What happens if you get in trouble on a cruise ship

To be safe, read the documentation that you receive after booking these days, often in electronic form for specific information about boarding times for your sailing. Just last year, I got stuck in a massive traffic jam around one of the guard gates at Port Everglades. It added at least 15 minutes to what should have been a quick five- to minute Uber ride from a nearby hotel.

Just like airplanes, cruise ships are on tight schedules -— much tighter than you may realize. If a ship delays its departure by an hour while it waits for you to arrive, it very well may arrive an hour late at its next port of call.

One common misperception among cruisers is that cruise lines will hold a ship for late-arriving passengers if they are arriving on cruise line-booked flights. This generally is not the case. Even if you are arriving on a flight booked through the cruise line, the ship still will sail without you if that flight is delayed and you are not at the pier on time. What cruise lines will do if you miss a cruise departure due to a delay on a cruise line-booked flight is help you get to the ship at another port.

That is, if they can do so legally more on that in a moment. Note that the policies vary from line to line on this issue. Some lines are a bit vague about what exactly they will do to help passengers reach the ship. Others spell it out quite clearly. These laws are designed to protect domestic shipping industries from foreign competition. In the United States, for instance, the Passenger Services Act of says foreign vessels cannot transport passengers from one US port to another US port, either directly or by way of a foreign port.

The Act does not apply to sailings that begin and end in the same US port, provided the sailings include at least one stop at a foreign port. It also has an exception for trips between two different US ports that include a stop at a distant foreign port. What that means, in practice, is that a cruise line cannot let you join a ship at a US port such as Port Canaveral, Florida, if you later will be disembarking at a different US port — say, New York or Miami.

This is a rule that can severely limit your options if you want to join a ship part way through a cruise. Someone boarding in one of those ports and disembarking at the end of the cruise in Whittier would be traveling between two US ports, creating a violation of the Passenger Services Act.

Cruise ships do, occasionally, violate the law. Some lines also will occasionally allow waylaid passengers to join a ship at a forbidden port if they agree to pay the penalty themselves. If you are legally allowed to board a ship at a later port, you will be responsible for paying all the costs related to getting to that port. One exception, as noted above, would be in a situation where you missed the original departure because of a delay with a cruise line-booked flight.

Another exception would be in a case where you had a certain type of travel insurance more on that below. Cruise lines generally do not offer refunds or future cruise credits for passengers who miss a cruise due to travel delays.

This includes partial refunds for missed days if you join a cruise a day or two late. The only exception here is that some lines may offer at least a partial refund if you miss a cruise due to a documented emergency.

If you miss a day or two of a cruise because of a delayed flight, you might be able to get some reimbursement through a travel insurance policy, assuming you have one. Then again, you might not. Would you interrogate the victim before calling the police?

Would you tape record the victim without her permission? Would you demand that the victim prepare written statements before she could receive medical treatment? Would you scramble your defense lawyers to the scene to look for a way to build a case against the victim? Would you refuse to provide the name and address of your employee to the victim?

Unlike airplanes with Federal Marshals, cruise ships have no police authorities aboard. The few security guards on the ships are loyal to their employer who pays their salary — not to the passenger. When a crime occurs, the cruise lines first notify their risk managements departments and their defense lawyers.

If the closed circuit television CCTV tapes exculpate the cruise line, the cruise line keeps the tapes. In some criminal cases we have handled, the cruise lines did not bother to notify the FBI; in other cases, the cruise lines notified the FBI only after they destroyed evidence and sanitized the crime scene. The result is that criminals on cruise ships are rarely prosecuted.

In fact, some cruise lines have never had a crew member ever convicted of a sex crime or other felony. Most crew members know that nothing will happen to them if they commit a crime on the ship.

Because there is no criminal accountability, there is no deterrence to crimes on cruises ships. This is not my opinion, but the conclusions reached by security and sexual harassment experts who have studied the problem. In , Royal Caribbean hired two top notch firms to study the problem of sexual assaults on the Royal Caribbean and Celebrity fleet of cruise ships.

Royal Caribbean also retained a nationally recognized expert on sexual harassment issues, Dr. They attributed this problem to the fact that most crew members were not afraid of being arrested, much less convicted. Krohne reported that the worst thing that could happen to a crew member who committed a crime on a Royal Caribbean or Celebrity cruise ship was to be sent on a one way flight home. The experts concluded that male cabin attendants and bartenders were the most likely crew members to commit a crime.

The most likely location? The passengers cabin. In general, when crimes are committed in territories under U. These crimes include: assault, murder, attempt to commit murder or manslaughter, kidnapping, sexual abuse, robbery, and theft. These crimes and more are included in the cruise crime statistics reported by the Department of Transportation. Once a cruise ship sails more than 24 miles off of the coast of any given country, it is considered to be in international waters.

This means that the laws governing crimes on the ship are determined by the flag that the ship is sailing under. It is not uncommon for a ship to be flagged in a different country than the one from which it departed.

In fact, cruise lines often flag their ships in countries where the laws are less stringent, so as to avoid greater oversight.

If a crime occurs at sea, outside of U. It is forbidden for the FBI to enter a foreign flag vessel outside of U. Crimes that take place outside of the U. This includes coordination of investigation efforts, evidence collection, and agreement upon the jurisdiction of all impacted countries. When given permission, the FBI will come on board the ship as soon as possible after a crime has taken place in order to examine and make proper notation of all available evidence associated with the event.

Failure to promptly notify cruise security of a crime can result in missed opportunities for the proper personnel to board the ship and conduct the necessary investigations. Regardless of which jurisdiction you are under, the sooner you report the incident, the greater chance you will have of creating a strong legal case in your favor. Although you may feel safest with the knowledge that the FBI will be investigating your case, as you can see, there are many times when this is not possible.

Crimes in foreign ports can be one of those times. If a crime should take place in a foreign port, you should notify cruise security as soon as possible.

The most likely scenario is that the local authorities will then board the ship in order to investigate the crime scene, gather evidence and receive testimony from all those involved.

In some cases, the cruise may be delayed in its departure from the port, until the investigation is complete. The moral of the story, and one of the biggest takeaways for passengers and crewmembers on international cruise journeys, is that regardless of whether you are on the high seas or in a foreign port of call, prompt reporting of crimes is key.

Often, it can feel as though the laws that govern behavior at sea are constantly in flux. After all, the laws that apply while sailing internal and territorial waters shift once the vessel enters the contiguous zone, and shift again when the ship enters international waters. In addition to their particularity, laws when aboard cruise ships are exceptionally complex, often containing unforeseen loopholes and little known exceptions that can make prosecuting a crime a time consuming endeavor even for skilled and experienced attorneys.

A good rule of thumb is to refrain from any behavior that may have negative repercussions on land. After all, it is far better to be safe than to unintentionally find yourself committing an international transgression. That said, if you find yourself a victim of accident or injury at sea, you should know that the law is on your side.