All the Roadrunning

Ding. Dong. Ding. 

Ordinarily, I hear this trio of sounds dozens of times throughout the day.  It comes from the ship’s PA system and it indicates that an announcement is about to be broadcast.  Usually it is the Cruise Director informing guests of the next show time in the theatre or a receptionist asking for a particular guest to contact the front office.  These announcements are so frequent and irrelevant to me that I don’t even listen.   

Once night falls, however, and the activity of the day has faded and the majority of crew members are snug underneath their blankets, the Ding-Dong-Ding takes on an entirely different meaning.     

If an announcement is being made in the middle of the night, it is usually only for the crew to hear and always brings troublesome news.  The Hotel Manager would not simply have the urge at midnight to enthusiastically inform all crew that they will be receiving Cunard towels as their Christmas gifts this year.     

Instead, such announcements usually signify a medical emergency or a fire or perhaps a warning that all crew might soon have to go their emergency stations as a precaution.  When something is wrong somewhere on board, certain people must be summoned, warned or evacuated and the quickest method of doing so is a loud booming PA message blasted into all crew cabins.     

Last night at 2am, we were all awakened with that feared Ding-Dong-Ding.  During the two seconds that passed before an actual voice was heard through the speakers, I tossed aside my blanket, sat up in bed and began mentally preparing for the worst.    The Captain’s steady voice soon echoed out, notifying us that there had been a complete blackout of the ship and that our main electrical system was down.  But he also assured everyone that there was no need for alarm and that the emergency generators and backup electrical system had kicked into action.  It was just a general notice aimed at allaying any fears that might arise as crew began realizing that the electricity had failed.   

The Captain then wished us all a good night and I took a calm breath, feeling quite relieved that the situation was not something more urgent.  I fluffed my pillow and lay back down in bed.     

Twenty minutes later I heard an explosion outside of my cabin. 

Out of pure instinctual reaction, I tumbled to the floor and bolted across the room.  Opening the door in one quick motion, a thick wave of hot air bellowed past my face and into my cabin.  I nearly became sick with fear as I stared out into an impenetrable cloud of dark gray fog.  The visibility was no more than one foot and I came to the shocking conclusion that the ship was on fire and that I might be trapped.   

As I tried to peer through the fog, trying to decide if there was a viable escape route, I heard a violent hissing as intense streams of hot water began spraying out of the wall in front of me.  A layer of water immediately began building on the floor of the hallway.  The heat and smoke alarms in my cabin began beeping and I closed the door.  

From inside my room, I started to hear voices yelling and footsteps moving at a running pace somewhere at the other end of the hallway, but I was not confident that the area outside my door was safe enough for me to pass through.  I stood still, my feet unable to move, my heart pounding and my arms shaking. 

It was not until someone started banging on my door that I snapped out of my shock-induced trance.  I opened it and found an officer from the bridge yelling for me to evacuate at once.  I threw on a t-shirt and sandals and ran along the hall in the direction the officer told me to go, as other crew began beating on the doors of all my neighbors, trying to evacuate the entire area.   

The stairwell heading down to the safety of Deck 1 was a steady stream of traffic, with dozens of crew on two floors being cleared from their cabins.   Usually empty and silent at this time of night, Deck 1 instantly became a crowd of half-asleep, confused, scared people as more and more crew poured in from every direction.  Without knowing exactly what was happening, I could not help dwelling on the fact that we were nowhere near land, some two days out in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. 

After an hour of leaning against a wall, I tried to return to the area of my cabin in order to obtain a better understanding of the situation.  But I could not get very close, my hallway was flooded, water was pouring down three flights of stairs and a dozen or so security officers, deck officers and engineers were still working on the problem. 

Exhausted and living in an environment that does not allow for days off, I realized that I needed to sleep before morning came.  A friend of mine had an empty bed in his two-berth cabin which I gladly made use of.  However, I did not sleep much of course, instead falling in and out of disturbing dreams and waking thoughts about whether or not this ordeal was actually over.   

At 7:30am, without any further announcements having been made, I decided to return to my cabin.  I walked up the stairs slowly and along the hallway with the smallest of steps, as does one returning home to the house they had evacuated before a tornado or hurricane swept through their town.  I turned the final corner hesitantly, stepping in some small puddles of water scattered around the floor.  

Entering my cabin, I heard two distinct noises.  One was of my feet squishing the soaking carpet and the other was the drone of a dark blue industrial-size blower blowing warm air in an attempt to remove the moisture.  I surveyed the cabin quickly, finding little damage beyond the flooding of my entire floor.  Most of my belongings had luckily been tossed on to my bed by what I can only assume was a fellow crew member who had thought to save my stuff after I had been evacuated.   

I sat down for a few minutes on the still dry sofa and replayed the events of the night before as the air blower created a constant wind that swirled around me.   My room stunk terribly of rotten, damp carpet but I was quite content to have this foul odor as my only problem in the end.    

It turns out that not only did we have a complete blackout and a burst hot water pipe last night, but we also had engine troubles.  On the commute to my office this morning, I glanced out the windows and noticed that the ship was not moving.  Moments later the Captain made another announcement, one for all guests and crew to hear.  One of the pod propulsion units had a technical problem and as a result he needed to stop the ship in order to conduct an investigation.  Once again he stressed that there was no need for alarm. 

Tonight I have been given an empty passenger cabin to sleep in so that I can hopefully get some much needed rest.  But we’ll see how well I sleep, especially considering that this evening we are even further from land, some three days out in the middle of the Atlantic.  We are also only 100 miles from the sunken Titanic but I don’t really want to think about that right now. 

This entry was posted on Friday, August 15th, 2008 at 12:58 pm and is filed under Return to Ship Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.