Shipboard Confidential : LOVE, SEX, DEATH and the BARON’S MISSING TROUSERS : Behind the Scenes on a Luxury Cruise Ship

Wanted: Editor on a cruise ship.”

I was a graduating journalism major at a Midwestern university in 1981 when I happened to notice that sign in the job-placement office.

At the time, I’d never so much as seen a cruise ship. I’d never even watched “The Love Boat” on TV. Nevertheless, I applied. To my surprise, I sailed through the interview--and the day after graduation, I flew to San Francisco to sign on the ship.

I arrived at the pier to find a bustle of activity--provisions being loaded, limousines discharging glamorous-looking passengers, porters lugging huge trunks, gorgeous officers strutting around in white uniforms. A group of giggling women in sequins and spike heels staggered up the steep gangway--women with Adam’s apples and big feet, I noticed. A porter later tipped me off: An actor and his bride would be honeymooning on board, and these drag “showgirls” had been invited to the bon voyage party.

I knew I wasn’t in Kansas anymore.

Most cruise passengers--even the most experienced ones--have no idea what goes on behind the scenes as they sail happily off into the sunrise, or the sunset. In fact, as I quickly discovered myself, there’s a whole different world “below decks”--with its own characters and conflicts, its own emotions, its own sense of humor. If you’re planning to take a cruise, whether it’s your first or your hundredth, you might enjoy (and appreciate) the trip a little more if you know a bit about a cruise ship’s secret life. Here, then, is an insider’s look at cruising, based on my own five years at sea.

When I strolled over the gangway on the ship that was to be my first oceangoing home, I marked a passage into a new life. In the years to come I would circle the globe, climb the Great Wall of China, ride horseback beneath the Sphinx, journey to the Taj Mahal by oxcart, fly over Sydney Harbor in a helicopter, buzz Alaskan glaciers in a light plane and attend the cremation of the king of Bali. I would pass through the Panama, the Kiel and the Suez canals, cross the Equator and the International Date Line, sail to the North Cape and around Cape Horn and through a typhoon. I would fall in love. And I would meet folks the likes of which just didn’t exist in the Midwest of my youth--among them a rugby player dressed as Ginger Rogers, a multimillionaire with no socks and a baron with no trousers.

The company that hired me in 1981 was dubbed “the Rolls Royce of cruise lines” for its lavish vessels, its excellent cuisine, its spit-and-polish crew and its all-around attention to detail. Our passengers were often elderly, but they were the seagoing creme de la creme : the discerning, who voyaged in search of culture, art and history; the famous, who were assured that they would be treated with discretion and respect on board; the fabulously wealthy who might just as well have been sailing in their own yachts.

*

My job was to produce the ship’s daily newspaper, published 365 days a year come hell or high water (the latter not just a figure of speech). I lived on the crew deck, one level below the lowest passenger deck--down in the bowels of the ship--but I had my own cabin, a rare privilege for an employee. I wasn’t paid much, but I enjoyed many social perks. I was entitled to join passengers in the dining room each evening, or I could eat in the crew mess or the officers’ mess. Often I hosted a table for passengers, which was certainly a privilege because the food and service were wonderful. (Along the way, I developed quite a passion for baked Alaska, the traditional finale of the captain’s farewell dinner.) I had a wine allowance to treat the guests at my table, and I could sign for drinks in the bars. Instead of a uniform, I wore my own clothes--suits and dresses to work and evening gowns to cocktail parties and gala dinners. I was allowed to partake of all passenger activities and also to visit the bridge.

Officers lived on bridge deck and had their own mess and day room. Depending on their rank (the number of stripes on their epaulets) they were sometimes allowed to socialize with passengers--in fact, strongly urged by the company to do so. “Socializing” was subject to wide interpretation, and in many cases it wasn’t limited simply to a drink and a dance. Some officers were notorious womanizers. In my first weeks at sea, I was so naive that I actually visited an officer’s cabin and admired his photos of his beautiful blond sister--before realizing that she was really his wife.

I got wise. Others didn’t. One passenger had been swept off her feet, on an earlier cruise, by a chief engineer (a very important man on shipboard, being in charge of all the engines)--and though he was no longer with the company, she always insisted on being seated, for nostalgic reasons, at the chief’s table in the dining room.

Officers usually relished female attention, but a few had to dodge unwanted advances. One engineer locked himself in his cabin for an entire cruise to avoid a young woman he had wooed on a previous sailing; she had returned with her mother, who was talking marriage. As an escape trick, some officers would arrange in advance to be paged at a certain time. “My beeper,” they’d tell a lovesick lady as they dashed off the dance floor. “Duty calls.”

Occasionally, a sailor would try to bring a passenger to the crew deck. Since most crew slept two or even four to a cabin, the logistics of this maneuver were complicated. Even on the passenger decks, though, it was useful to remember that, as the saying goes, “There are no secrets on a ship.” One sailor crept into an amorous woman’s stateroom. While he used the bathroom, she called room service for ice. The crewman emerged only to be confronted by the reproachful night butler.

