a nightmare. Here are some of the first time cruise mistakes to avoid to ensure an unforgettable cruising experience from beginning to end.

Booking Flights Too Close to Embarkation and Disembarkation

One of the most critical aspects of cruising is ensuring that you arrive at the port on time. To avoid complications such as flight delays, it’s advisable to book your flight at least a day before the cruise. Doing so will provide a buffer period, and you won’t miss your sailing even if you encounter problems during the journey. Likewise, booking an early flight on the day of disembarkation can cause delays as the process can take a while. Ensure that you book your flight at least after 11 a.m. or noon, depending on the distance between the airport and the port.

Not Having a Valid Passport

Travel documentation is essential, and a valid passport is a requirement to board a cruise. Ensure that your passport has at least three to six months of validity left after the end of your trip. This requirement is necessary in case of unexpected changes to your itinerary, and you need to enter another country or travel back to your home country.

Not Checking COVID-19 Restrictions

The COVID-19 pandemic has created new challenges for cruising, with different countries imposing various restrictions. Ensure you are up to date with the restrictions and regulations of each destination you will visit. Check the requirements for vaccinations, masks, and social distancing protocols, especially if you plan on visiting multiple countries.

Not Monitoring Prices After You Book

Cruise prices can be dynamic and fluctuate based on demand. After booking, it is essential to monitor the prices to make sure you are getting the best deal. Sometimes prices drop after booking, and you can request a price adjustment. Consider using tracking tools or working with a travel agent who can proactively make adjustments if the price changes before the final payment.

Skipping Travel Insurance

Travel insurance is crucial for any trip, including a cruise. You never know when an emergency will arise, and it’s essential to be prepared. Most domestic health insurance policies do not cover medical treatment while onboard international waters. Without travel insurance, you may incur significant expenses in the event of an accident or illness.

Picking a Cabin at Random

Picking a cabin is crucial, and it’s important to research the ship’s layout and cabin categories to ensure you select a cabin that meets your needs. Consider consulting with a travel advisor who can guide you to serene slumber. If you are prone to seasickness, select a mid-ship cabin with a lower floor and avoid cabins at the front of the ship, where there is the most movement.

Taking Only Ship-affiliated Shore Excursions

While cruise ships offer great shore excursions, you can also choose to book with a third-party provider or explore the port on your own. Book day passes at luxury hotels or explore the destination independentl y to have a unique and personalized experience.

Arriving Late to the Pier After a Day in Port

When exploring the port on your own, be mindful of the embarkation time and ensure you return to the ship with ample time. Consider setting a personal alarm or watch to remind you of the time and avoid the embarrassment of being late.

For a seamless and enjoyable cruising experience, avoid these common first-time cruise mistakes. By taking the time to plan, prepare, and research, you can ensure that you have a memorable vacation from beginning to end.

Choosing the Wrong Dining Time or Style

When booking your cruise, you’ll usually have the option of early or late dining. If you have a preference, make sure to choose accordingly, as switching dining times might not be possible. Additionally, you’ll want to consider the dining style. Some cruise ships have assigned seating in the main dining room, while others have flexible dining options. Make sure to research your ship’s dining options and choose the one that works best for you.

Overpacking or Underpacking

One of the most common packing mistakes is bringing too much or too little. To avoid this, make a packing list ahead of time and stick to it. Consider the dress code on the ship, the activities you’ll be doing, and the weather in the destinations you’ll be visiting. Remember to also leave some space in your luggage for souvenirs or any items you may buy during your trip.

Forgetting the Essentials

While packing, don’t forget to bring the essentials. This includes things like medications, sunscreen, insect repellent, and comfortable walking shoes. You’ll also want to bring any necessary travel documents, like your passport, and a small amount of cash for tips and other expenses.

Ignoring Onboard Safety Procedures

During your cruise , it’s important to pay attention to the onboard safety procedures. Attend the mandatory safety drill and familiarize yourself with the emergency exits and procedures. If there is an emergency, follow the crew’s instructions and remain calm.

