Why We Love (And Love to Hate) Cruises

On the (nearly lethal) comforts of a luxury cruise.

BONUS READ: Listen to the author discuss this essay on an episode of To the Best of Our Knowledge.

Everything about the weeklong Caribbean cruise is meant to buff life’s unpleasant edges into sea glass. If it sounds like I am making fun, I am not. I love it.

I didn’t expect that spending a week with a couple thousand lesbians on a cruise ship would push me to radically reconsider the future I’d planned for myself.

BONUS READ: Travel alongside another cruise passenger, this time on a “Gone Girl” themed voyage via Slate.

The beauty salons, swimming pools and even wireless communications of today’s huge cruise ships all got their start with the “floating palaces” of a century ago.

BONUS READ: Get the case against the modern cruise industry, from disease spread to environmental destruction, at Vox.

People ask, ‘don't you get bored at sea?’” says Janice Yetke, 77. “I say, are you kidding me?"

When passengers boarded the MS Zaandam in March 2020, they were preparing for the holiday of a lifetime. Within days they would be confined to their rooms on a liner that no country would let dock. How long would their ordeal last?

BONUS READ: Read the distressing story of cruise ship workers who took their own lives while stuck onboard during the COVID pandemic via Bloomberg.

To escape my city’s pandemic restrictions, I embarked upon a cruise with literally no end destination.

Filipinos make up nearly a third of all cruise ship workers. It’s a good job. Until it isn’t.

High school didn’t serve up much adventure, so Devin Murphy signed up to do grunt work on expedition ships that sailed to Alaska, Iceland, Antarctica, and other far-flung places. Turned out to be a pretty great idea.

Following in the footsteps of African Americans traveling to Denmark in the early 20th century, Ethelene Whitmire experiences a 21st century transatlantic crossing.

The cruise industry promises to make zero-emission vessels and fuels widespread by 2030, while environmental groups cite its record on pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and over-tourism.

BONUS READ: Discover Antarctica’s efforts to balance cruise tourism and sustainability in a fragile ecosystem at The Conversation.

When the Costa Concordia hit a rock off the Italian coast on January 13, 2012, it became the largest passenger ship ever wrecked, supplanting the Titanic in maritime history. From the moments when the captain made the first in a series of incredible blunders through a harrowing night of mindless panic, Bryan Burrough reconstructs an epic fight for survival—in which all too many would perish.