CRUISES are being described as “floating petri dishes” in the UK press, manufacturing disease and COVID-19, over 6000 passengers are still stranded at sea even now and shares in the biggest cruise companies have plummeted.
However, having worked as a cruise musician and been evacuated from a corovavirus infected ship, the Grand Princess (pictured above), I wouldn’t say that I will never take another contract and do it all again.
Described as the “Plague Ship” by The Sun and publically shunned by the US president, at the height of its infamy, my ship was floating around the ocean in circles stranded for days while I was surrounded by crew members getting visibly sick with the symptoms of the virulent virus.
One crew member later died and a couple of passengers but you could never argue that it was a safe, healthy, working environment or that I shouldn’t have evacuated when the British Consulate took all UK passengers and any British crew that were willing to go.
report on Grand Princess fatality
A thousand plus passengers were being evacuated and most of the crew repatriated and taken off board, leaving only a few hundred to keep the ship rolling. In spite of the blinding evidence to the contrary I received Facebook messages and had private conversations with some musicians insisting that this was a lot of fuss about nothing much worse than the flu.
10,000 deaths later in the UK, people digging mass graves for the poor in New York in scenes reminsicent of World War Two, and we can be certain that this is wrong to the point of malicious irresponsible stupidity. But who should take the blame for a blase approach? What is the reason for some musicians’ pretending it isn’t as bad as it is?
Check out this video link to a press interview with one of our passengers to get a visual sense of the danger and the drama. Suzanne Suwanda brought her guitar on board the Grand Princess and we jammed together, hung out at times and she came to see my sets before being evacuated and quarantined in a US army base.
interview & video ABC7 news Us
Personally I believe that when it comes to any cruise company the main motivation for playing down a virus on board which kills passengers and crew alike, of any age, could be profit and public relations. If a cruise company plays down the danger.
Personally though I still felt loyal to my cruise musician colleagues and to the idea of being loved as part of the Princess “family”. I enjoyed playing my music every night, in spite of the (to me) bizaare, artificial and unnatural surroundings of a cruise. I throughly enjoyed the company of many passengers. Meeting the crew was a privilege and I felt closely connected with a few of them.
For a musician it’s a highly paid job with public recognition of your professionalism and ability – even if it is popular covers and not your own original material. I personally though took advantage to talk on the mic, tell stories, and play a few of my own songs along with Irish rebel songs and northern Brit indie tunes from Wales, Liverpool and Manchester – cultures and geography which are part of my upbringing and daily life.
I will definitely be looking for musician work abroad when the vaccine is finally manufactured and a life of travel can start over again.
I won’t forget though that I’ve been treated with a casual disregard for my personal well being and financial compensation by some people. Nobody wants to be treated like they don’t matter. But it does help you to stand up for yourself and it pays to keep a ground perspective regarding everybddy.
I think the worst moment in this whole adventure was when I arrived in the UK on our chartered military plane. Having been left to float out in the ocean as a danger to the US public, then repatriated under high quarantine conditions, we were told by the Princess rep we could take off our masks and go home.
Princess contratced PR employees tried to shove me in a taxi and mingle me with elderly people just as it turns out I was developing COVID-19 symptoms. I didn’t know but I was thankfully sensible enough to take the right precautions by refusing. And they took us to a public hotel bar in Birmingham to use the pubic toilets and drink a free pint. Incredible.
I’m not in a bad position now professionally. The lockdown is giving me a great excuse to work out how to use film cameras and livestreaming, to keep more effective accounts, work out my ipad music aps, teach online, stay fit and practice. Even if my initial attempts prove amateurish, it’s going to happen.
It’s also proved a perfect opportunity to write that book on music and personal adventures. I’ve been filling noteboks for decades, my whole life in all honesty, looking for that free flowing story with room to express personal anecdotes, my wild upbringing and social perspective. My experience on Princess Cruises has provided one for me. So I’m grateful for that.
And if end up being a paid mix of self employed guitar teacher and self employed delivery driver until I can make it travelling and gigging again – the 4 months working away has given me the self belief to do that.
As for the cruise industry here’s a great story in the The Guardian explaining why some people still love cruises while ading the information on the plummeting shares – except in addition with Carnival Cruises:
“However, Carnival shares have gained 60% this week after the company secured $6.25bn of rescue financing, mostly secured against $28bn worth of its ships, and Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund revealed it had built an 8.2% stake in the company.”
Plus with Princess Cruises more specifically this:
“Australian authorities this week launched a criminal investigation into how passengers on the Ruby Princess were allowed to disembark in Sydney despite some exhibiting flu-like symptoms. More than 600 people on the ship later tested positive for coronavirus and 11 have since died – more than a fifth of Australia’s deaths so far. The New South Wales police commissioner accused Carnival of potentially breaching biosecurity laws and allowing the virus to arrive in Australia.”
I’ll be back with more updates and musicworkersdiary tomorrow.
Mike
The Music Workers Diary 