I fullfill my passion for travelling (no particular order).

Mendenhall Glacier, Ile Des Pins, Nouméa, Nouvelle-Calèdonie, New Caledonia, Jund, Mazatlan, Torrance, California, La Rochelle, Albuquerque, Vanuatu, Australia, New Caledonia, Nouvelle Caledonie, Dunn's River Falneau, Skagway, St Thomas, Miami, Los Angeles, Ketchikan, Glacier Bay, Tracy Arms, Whittier, Mazatlan, Puerto Vallarta, Stone Islals, Sipadan Island, Malaysia, China, South East Asia, Hong Kong, Nanjing, ShanghaÔ, Padang, Manille, Djakarta, Pukhet, Bali, Singapour, Padang Bay En Indonèsie, Tanjung Priok, Le Port De Djakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Ile De Nias, Borobudur, Scandinavia, USSR, Vancouver, Canada, Hawaii, Los Alamos, New Mexico, Death Valley, Manaus, Bresil, Orinoco River, Amazon River, Honduras, Sea of Cortez, Colorado, Fort Lauderdale, Newport News, Virginia, Monte Carlo, Toronto, Quebec, Canada, Missouri, Philadelphia, Eleuthera, Tampa, Key West, Cozumel, Playa Del Carmen, Knoxville, Tennesse, Death Valley, Las Vegas, Gainville, Florida, Cozumel, Grand Cayman, Jamaica, San Juan, Puerto Rico, Haiti, Cap Haitien, Nassau, Alaska, Glacier Bay, San Francisco.

My life on cruiseships.

TEXT ET PHOTOS : CHRISTIAN FOURNIER

I criss-cross the seas of the world on gigantic cruise liners, taking photos, taking photo, and … taking photos.
My personal record is 4,000 photos in a single week (which, out of context, is quite stupid; allow me to explain). To understand, you should know, for example, that on the S/S Norway (a former French liner), which had seven photographers for two thousand four hundred passengers a week, the production comes out to twelve thousand photos every week (I’ve done the math for you, that’s ten photos per couple, per cruise). Yeah, that is a large production. A large business, even, which requires a certain organization. Production, marketing, phone calls, aspirin.
I have the status of independent photographer, or Freelancer for those in the know, and I sell my services to an English agency which has Photography contracts on about (depending on the season) thirty-five cruise ships from a great diversity of maritime companies (English, French, Greek, Italian, Norwegian, American, and so forth, for example: Norwegian Caribbean Line, Paquet, Bahamas Cruise Line, etc.)
This status grants me the unheard-of luxury of working for several months on a ship (fifteen hours per day, seven days a week, all expenses paid, and no taxes to pay, thank you very much), in an often exotic corner of our beautiful planet, and then to spend the next several months on my time “off”, by which obviously I mean I did more freelancing (now you’re in the know).
On cruise ships, we work hard and play hard. There was always the pressure of meeting your sales performance (three thousand dollars give or take, depending on the boat), to outdo the previous chief photographers, seniority oblige, week after week, in spite of diplomatic issues with the maritime company, delivery delays, technical problems in the onboard colour lab that you had to repair yourself, assistants to train, finances to manage, the moods of the big cheese in London, etc, ..
In a way, this type of photography is a job for mercenaries. The best training is “door to door” sales, if you see what I mean. When the ship leaves the port after boarding, all the passengers are on deck watching firm land shrinking into the distance. Naturally all the photographers are on deck too, each one staking his territory, taking a perfect, professional, but rather unoriginal photograph (with flash in the middle of the day, to chase those shadows away!) of each couple leaning upon the railing. The best photographer is the one who comes away with the most (properly) exposed rolls of film. So “smooth-talking” is an essential skill.
-“Smile! There’s no obligation to purchase”, “Come on, it doesn’t hurt, I promise”, “It isn’t every day you embark on a cruise ship” “I’m the best photographer for 20 km around”
In my former life, I had been a maths teacher, in the private sector, I was very timid and I didn’t speak much English. Look at me now: the best photographer in a 20 km radius, I photograph groups of thousands of passengers while dreaming of my next dive, and even my assistants, all of them British, think that I come from England. Anything is possible when you’re paid on commission. You need to have motivation in life!

To summarize, I am given:
- Passengers closed off from the world
- Photography equipment (both shooting and development)
- Assistants
- A photo gallery to display the photos
My job is to somehow transmute all of this into $$$$$$. I oversee the whole production from beginning to end (an old cherished dream: artisanship!)