Not Taking Advantage of Onboard Activities and Amenities

Cruises offer a wide variety of onboard activities and amenities, from poolside lounging to Broadway-style shows. Make sure to take advantage of these offerings and participate in activities that interest you. Additionally, consider purchasing a beverage package or dining package to make the most of your onboard experience.

Booking Your Next Cruise After You Get Home

If you have thoroughly enjoyed your cruise and can’t wait to book your next one, you might want to consider booking while still on board. This way, you can take advantage of the onboard promotions and discounts, which can be significant. Cruise lines often offer onboard credits, free Wi-Fi, and cabin upgrades to guests who book their next cruise while still on board. Another advantage of booking while on board is that you can secure the cruise you want at the best price. Cruise prices fluctuate regularly, so by booking early, you can take advantage of the lower prices. Furthermore, you can secure the cabin type and location that you prefer, which might not be available if you wait until you get home to book.

Not Using A Travel Agent

Booking a cruise can be a daunting task, with so many options available and countless details to consider. While booking your next cruise while on board may seem like the easiest option, it’s important to note that it’s not the only way. Taking the time to research other options and consulting with a travel agent can be highly beneficial.

By using a travel agent such as Sunshine Travel and Tour, you can get invaluable advice and guidance to help you find the perfect cruise for you. A travel agent can help you navigate the vast array of options, find the best deals, and take care of all the details, including flights, hotels, transfers, and shore excursions. They can also provide you with insider tips and recommendations to make your cruise experience even more enjoyable.

In addition to helping you plan your next cruise, a travel agent can also be a valuable resource when it comes to travel insurance, visa requirements, and other essential aspects of travel. By working with a travel agent, you can ensure that you have all the information you need and that your trip is planned and executed flawlessly.

A cruise can be an incredible vacation experience, but it’s essential to plan and prepare adequately. By avoiding these first time cruise mistakes and using the services of a travel agent, you can ensure a hassle-free and enjoyable cruise vacation. So, pack your bags, grab your sunscreen, and get ready for an unforgettable adventure on the high seas.

Cleveland Cavaliers cruise in game 1 of playoffs

CLEVELAND, Ohio (WOIO) - Donovan Mitchell scored a game-high 30 points to lead Cleveland to a 97-83 win over Orlando Saturday in game 1 of the NBA playoffs.

Jarrett Allen added 16 points and 18 rebounds.

HOW WE FEELIN' CLEVELAND?! #LETEMKNOW pic.twitter.com/zCQGjvZpXJ — Cleveland Cavaliers (@cavs) April 20, 2024

Donovan Mitchell today: 30 PTS 11/21 FG 3 3PM 2 REB 3 AST 3 STL Cavs take Game 1 🗣️ pic.twitter.com/81QQ1zIvSx — Overtime (@overtime) April 20, 2024

Orlando’s guards struggled from the floor, shooting 4-for-35.

Paolo Banchero led the Magic with 24 points.

CARIS LEVERT. THIS WAS INSANE. #LetEmKnow pic.twitter.com/4J6Wc2h9mr — Cleveland Cavaliers (@cavs) April 20, 2024

Copyright 2024 WOIO. All rights reserved.

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Ukraine-Russia war latest: Russia vows to attack 'Western weapons stores' after US aid bill passes

In response to "threats posed by the United States", Moscow's defence minister has said Russia will increase strikes on logistics centres and storage depots of Western weapons in Ukraine. Listen to a Daily podcast on the notion of the UK sending troops to Ukraine while you scroll.

Tuesday 23 April 2024 16:53, UK

• UK to increase defence spending to 2.5% of GDP
• Russia vows to 'increase attacks on Western weapons stores' in response to US aid bill
• Moscow warns Europe of 'prepared response' if West seizes assets
• Russia trying to persuade Ukrainians to leave major city ahead of potential offensive - as television tower knocked out
• The big picture: What's happening with the war right now?
• Your questions answered: How long will it take for any aid to turn the tide militarily?
• Listen to the Sky News Daily above and  tap here  to follow wherever you get your podcasts
• Live reporting by Lauren Russell

We are pausing our live coverage of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Today, Rishi Sunak announced a £500m military aid package for Ukraine - the UK's largest military pledge to the country.