A beautician I knew once stayed over with an officer on bridge deck. The next morning, he left for work while she slept late. Not wanting to be spotted going back to her cabin in the previous night’s clothes, she hit on the idea of dressing in one of the officer’s uniforms. While dashing to crew deck, her hair tucked into the officer’s cap, the worst possible thing happened: She ran smack into the captain, who was not amused.

Lest these tales of maritime indiscretion sound irresponsible by contemporary standards, remember that my stint at sea occurred in the pre-AIDS-awareness era. Remember, too, that according to an old maritime tradition, sailors usually use condoms. On my ship, prophylactics were available for the asking from the hospital and were stocked in every passenger-deck pantry.

When I was sailing, “sexual harassment” hadn’t become quite the issue it is today--but it certainly occurred. One notorious officer, who refused to take no for an answer, chased a female crew member so relentlessly that she signed off the ship in tears at a remote port in Alaska. The officer’s downfall came when he took to pinching guests. They complained, and he lost his job.

*

Crew parties held an irresistible allure for some passengers. A distinguished German baron who often sailed with us--always accompanied by two charming young men who acted as his personal secretary and his butler--loved to slip into the crew bar to watch the sometimes outrageous behavior of off-duty sailors.

The crew worked hard and played hard. Theme parties were a favorite diversion, and during my time at sea we celebrated the royal wedding of Charles and Diana, had numerous toga parties, and once threw a South Seas bash where even the burly German cooks wore grass skirts and coconut-shell bras. For a “Hooray for Hollywood” gala, I dressed as Fred Astaire, with top hat and tails. My date was Ginger Rogers, a hairy former New Zealand rugby player decked out in a backless pink gown.

At crew parties, the music was loud, the small dance floor was packed, and the punch was spiked. But no matter how your head throbbed the next day, you were expected to be at work on time.

News of the outside world came to the ship via radio or satellite, and was channeled through me to the passengers and crew. I also produced a steady stream of stories about the ports we visited and the personalities on board.

On my very first cruise, I met actress Shirley Jones. In the following years there were many other famous names--actors, authors, network news anchors, fashion designers, models, musicians, comedians, bandleaders, historians, ambassadors, prime ministers, nobility, even royalty.

One of the kindest and most generous guests was California winemaker Robert Mondavi, who led wine tastings for passengers and treated me and other fortunates to some very memorable vintages. Omar Sharif, who often cruised with us as a guest bridge expert, was not so gallant. I once interviewed him in his suite, where he sat bare-legged in a terry-cloth robe, sipping tea from a silver service. He didn’t share.

William C. Westmoreland, the general who sued CBS for libel over its reporting of his role in the Vietnam War, stood me up twice for scheduled interviews, and when we did connect he was very brusque--maybe just a reflection of a natural disdain for journalists. Astronomer Carl Sagan spent part of our first meeting reading a Jan Morris book, but warmed up a bit later when I went ashore in Panama with him and his wife, author Ann Druyan, to look for Halley’s Comet with a telescope in a muddy field. (On the same cruise, I also interviewed a number of passengers who recalled having seen the comet on its previous appearance, in 1910.)

Every ship has its colorful characters. Ours were usually regulars on the line, like the heir to an insurance fortune who told me he’d never worked a day in his life. He literally didn’t have a home. He went from ship to ship, and on the occasions he had to meet with his bankers ashore, he stayed in a hotel. This gentleman never, ever, wore socks, even to black tie affairs.

Then there was that baron. His secretary came to my office one day with a special request: Would I run a lost-and-found item in the newspaper? As a matter of policy we didn’t publish lost-and-founds, but for the baron we made an exception. The item was headlined: “Has anyone found a pair of men’s dress pants?” It set off a shipboard guessing game over which gent had lost his trousers and, more intriguing, how.

To his credit, the baron not only crashed the crew parties but also invited crew members to his penthouse suite for cocktails. I found myself there on several occasions, sipping his Dom Perignon and submitting to his demands that I indulge in caviar from a huge crystal bowl.

Some passengers were more difficult than colorful. One liked to stroll the deck in his boxer shorts; another brought a maid who was caught with a suitcase of silverware as she walked off the gangway. Yet another accused her stewardess of stealing a diamond necklace--but this turned out to be a scheme the woman had cooked up to avoid giving the crew member a gratuity--which was in any case optional.

*

The purser’s staff kept a logbook to record noteworthy events that occurred on the ship, and one day somebody started jotting down funny things passengers said. “Does the crew live on board?” asked one. “Is the electricity generated on the ship?” wondered another. Still another asked a steward whether the swimming pool was saltwater or fresh water. “Saltwater, ma’am “ he replied. “Oh,” she said. “That explains why it’s so rough.”

One thing cruise ship passengers often fail to appreciate is that the crew typically labors seven days a week for six months at a stretch. My first contract lasted 13 months, which meant that I had to work for almost 400 days straight. Oh, sure, I got to sunbathe or go ashore when I finished producing the newspaper--but if the captain needed a report written just as the sun came out, I had to stay inside and do it. And if my typesetting equipment broke down--as it did on numerous occasions--I had to stay on board when we reached port and wait for the repairman.