With training and mileage, the photographers can read the negatives easily.

The job is very varied: you’ve got to be both versatile and well-versed in other languages:

- Storekeeper: keeping track of the stock (long live software!). A shame we can’t always maintain proper storing temperatures.
- Photographer: Oh yes, sometimes you even have to know a bit about photography. We are all skilled photographers, armed with our “Leica”s and big flashes. We wear tuxedos at the cocktail parties and swim suits on excursions.
- Crowd Control: taking a photo here and a photo there is not enough, it’s a drop in the ocean. We have to photograph everyone. We also have to take photos for the maritime company: (a broken part in the machine room, a new excursion, a medal awarding ceremony, the boat in the Panama Canal, a show on stage, at harbour, etc..)

- Colour Printing (Kodak didn’t anticipate the extra chemical agitation on a rocking ship. Hey, why is the white base of the paper slightly brown?)
- Electrician and mechanic: maintenance and repair (waiting a week is not a possibility: passengers don’t often purchase the photos of past passengers)
- A good Salesman: Why, yes, we do have a counter, we do accept credit and debit (on display: many thousands of prints; please don’t touch them with your fingers, thanks)
- Skilled Marketing: statistical analysis to know which products are the most sought-after, fine-tune photography strategies (it’s important to follow the movement of a crowd when you take a lot of photos), and sales strategies (it’s important to follow the movement of a crowd when you want to sell a lot of photos). No purchase necessary, so you have to offer the best product to “win”. Here, it’s one’s experience and flair that count.

- Team Leader: you need to know how to delegate different tasks according to everyone’s abilities, to differing degrees of seasickness, and to the TV movie schedule.

- Diplomacy expert: Finding a compromise between the interests of the English Photography company, avoiding stepping on the toes of the maritime company, giving the best service possible to the passengers and assuring the well-being of the assistants. Hey wait, I forgot something: my own interest, too.
You must fulfill all these roles while maintaining the utmost courtesy, in an ironed uniform, with great discretion. These are all important. Also, it is imperative that you have an excellent sense of humour, yet keep it to yourself.

The English company now has around thirty-five boats in its fleet. The vacations I am allowed get longer and longer, that is to say photo reports, and other slices of life:

Near the North Pole, with scientists and sled-dogs. With vases and flowers in a studio. In the Amazon with a tribe cut off from civilization (where I managed to catch malaria and it lasted for three months). In a small sailboat in the British Virgin Islands. With charming Fashion Models in Paris and in Los Angeles. Surrounded by glaciers in Alaska. With small bottles of paint on the Ektachromes. Piloting a plane above Missouri. Scuba-diving in Florida, Ohio, the Caribbean, in Mexico, in Canada, in Bermuda, Honduras, Venezuela, Hawaii, California, on Sipadan in Malaysia, Kota Kinabalu in Borneo, Bali in Indonesia. With my own personal creations (check out my accompanying portfolio).

I am drawn to diversity. Always photographing the same types of subjects, in the same style, that is the key to success : but what an insult to the open mind and true creativity!

The hardest part is to develop and keep one’s contacts in the magazines of the world. Thankfully in the USA there are a few excellent Post Office Box services (privately owned, of course), thanks to whom I can stay in touch (in staggered time, but reliable). This allowed me to have my work published in Europe, North America, and Asia.

Thanks to cruise ships. Let’s get back to the cruise ships. Your schedule is always very full, as a photographer, just like any of the crew members, really. Today is more laid-back, we are docked for the day: the passengers are out on an excursion. This leaves only a few things to get done:
- Chemicals to mix up
- Yesterday’s prints to cut out (they are on a long roll as they come out of the drier)
- The cash register’s balance to show to the purser
- Explaining to the new guy, Nigel, how to photograph the Waterfall Excursion
- Updating the photo gallery = removing the older photos taken at the beginning of the cruise and replace with the new ones
- Sending a fax to England about the circuit board for the temperature controller that still hasn’t arrived but which we desperately need
- A meeting with the second commander about photos on the docks: he would like us to photograph the passengers once on the dock rather than on the gangway
- A meeting with the Excursion Director who is accusing us of slowing down the boarding of the buses, we are getting in his way by taking photos on the dock so he would rather we do them on the gangway
- A reprimanding fax to read from England: we should take more photos as passengers are disembarking
- The “Hotel Manager” would like to move the photo counter to an invisible location
- The electricity was suddenly cut without warning in the photo lab: even though I’ve already asked the chief electrician to warn us, because we could lose film, but he always forgets
- A phone call from the Miami branch asking us if we happened to have an extra circuit board for the temperature controller, since another boat was in desperate need of one
- A passenger contacts us at the lab: he complains because there is no photographer coming along on the six-person helicopter excursion. For us, it isn’t economically viable to send a photograph on a six-person excursion when at the same time there are three other excursions of four hundred people each. Yet you must be polite to the passenger: it is not his fault: he doesn’t know how the system works: I explain it to him, reverential and suave, and he explains to me, that I would sell at least six photos if not more, that he would buy at least one, for sure, except if his wife forces him to wear that terrible jacket she got him last year for their trip to Switzerland, which isn’t practical at all since nothing fits in the pockets, so he’d have to carry his camera around his neck, which makes you look too much like a tourist ; at last I am saved by the weekly abandon-ship drill. In the USA, safety is sacred.