In a speech in Warsaw, Poland, Mr Sunak said: "An investment in Ukraine is an investment in our security."

The prime minister also said he would put the UK's own defence industry "on a war footing" as he confirmed an increase in defence spending to 2.5% of national income by 2030.

The announcements were praised by NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg, who said the UK was "leading by example" for other NATO countries. 

Potential Russian summer offensive

Elsewhere, a commander from Ukraine's National Guard has said Russia is planning "unpleasant surprises" in a potential summer offensive.

Oleksandr Pivnenko told news outlet Liga Net that, as part of this, the National Guard does not rule out Russian attempts to target Kharkiv - the country's second-largest city.

Kharkiv and the surrounding region have recently been the focus of recent attacks from Moscow, having experienced the most intense strikes. 

Russia vows to attack 'Western weapons stores' 

The Russian defence minister said that when the US military aid package for Ukraine becomes law, Russia will "increase the intensity of attacks on logistics centres and storage bases for Western weapons".

Ukraine is set to receive provisions worth nearly $61bn.

The bill will later be voted on in the US Senate, where it is likely to pass. Joe Biden has promised to sign it into law immediately after this.

The latest appeal by detained Wall Street Journal journalist Evan Gershkovich has been rejected by a Russian court. 

Mr Gershkovich was arrested on suspicion of spying while reporting in the Ural Mountains city of Yekaterinburg on 29 March last year. 

His latest appeal was against a ruling last month that extended his detainment until 30 June.

It was heard by a Moscow court and later rejected. 

Mr Gershkovich has been accused of stealing state secrets by Russian intelligence officials, who provided no evidence to support the charge.

Both Mr Gershkovich and the WSJ deny the accusation, as does the US government, which has classified him as wrongfully detained.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has just finished speaking in Poland. 

As expected, Mr Sunak officially announced a £500m military aid package for Ukraine.

"An investment in Ukraine is an investment in our security," he said.

Mr Sunak said he would put the UK's own defence industry "on a war footing" as he confirmed an increase in defence spending to 2.5% of national income by 2030.

This goes above the 2% defence investment guideline which is set by NATO. 

The announcement was praised by NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, who said the UK was "leading by example" for other NATO countries. 

He added that the bloc did not seek conflict with Russia but would do what was necessary to keep its people safe.

Other key things said during the news conference:

• Mr Sunak said Vladimir Putin would not stop in Ukraine. Win there, and he and others would be emboldened;
• He praised the recent approval of aid for Ukraine in the US House of Representatives, but said: "We cannot keep expecting America to pay any price or bear any burden if we ourselves are unwilling to make greater sacrifices for our own security";
• The prime minister said he was determined to reform defence procurement - something which has long come under scrutiny as a potential area for savings;
• At least 5% of the defence budget to be committed to research and development to ensure the UK is at the cutting edge of modern warfare technology.

Rishi Sunak has just begun speaking at a news conference alongside Jens Stoltenberg, the NATO secretary general, in Warsaw, Poland. 

The prime minister is visiting the country to cover defence funding and support for Ukraine.

You can watch the full conference live in the stream above or follow along in our Politics Hub...

The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) has reportedly detained a man in Kharkiv suspected of helping direct Russian aerial attacks on an elite Ukrainian military unit base.

In a post on Telegram , the agency said the man helped Moscow's forces to identify the location of the military intelligence's Kraken special unit.

The SBU claimed the individual was recruited at the beginning of the month via social media where he had been posting anti-Ukraine content. 

The man was charged under the Criminal Code of Ukraine and remains in custody, the SBU said. 

He faces up to eight years in prison. 

A second man was also arrested, according to the SBU, who they said allegedly helped "adjust Russian rocket bomb attacks on Kharkiv".

It is unknown if he has also been charged.

