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- What happens if someone gets caught as a stowaway on a cruise ship? - DougC
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On Carnival cruises, they put you to work in one of Kathy Lee Gifford’s sweatshops.
I’d imagine they’d “arrest” you and then charge you with trespassing or robbery (of food perhaps) once they got to shore. If they really wanted to push it. Of course, first they might ask you to pay for the price of the cruise.
From Oceans & The Law of the Sea: Report of the Secretary-General A/53/456
[sub]Sorry for such a huge cut-and-paste[/sub]
So, in the absence of any legally binding principle or precendent, I guess they just hold you in whatever security facility they can, and extradite you back to your home country at the soonest convenient moment.
In some of the other mundane memorandii I read (and accidentally forgot to cut & copy their links), there were provisions that the vessel was well within it’s right to prosecute the stowaway according to the laws of its flagged and registered country. So, yeah, Kathie Lee would get her work out of you, and then they’d deport yer ass. . .
Tripler
Hell, I’d rather buy an airline ticket. Food’s better anyway . .
Let’s see… you want a cheap vacation, so you sneak onto a cruise ship, thinking you might not get caught but you post to the SDMB to see what the worst case scenario might be.
Know that many cruise lines aren’t US registered vessels, so the laws of the flag country or at least the customary ways of dealing with nogoodniks likely apply. Like, for instance Liberia.
So they find you out when the ship pulls into Puerto Vallarta. Lucky you, you get to spend an indefinite time in a beautiful Mexican jail. You might or might not be sent back to the US after a while. Maybe the ship is on a Mediterranian cruise, so you get put off into the hands of the cops in Turkey.
Let’s not forget the Achille Lauro. What if someone decides you’re trying to pull an episode like that? What kind of treatment would you expect as a suspected international terrorist? If you’re really lucky, they might only “interrogate” you for a while.
I recall a case recently of some Brit tourists getting thrown in the slammer in Greece for “plane-spotting”; the local authorities took them for spies or terrorists. Remember that in this case or in the case of stowing away, the rights of the arrested are whatever they locals say they are —usually few to none. Greece, like many countries, runs on the prniciple of guilty until proven (at the accused’s expense) innocent.
It ain’t worth the risk.
Stowaways are a significant part of my work. Yes, an odd speciality, but there you go.
I have never had to deal with a stowaway on a cruise vessel. That is probably for two reasons. Firstly, most stowaways are from poor and inhospitable countries with many people trying to get out. Iran, African nations etc and of course cruise ships don’t go there. Secondly, Queensland (my state) is not a great cruise ship destination anyway.
But the usual drill for stowaways that arrive here is firstly to lock them up on board, because there are penalties upon the shipowner for allowing them to escape, secondly to try to find out their identity and where they are from and thirdly to use that information to get them emergency travel papers, and send them home. This is not all as easy as it sounds because very often if they know what they are doing, they try to hide who they are and where they are from, precisely so that you can’t send them home.
Their attitude towards going home often depends on how long they’ve been on board. When you’ve been kept in an internal cabin on a working ship (diesel fumes, vibration, boring food etc) for 9 months without seeing daylight, being beaten up and thrown in jail for a short while when you get back to your home starts to look good, and your resolve to refrain from telling anyone your name and where you are from starts to dissolve.
Australia is not interested in prosecuting such people. The flag state has no interest in doing so. What happens when you arrive home in some small African nation having caused a large amount of fuss and bother to some poor shipowner, I don’t know. I suspect that the local government wouldn’t much care, but I don’t suppose that harsh treatment could be ruled out.
In most countries, the attitude towards stowaways on visiting ships is “lock em up (on ship or on shore) and then move em along. Not our problem”. Forget any obligations under IMO guidelines.
I have only handled one instance of first world stowaways (Kiwis) getting caught in Australia. I think they were deported and prosecuted in NZ but I don’t think they were charged with anything too serious.
And by the way, you will not be put to work, if the Master and shipowner know what they are doing. Doing so creates employee/or obligations which complicate the business of getting you off the ship and sent home.
While I doubt that this would be a problem on a cruise ship, bear in mind that my colleagues and I generally assume that we only hear about and deal with the stowaways that the crew decide to report. We assume that there are others that make a faint splash and then no noise whatsoever. A German Master is in jail at the moment for murder in just such circumstances. I would assume that he is just one of the few that got caught. Before you stow away, bear in mind that you will become an enormous headache to the crew of the ship and that they will not appreciate you. At all.
I am not by any means justifying or condoning such appalling behaviour, but you have been warned.