The abandon-ship drill: I do absolutely nothing, as usual, and just like the other three hundred and eighty crew members, I watch the twenty crew members who are actually putting the lifeboats into the water.
After the abandon-ship drill, I dash back to the dark room, electricity is back on, I print yesterday’s “Cocktail Parties”, the second test is perfect, I print everything in one block: one thousand two hundred prints, same density, same filter, three hours. Life is good: my assistants John, Barrie, and Nigel have taken my unending slew of recommendations to heart: same emulsions, same diaphragm, same brightness manual flash, same distance from the subject. Out of forty rolls, only one bad photograph, they’re real pros.
I load the long roll of paper, in total darkness, in the corresponding developer, then in the ten minutes before I hang up the developed and dry paper, I try to repair the Leica from two days ago. Ah yes, there’s your problem, the shutter, made of cloth, hadn’t unrolled properly, so I unscrew it, screw it back on, all is well, business as usual.

The processor’s alarm sounds: the developer solution’s temperature has gone down more than a degree, I know, the circuit board has failed again. I ordered a new one three weeks ago, because I gave my extra replacement to another boat on the edge of catastrophe. It is a complex circuit board, with more than fifty parts, impossible to repair, not onboard, and not anywhere in Mexico: the hundred litres of developer solution are going to cool down much too quickly and the last hundred photos are going to be too ruined to put up. Time to bring out the big guns: the 500-Watt electric heating element, directly hooked up to the sector. I take out the big roll of paper from the developer, knowing some photos will be lost, but I have no choice, I have to open the lid of the developer solution and throw the heating element into it, and I have to take out the photos in there else they will be fogged. I’ll have to heat the bath every fifteen minutes, after having, of course, taken out the roll, losing several photos every time, but this way the temperature should stay in the acceptable range, not in the range recommended by Kodak, maybe (please forgive me, Mr. Kodak), but the one I set myself. Keeping the heating element in the middle of the bath is the hardest, for if it touched the sides, made of PVC, they wouldn’t take it too well. Tonight I’ll put together a metal frame to hold the element for me. Look, it’s already almost dark outside: it is a long process, manual heating.

Aha, John, Barrie, and Nigel have just come back from their respective excursions, so they can come help me find the missing prints and reprint them. Oops, I haven’t had the time to eat lunch yet. A phone call for me from reception: an emissary from my company has just arrived and is waiting for me, so I go to meet him, he is wearing a nice suit and tie and a cellphone which doesn’t work in Mexico, obviously. He is repulsed by my perfume of developing chemicals. He has come as quickly as possible from Los Angeles, to give me my replacement circuit-board #686138157 8060 PCB. Here, it’s the one that controls the temperature, the one that I had ordered and still not received but which today I very much needed. He is a little disappointed: according to my reputation I always had the replacement parts because I always ordered them on time. I asked him why he didn’t call me from Los Angeles before coming, he says he was too busy, as we both stare at the mobile phone in his hand. He takes advantage of this moment to let me know that he’d just run into the purser who had complained that I didn’t photograph the six-person helicopter excursion, because everyone wanted it. Well, anyway, he’s got a plane to catch and I’ve got a shower to take, and a bear costume to put on (disguised, obscured, very soft to touch, very photogenic, waiting for passengers at the restaurant exit, and tadah, miraculously, the photographer is there to take a photo).

