Cruise Ship workers of reddit, what was the biggest “oh shit” moment on the boat, that luckily, passengers didn’t find out about at all?

1. Water pipe burst in a store room and soaked ALL of the spare toilet paper. This was on day 2 of a 14 day voyage to Antarctica. The cabin stewards had to swap around rolls of paper between "low use" and "high use" guest cabins and it came right down the wire. None of the guests found out or realized. Now toilet paper is hidden in every cabin instead of a centralized location.
   — myjobisawesome


2. Ship just arrived in Whittier, Alaska (the port for Anchorage) and an elderly passenger dropped dead while walking down the gangway. A conflict ensues between the port security and the ship's medical team. The port security didn't want the ship's medical team to get involved because it technically happened off the ship and the local authorities had jurisdiction. There really was no saving the guy but the ship's medical team at least wanted to try but the local authorites wouldn't even allow the chief medical officer to start CPR. The coroner had a ~6 hour ETA so the port authorities bagged up the body and stuffed it in an x-ray machine storage container in port (guarded by local police) until the coroner could arrive to take the body to Anchorage. The wife of the deceased continued on to finish the vacation for the 7-day rail trip to Denali (it was a 14-day gimmick... 7 days at sea, 7 day scenic rail trip). My understanding was the cruise line comped her entire vacation, arranged for the remains to be returned home at no cost to her, and provided a personal escort/assistant for the remainder of her vacation.
   — SchruteFarmsInc


3. All of the computer systems run on Windows 7, including all of the automation in the machinery space, security system, fire detection system etc.. When Windows updates it will restart the computers, as it does with a normal desktop, unfortunately it can also take out every computer at the same time and we're flying blind until it finishes. People may be more worried to hear that there is a hole in the hull yet they're actually fairly common occurances in older ships and easily plugged. Fires happen occasionally. The most terrifying was a crankcase explosion. The fire suppression systems are good at extinguishing them quickly enough though so they're not even a concern to the crew, unless Windows is updating at the time.
   — Mr_Happy_80






4. I used to be a crew member, and one time a guy working at the front desk jumped overboard after a crew party. He was found a few hours later by the coast guard, and everybody was asked to be discrete in order to keep the cruise running smooth, and everything was fine until the captain came on the PA and said we were delayed because a crew member jumped overboard. Then the madness begins, rumors appear out of nowhere, and the rest of the cruise was pretty much guests asking what happened the whole time. A lot of shit happens onboard, I could write a book, maybe even more than one. Another time a guy commited sucide in his cabin, and his family was onboard, including a little girl, but this time it didn’t leak to the guests. I saw the family as they were being escorted to the security office, felt so bad for them A friend of mine got fired for gettting wasted, got pissed and starting peeing all over his cabin while the security guys were there to take care of him. He spent the night in the little jail onboard before being dumped the next day in whatever port we were Also, everytime we had ice cream at the crew restaurant, people would say it was because they had to empty the freezer to put a dead body.
   — rjdac


5. I worked on a cruise ship, and unbeknowst to the passengers and most of the crew, the ship was on its last cruise. The company was going bankrupt and when the ship landed, that was it. Everybody was out of a job, and a lot of the immigrant workers were stranded in a foreign port.
   — Pilebsa


6. Somebody shot at the navigation bridge of the ship from the shore on my last ship, the bullet bounced off and hit my colleague on the hand (no real damage but it scares the hell out of her, ended up going home for a few weeks). While we waited for the local police to come on and investigate and take statements, guests were told we were delaying the departure to take on fresh water. I'm still shocked that never leaked out.
   — ElGofre






7. -There are small fires in places like the kitchens that happen somewhat regularly. Most of the time they're controlled quickly and no one even knows they happened. -People drop dead all the time, especially on some of the nicer lines that are basically floating retirement homes. Ironically it's when there's a survivable medical emergency that guests become aware of it, when they need to do an emergency evacuation either by tender boat or helicopter. -One of the ships I worked on a guest jumped off an open deck while we were at sea. He survived though, I think he was super drunk more than he was suicidal. -Norovirus outbreaks happen regularly. That'a a literal "oh shit" moment for some people. Edit: Probably the worst accident that happened during my tenure was when a kid literally put his eye out on a ball valve handle on one of the open decks. Pretty sure word spread quickly on that one though. Edit2: Sorry to disappoint everyone, but I don't know u/too-tsunami. I'm sure similar things have happened before, there's hundreds of thousands of people cruising at any given moment, and many of them are getting shit faced.
   — ostiarius


8. Well, all the passengers found out, but on a QM2 transatlantic crossing one of the kitchen staff got drunk one night and hurled himself overboard in the North Atlantic. The ship basically found out the next morning when the first mate kept calling on the ship wide intercom for him to go to his post. That afternoon, the captain announced what happened and that the ship was turning around to, with the help of 3 nearby merchant ships, try to search for the him. Of course it was foggy as hell and you couldn't see 100yds but just about everyone was on the railings with binoculars trying to search for the poor guy. A wedding even stopped onboard, the whole party out looking once the announcement came that we were in the search area. After (shockingly) nothing was found, the concierge desk set up a multinational-currency donation box to send to his family back in Chile. There were 4 days left in the trip at that point and every day that box was stuffed to capacity.. I hope it helped them.
   — ManInKilt


9. I was playing a production show (guitar) was standing on stage with a wireless unit alone to play Purple Rain, and then all of the sudden the house lights came on and the curtains closed. Everyone in the audience looked at me, and I ran off the stage. Turns out a sewage pipe burst backstage and there was shit everywhere. Show was cancelled and the passengers didn't find out why.
   — Lacklusterbeverage






10. I worked on a cruise ship for three years! I've got a lot of these kinds of stories, but here's my favorite one: Our ship officers got a call from a ship of a completely different cruise line, off the coast of Cozumel, Mexico. They found one of our passengers floating in the ocean. He wasn't even near the shore at all, just floating in open water. He was alive & perfectly fine. They reviewed the security footage, & in the middle of the night this guy was drunk on Deck 5, & could be seen holding his phone, dancing to music by himself. He then climbed onto one of the lifeboats, & did a RUNNING JUMP into the ocean. He left his phone on top of the lifeboat. His body was so fluid from being drunk that he wasn't injured when he hit the water. The cruise ship spotted him & rescued him. His family didn't know he was missing because he had booked a separate room. This guy told the news that a rogue wave pushed him off the side of the ship. He was on Deck 5, so the wave would have been over 40 feet tall... Don't know what happened after that. The entire crew was talking about it for weeks before it hit the news, though. Edit: [here’s the article on the incident! ](https://www-m.cnn.com/2015/01/13/us/man-overboard-cruise-rescue/index.html?rm=1) Some of you are asking if it was a suicide attempt, & I don’t believe it was. He was dancing for a while by himself & seemed to be just really really drunk & having a good time. He was screaming for help when he was rescued, but ultimately he’s the only one who would know. Edit 2: I am relaying the information I heard through the grapevine from security & other crew members. I don’t know if being drunk helped him survive the fall into the water, that’s just what I was told from several people onboard.
    — too-tsunami