'Almost turned me into a pirate' Photo / TikTok, littledrownedrat; WWW Prod, Unsplash
'Almost turned me into a pirate' Photo / TikTok, littledrownedrat; WWW Prod, Unsplash
A cruise passenger claims she learned the hard way that there is a place called “cruise jail” after almost spending three days of a seven-day sailing locked in a ship’s brig for an altercation with another passenger.
Theresa Rowley, from Texas, said she has been on four cruises with her67-year-old mother, Cindy. However the revelation that there are holding cells for unruly travellers “locked up in the belly of the ship” has made her reconsider another.
The actress from Dallas shared her story to TikTok, claiming the actions of one rude traveller “almost turned me into a pirate”.
She had been booked on to the week-long voyage with Carnival Cruise Line when she and her mother decided to visit the “piano bar”, a staple on the cruise lines’ Sunshine Class ships.
However, not everyone was feeling the music that night, especially one woman who had been heckling the pianist and the other guests.
“She [the other passenger] whips around and she goes, ‘Oh, I think you’re the rude one, b****.”
The moment she heard the swear word hurled at her mother, Rowley said a red mist descended as she vowed to avenge her elderly mother’s honour.
“Never in my life have I been in a physical fight, okay? But I felt like at this moment, every SoulCycle class, every Barry’s Boot Camp, every SolidCore, yoga class that I had taken had prepared me to throw a b**** into the Gulf of Mexico,” she said.
She went to the toilet to gee herself up into a frenzy and plot her plan of attack, but when she came back her mother told her the annoying passenger was gone. They never saw her again for the remainder of the cruise.
However, in a video that’s been seen 22 million times, Rowley claimed she was fully willing to spend the night in “cruise jail” for her mother.
”I don’t like who I become on Carnival cruises, actually,” she says.
But the meandering story left many wondering if cruise jails exist and what would get you locked up at sea.
As his clients can testify, these are for use to restrain unruly travellers at sea - passengers or crew - before they can be handed over to the relevant authorities.
Originally a term adopted for Navy jail cells, named for old-fashioned ships that were kept in service as floating prisons, it’s now a term that applies to any holding cell.
If you’ve ever been on an old Navy vessel or museum ship, the image of a ship’s brig is not much changed from the 1700s but Aronfeld says they are a bit less elaborate on cruise ships.
“They’re not the cabins with bars and sliding doors you see in movies. They’re cabins on lower decks with no windows that lock from the outside. They have minimal things inside, a mattress and some toiletries . . . and that’s it,” Aronfeld said in a video, Ask Me Anything, posted to TikTok.
The brig is normally reserved for those accused of serious crime, assault or murder.
The ship's brig on Navy aircraft carrier USS Yorktown. Photo / RegBarc, CC
In other cases, passengers who are found to be drunk and disorderly, or accused of less serious charges, can be confined to their cabins.
Every ship will have a ship security officer to oversee safety and decide when confining passengers to quarters or a brig cell is appropriate.
Fortunately, crime is relatively low on ships, according to United States data.