In the stairwell I’m stopped by the security officer who asks me why I didn’t participate in the abandon-ship drill today, when I had already excused three assistants for going on an excursion. I go by the gallery where John, Barrie, and Nigel had opened on time after all and everything is okay, except for some missing photos, which have been exposed but not developed. I would do them between two bear sessions.
A lady passenger calls me over to say, “The photos are too expensive, I’m sure you would sell twice as many if you sold them at half the price”. I think, well then we wouldn’t earn a cent, but I say instead, “A very good idea, Madam, I will definitely bring it up with my superiors”. It’s my turn to do the bear, an assistant takes the photos, another manages the gallery, and the other takes his chance to get a bite to eat. I hurry to the lab to develop the missing photographs. I eat and I go to help my assistant at the gallery, full of people.
There are already two thousand photos on the walls by the third day of the cruise. One passenger says, facing the counter, “Where is the photo gallery?”. Another, showing us his photo on his identity card, “Can you find me my photo with the Captain, here’s what I look like.” “Well of course we can, Madam, but we can see what you look like quite clearly on your face.” A very dignified gentleman: “Do you have a photo lab on board?” “Of course not, we have a helicopter service.” Anyways, they’re all nice and good, they are on vacation, they’re on a cruise ship, they’re here to relax, not to think.

Sometimes we get to relax, too. Here are some silly photos that I made onboard. Sometimes, we get to take very interesting photos: the boat in the middle of the ice for the Alaska brochure, an underwater photo of a broken propeller, a burial at sea, a celebrity on board (Henri Salvador, Jimmy Carter), the evacuation of passengers after the engine room caught on fire. The technical and commercial aspects of the business are equally fascinating and we have to evolve as the industry changes: American tourists all have their own camera (even autofocus!) and a video camera, and many of them have been on cruises before, they want something new. The recession hit us hard: the souvenir photo is superfluous and digital photography is about to turn the system upside-down : everything will be instantaneous or near enough, no need for dark rooms, just television screens and laser colour printers.

Thanks to my inquisitive scientific mind, I’ve invented a good number of techniques and developed a good number of markets. Back when I started, the English photography company hadn’t but a dozen boats.
I organized photoshoots with mascots (creatures in soft, photogenic, asexual disguises).

I invented studio photo shoots during formal evenings, my famous “Formal Portraits”: with Hasselblad, studio flashes and umbrellas. I had to spend a cruise on each boat in the fleet, one by one, as a consultant, to install and relay this novelty. (See details on page 35)

I came up with a new faster system to assign numbers to prints. I redrew the mask for the new machines so they could print our logo at the bottom of every print, and Mr. Durst sent me a patent. Thanks, Mr.Durst.

I also developed, as is normal for a photographer, an anti-theft system for the photo gallery.

With the help of a friend, Nicole Bordes, a doctor of Physics, I was able to digitize the entire onboard photography system so that we were able to see the immediate effects of prices, format, season, assistants, etc., on revenues.

Revenues (and quality) went up on every boat where I worked.

I trained many assistants, who went on to become very good managers themselves.
Hey, this page would look good on my resumé.
The human aspects are just as fascinating: the crew is made up of forty-six different nationalities. When the captain gives his welcome speech to the passengers, he claims that we are doing a better job than the UN when it comes to fighting racism and the mix of peoples.

That’s good and all, but the feudal system remains:
- The Serfs (Haitians, Mauritians, Jamaicans, Filipinos, Mexicans, Chinese, in short the poor nations) are six to a cabin, earn a thousand francs a month, can only go between their cabins and their workplace, and when one is fired on the spot for some small slip, two hundred are ready to take their place immediately, because when they come home after a year or two on board, they are rich heroes to those at home.
- The Lords: the Captain, the Cruise Director and the Hotel Manager are the Lords: one does not discuss with them: they are always right, even when they’re wrong. They can even bend the laws of logic and physics if they will it.
Well, someone needs to lead, otherwise it would all go to shambles. The workers strikes brought the cruise liner France to bankruptcy, now the Norwegians do a fine job of running it. Alright.
At the homeport, on land, the Captain is shouted at by the Company President. The Company President is also shouted at by the Parking Officer because he ruffled his parking ticket and now the machine won’t accept it.
- The Court: The Knights, the Bards, the go-betweens. We joke, we fight, we are intrigued, we hope, we are disappointed, we are content, we see the world, okay well mostly the ports, well anyway more than we’d have seen if we’d stayed home, and we don’t pay for electricity and we are like one big family, a small village floating on the water. We’ve got a hairdresser, a baker, a casino, a pool (reserved for passengers, of course, since there’s not enough space, obviously.)