The most grueling days were the turnarounds, when one cruise ended and another began and the ship had to be unloaded, cleaned, then loaded up again. But every day was strenuous. The waiters served the regular three meals a day plus parties and special buffets, checking in hours beforehand to fold napkins and polish silver and staying until the last diner finished his demitasse. The engineers sweated in the boiling hot engine room and toiled especially hard in port over repairs that couldn’t be handled while machinery was running. The chief purser stayed up nights on end filling out forms, and had to know when to grease the palms of local officials with cigarettes or Scotch. The bridge, the engine control room, the gangway and the reception desk were staffed continuously, the doctor and nurses were always on call, the entertainers frequently rehearsing. The show must go on.

Crew members of more than 30 nationalities worked on board. Because the ship sailed under the Norwegian flag, its officers were Norwegian. The cabin stewardesses (all the cabin attendants were female, which is not uncommon) were from various Scandinavian countries, the chefs and waiters were mainly Europeans from slightly farther south. The rest of us were mixed--Hondurans, Chileans, Filipinos, Australians, Argentines and so on--plus a handful of Americans.

The ship’s band was from Poland. Well liked by everyone, they were on vacation at home when martial law was declared in 1981, and we feared we’d never see them again. They eventually did get out, though, and returned to the ship--where the crew welcomed them back with a joyful (and boozy) party.

I’ve heard reports of poor labor conditions on some cruise lines, but the company I worked for treated us humanely. If we had gripes, we appealed to our union representative. But most cruise lines, I think, realize that a happy crew makes happy passengers.

*

Given the age of our passengers, deaths on board were not unheard of. During one cruise, we lost three people--including a man who suffered a heart attack while in bed with a woman who was not wife (the widow was spared this information) and another who drowned in the swimming pool while his fellow passengers were diving into the noontime deck buffet.

Depending on local regulations and the wishes of the next of kin, bodies could be flown home from the next port, buried at sea or stored in a refrigerated morgue until the end of the voyage. Quite often, a surviving spouse or other traveling companion would complete the cruise, reasoning that the dearly departed would have wanted it that way.

Drug searches occurred from time to time on the ship, usually in U.S. ports. I never saw any drug use, even at the wildest crew parties, and I don’t believe that it was widespread, at least on our ship. During one drug search, though, I was surprised and saddened to watch my baby-faced dining room waiter, who, like me, was in his first job out of school, hauled off in handcuffs. I never saw him again.

Once, what I thought was a drug search wasn’t. As we were leaving Sydney, Australia, we cast off from the dock but remained some distance out in the harbor. As I typed away on the day’s newspaper, uniformed men with a dog combed the entire ship, including every inch of my tiny office. I later learned from a radio report that there had been a bomb threat. It turned out to be a hoax--but I always wondered why officials had not evacuated the ship.

*

We generally followed the sun, sailing the Caribbean, the Panama Canal, the Mexican Riviera, South America, the South Pacific and Asia in winter, and the Mediterranean, the Baltic and Black seas, Alaska and New England/Canada in summer. Usually the waves were gentle, but once, while en route to Tahiti, we came uncomfortably close to a full-fledged typhoon.

I saw the storm on the ship’s radar, but we were able to steer clear of it. During the night, though, the boat lurched so hard that I was repeatedly thrown from my bunk. I awoke to black skies, and upon reporting for work, discovered that a huge safe in the purser’s office had tipped over, narrowly missing the night receptionist. My typesetting machine was tied down, but I found it tough to work with my chair rolling across the floor and my desk lamp swaying to a queasy rhythm. Thankfully, the ship rode the storm remarkably well. I was exhausted from the constant motion, like everyone else, but never got sick. And when things blew over, we had a great story to tell. I even produced a special Typhoon Rewa issue, featuring a chart of the storm’s path and a dramatic report from the captain.

*

Looking back on my five years at sea, I have to say that the passengers were often amusing and always taught me something (about how to be or not be), that the crew were wonderful friends and that waking up in a new port every day, without lifting a finger--or a foot--to get there was a magical experience. As much as I relished slipping into each new port, though, I also loved sailing away--gazing down at the envious crowds on the pier and marveling at how lucky I was to be the one leaving with the ship, the one taking the cruise.

Just being on the water was a delight, in fact. The seas could be silver and becalmed, placid and blue, rolling and gray--even black and raging. Sometimes we were escorted by schools of dolphins, hundreds bounding alongside like ambassadors from a benevolent Poseidon; occasionally we spotted a whale spouting or leaping from the deep. Every sunrise and sunset was unique in its colors, intensity and scope.

One day, a crewman made me a present of a blue feather boa. It took all the nerve I could muster to wear it to the captain’s welcome party the next evening. To my surprise and delight, it was such a hit that several gentlemen I’d never met asked to be photographed with me. Remembering my Midwestern roots, I thought to myself, “If they could see me now.”

Little did I know that one of those gentlemen had plucked a stray feather from my boa and saved it. Some time later, I got to know this fellow and was invited to his stateroom for cocktails. There I saw my feather, stuck behind a picture on the wall. This gentleman was to become the first big love of my life.

Kalosh is a Miami-based writer specializing in the cruise industry and in Latin America and Scandinavia.