The UK will increase defence spending to 2.5% of national income by 2030, the prime minister is will to announce, in a hardening of military policy at a time of growing threats.

The expected rise is less ambitious than some insiders say is needed - but it will mean tens of billions of additional pounds for the armed forces over the next six years.

Rishi Sunak had previously said any extra investment would only happen when economic conditions allow. That caveat looks set to be removed.

The UK move comes at a time of escalating threats to global security posed by Russia's war in Ukraine, conflict in the Middle East and an ever-more assertive China.

Read the full story by our security and defence editor,  Deborah Haynes, here ...

A commander from Ukraine's National Guard has said Russia is planning "unpleasant surprises" in a potential summer offensive.

Speaking to news outlet Liga Net, Oleksandr Pivnenko said that, as part of a potential offensive, the National Guard does not rule out Russian attempts to target the Kharkiv - the country's second-largest city.

He said troops may achieve some success in a summer offensive by attacking "unexpected places" in the region but will not gain any strategic victories. 

"We are getting ready," Mr Pivnenko said.

"The enemy will make unpleasant surprises for us. It will operate in areas where we do not expect [them to]. But it will not achieve its goal."

Kharkiv and the surrounding region have been the focus of recent attacks from Moscow, having experienced the most intense strikes. 

As we have been reporting, Rishi Sunak is set to announce a new £500m military aid package for Ukraine.

The aid is expected to include more than 400 vehicles and more than 1,600 strike and air defence missiles. 

How will these extra provisions help Ukraine?

Our military analyst Michael Clarke  says the aid will make a difference politically, but won't come close to what the US or other European countries can offer militarily. 

"Britain is the first European country since the US's announcement on Saturday that they are going forward with the aid package," Clarke says.

"Britain is putting in less than 1% of the US package but what we are offering is what we have got that the Ukrainians say they want.

"What they really need is the things we don't really have, good old-fashioned air defence systems."

Storm Shadow missiles

Clarke says what might make a difference to the Ukrainians are Shadow Storm long-range precision-guided missiles that troops have found useful in the past. 

"I suspect we are now dipping into our own stores and MBDA - who make the missiles - certainly can't make the number that we are now giving," Clarke adds. 

"I suspect we are giving some from our own stock and it will take a couple of years to build up again. This is a fair sacrifice."

Husky vehicles

Also being given are 160 Husky vehicles, which Clarke says are "unglamorous but make a difference when fighting a battle".

"These are mine resistant vehicles that are useful around the combat zone," he says.

The UK has also pledged four million rounds of ammunition, which Clarke says is not enough, but other European countries are finding ways of getting more munitions.

Rishi Sunak has landed in Warsaw, where he will meet Donald Tusk, the Polish prime minister, and Jens Stoltenberg, the NATO secretary general.

Joining Mr Sunak on the visit is Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, and Grant Shapps, the defence secretary.

Our  political editor Beth Rigby  was also on the flight to Poland.

During the journey Mr Sunak addressed the UK's latest military aid package to Ukraine. 

He told reporters he was "very proud" that the UK has always led on support for Ukraine.

"We are Europe's largest defence spender and one of the few countries that's consistently met the 2% [of GDP] NATO spending pledge, and today's action is another example of us leading by example," he said.

The Russian defence minister has said his troops will increase the intensity of strikes on logistics centres and the storage depots of Western weapons in Ukraine.

Sergei Shoigu addressed the new US military aid package for Ukraine, worth nearly $61bn, in remarks to defence officials.

In an apparent reaction to the aid package, Mr Shoigu said: "In proportion to the threats posed by the United States and its allies, we will continue to improve the composition and structure of the armed forces and increase the production of the most popular weapons and military equipment.

"We will increase the intensity of attacks on logistics centres and storage bases for Western weapons." 

As part of the package, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, Kyiv will soon receive more long-range ATACMS missile systems.

US officials said the aid will also include ammunition supplies and interceptors for air defence systems.

The in-demand aid package will be voted on in the US Senate later today, where it is likely to pass. Joe Biden has promised to sign it into law immediately after this.

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