Hey wait, you’re right, we’ve left out the passengers. Without them, there would be no us. Without them, there would be no…
Excursions: Jamaica’s waterfalls, big game fishing in Bermuda, Jungle tours in Indonesia, snorkelling in the Caribbean, boats on the Great Canal in China and the inescapable shopping, swallowed hook, line, and sinker.
At the time of great discoveries, you know, Christopher Columbus and all that, the rich countries of the time traded with the indigenous peoples, trinkets and glass-work (produced in bulk by the rich countries’ industries) in exchange for spices and precious rare woods. Nowadays, the rich come to today’s poor countries (still the same ones, pretty much) via cruise ships to buy trinkets (eg. tiny onyx Incan ruins, made in Japan) in great quantity from the indigenous peoples. That way the indigenous people can afford electric hair-dryers (often made in Japan, or by Phillips).

Without blessed tourists, nor would there be the inevitable shows of local folklore that I photograph along the excursions, many times a day: in the jungle, on break between two warrior dances after the tourists have left, the handsome Black man bedecked in paint and feathers lights up a cigarette and discusses the John Wayne movie he saw on TV the night before.

And of course: the cruise has fun. THE LOVE BOAT. Thanks to many lovely and enchanting passengers, I have had a taste of many incredible slices of life, shared and understood their equally varied and passionate lives. I learned of the social classes, religions, customs, national education, fashion, politics, professional life, morals, conjugal relationships, the undersides, the underwear, etc. of the great US of A.

On board, tourists possess a great and revered weapon: the comment card they fill out at the end of the cruise. The Maritime Company judges and manages everything according to these comment cards, because to be the best they need to give people what they want. Too many photos, not enough photos, bigger coffee cups, funnier shows, the cabin smelled fishy, the photographer interrupted our intimate conversation at the cocktail party, the bear scared an old lady half to death because she thought it was just a big stuffed animal, the dancers are too scantily clothed, there was too much to eat, the cruise was alright, but we were jolted awake every morning by the photographer’s helicopter, the cruise ship should go inland more, the photographer made me look fat in all of his photos.
The comment cards, once submitted, bring on an avalanche of memos and bigger coffee cups. Now it is mandatory to photograph the six-person helicopter ride. Now it is mandatory that at least one photographer attend the abandon-ship drill. There needs to be more communication between different departments.

The cruise does have fun. You can’t deny it’s better than the Golf War and the hole in the ozone layer.

TEXT and PHOTOS : CHRISTIAN FOURNIER.

Text and Photos : Christian Fournier; View the photos on section "reportage"

This reportage (text and photos) was bought immediately by the Press Agency Sipa Press in Paris, after faxing them text and photos from Jakarta. Original photos were sent by DHL two hours later. The deal was all done. Sipa returned them 5 days later as unsaleable. This is an indecent procedure in the press world, since the news was then too "cold " to resale. They offered no explanation, no compensation. Two years later, I learned from someone on the French political scene that my reportage showed up on the French prime minister's desk and was vetoed "NO" because Paquet, the cruise line, was "persuasive enough......." So much for the French freedom of press......

Everyone going on a cruise has to go through a boat drill. These are international maritime regulations and this exercise is compulsory for all passengers. Even if you manage to skip it, you can be sure that the safety officer on board will have a meeting with you to explain you the emergency procedures. But what about it? The crew is trained with at least one crew drill per week, the ship herself go through a complete inspection every three months by the U.S. coast guards or their equivalent in foreign countries. Why should each passenger at the beginning of the cruise, put on his bright orange life jacket and assemble on the deck areas? What is to be feared? Accidents at sea are rare, but can happen.
The following is a true story:
12th February 1992, 3:30 P.M.: the luxury passenger liner Ocean Pearl from Ocean Cruise Line / Croisières Paquet is sailing the Java Sea. The weather is beautiful and the sea is calm. For the 370 passengers on board, this is the first day of a dream vacation: a 13 day cruise from Singapore to Bangkok. The first activity of the morning was the passenger drill and the excitement is building up for the welcome gala party this evening.
Suddenly, the voice of the British Staff Captain Jeremy Kingston breaks a leisurely started afternoon; The sound of his out of breath and highly stressed voice will be imprinted in many minds:
"This announcement is for the crew only. Crew alert, crew alert. A-team to engine room, A-team to engine room."
The alarm bells start ringing all over the ship. A black smoke has already invaded the lower stairs and corridors. Some passengers are hurrying out to the outside decks. There is no panic but they look distressed. The well trained crew and staff run to their assigned muster station in less than five minutes. Shortly afterwards, the passengers are asked to go to the decks with their life jackets. Inside the ship, the smoke is getting thicker. All power is off except for the small emergency lights. Inside this dark and smoky labyrinth, the slow passengers are shown their way out to the open air. Once the passengers are safe on the decks and counted, the remainder of the crew is ordered to go to their lifeboat stations. There is no panic, just some worried faces staring at the black smoke pouring out of amidships.
Life jackets from the deck containers are distributed to those who could not get to their cabin. All lifeboats are lowered and prepared to abandon ship. Everyone waits anxiously. A lady still wears her hair curlers, having just run out of the beauty salon. A beautician still holds a comb in her hand.
Below decks, engineers and firemen are fighting in the darkness, against the fire, the heat and the smoke. They all know that fire is the greatest hazard facing any ship at sea: especially, if it starts below the water line or propagate through the air conditioning vents or reach the fuel reserves.
The pursers have carried all the passports and documents in bags to the deck, the casino manager carries all the casino funds in her shorts and looks pregnant. Two ships (small cargos) are converging towards the Ocean Pearl: the distress signals have worked. The Titanic times are long past !
The smoke escaping from upper deck is impressive. The lifeboats are ready for embarkation. Everyone fears to hear the "abandon ship" signal. Nobody knows exactly what is happening inside. The Cruise Director Joe Raad, walking on upper decks, megaphone in hand, explains that the P.A. is out of order and that the "abandon ship" preparations are just a precautionary measure. Later, the Captain himself Pierre Delery go around the decks, megaphone in hand, and announces that the fire is under control; Meanwhile, everyone must stay calmly outside.
Engineers and fire fighters, covered with black soot, soon appear on decks with hoses and start pouring water in and around the funnel in order to cool down the engines below. The two rescue ships sail away after their reassuring silent watch: the situation is under control.
The telephones and P.A. system are turned back on. More announcements are made: the fire is out but everyone must stay out on the decks. The smoke needs time to dissipate from the bowels of the ship since the ventilation is out of order. Everyone now relaxes on decks: the worse is passed. Drinks and towels are being distributed around, many crew go back to their regular duties: there is food to prepare, decisions to make, a lot of cleaning to do and most of all, power, A/C and water to restore.
There are no casualties (just one gentleman fainted: anxiety and/or heat ?). Nothing on board in the passenger and crew areas has been damaged: the fire has been confined to the engine room where it started. By 7:00 P.M., people are allowed back inside. The smoke is gone but the smell of burning remains. Only electricity has been restored: there is still no water and no air circulation but the engineers are working hard on it.
A cold buffet is served in the Orchid dining room and the orchestra plays in the Marco Polo lounge. A hot night awaits everyone on board: the A/C is not operational. Most of the passengers will spend the night outside on the decks. Their fate is being decided over the phone: the ship can not move any more on her own. Finally, the verdict arrives in the middle of the night: all passengers and their luggage, as well as five crew escorts will be evacuated at 5:00 A.M. on board the Sea Princess, another cruiseship luckily sailing a similar route.
The passengers are being woken up at 4:00 A.M. and asked to pack. A very early bird breakfast is served. It is still early in the morning but already hot everywhere in the ship. Unfortunately, the meeting with the Sea Princess is postponed to 10:00 A.M. because of delicate navigation at night for the rescuers. A long wait starts. The shock is over, questions now arise: what is left of the vacation? Pearl Cruises is paying for the flight home, refunding the entire cost of the cruise/tour vacation and offering any future Pearl cruise at half price.
Evacuation starts at 10:30 A.M., using the Sea Princess tenders from one ship to the other. It will take two hours to transfer everybody. The Ocean Pearl will be towed by a tugboat back to Singapore where she will be repaired.
There has been no panic at any time. The passengers who had done the drill the same morning, knew how to get to their lifeboat station, saving precious time. The highly trained crew were there to help the passengers and make sure that the evacuation to the deck was going smoothly. Throughout this incident, all ship's personnel performed extremely well. But most of all, everybody is grateful to the crew, engineers and to those who helped to fight the fire, to have been able to avoid a catastrophe: the intense heat in the engine room could have melted the walls of the fuel reserves.