The Titanic's hull was 4 times thicker than the ship you are on now!

When I recount my time at sea I may not always get the timing right and one story I had forgotten from earlier on the Star was the safety briefing I had to attend after the ship finished Alaska. After two 30 day trans-pacific cruises the Star Princess would make its way over to South America to cruise Antartica, I would be getting off in Sydney after the first 30 day cruise.

Antartica was the biggest single money making cruise for any ship at that time especially with the photo/video department, although as colleagues who were lucky enough to work it said ‘most of the PAX had better equipment and more experience’ when it came to shooting one of the last bastions of the wild. My contract had been that long that when I started 8 months earlier on the Sapphire in Mexico my senior Richard had just been transhipped off the Star by my current manager Rich as they had fallen out. When I got promoted and transhipped I ended up replacing Bevan who was Richards replacement, I had now been onboard so long that my replacement would be the person doing the Antartica run this year. I remember some of the team saying to me ‘oh aren’t you gutted you won’t get to see Antartica?’ and honestly ‘yes and no’ was my response. Yes, because its the most important run in the whole company but no because even at the time I knew I didn’t have enough experience yet to handle that run and I as I was finding out from working with Rich I was very much still learning the ropes of the senior videographer role. I definitely didn’t have the skills or experience yet to handle the companies most lucrative run.

Looking back now I’m not sure I’d ever have wanted to work the Antartica run as each year it smashed the previous years DVD sales numbers and set a company record, you definitely did not want to be the first person to fail on the run. Also the weather round Cape Horn is well known to be spectacularly rough at times and also as I’d later learn as the cruise sailed from Chile to Argentina and back again with most of the two week cruise spent scenic cruising, most of the PAX only spoke Spanish to there always needed to be a Spanish speaking videographer onboard as we moved more into making the Reflections DVD’s documentary based with commentary provided by experts. Also filming would be around 10 days out of 14 outside on the open deck in freezing temperatures shooting for probably 8-10 hour a day and when you remove the majesty from Antartica and look at the filming side of things very clinically you are simply outside freezing you’re arse off filming bits of ice float by.

That said I would still love to see Antartica as a passenger without the added weight of financial oblivion if the sales were not good but I think I surprised many people when I said I would not want to work it, I think my my last few contracts I would have had the skills and experience to do it justice but in 2009 I definitely did not. Anyway…(getting back on track!) with the ship due in Antartica in a few months time we had fleet safety onboard and we had to go to a few 2+ plus department sessions to learn all about the different safeguards in Antartica, of course bar 2 or 3 people the whole photo team would be gone in the next few weeks. Cassie was still manager at this time and he got a page that he had to take care off 10 minutes into the meeting, 10 minutes JP the asst manager got a call and a short time after Lara the other asst manager got a call as well. What I didn’t realise was that bar Cassie’s page the next few was all of them paging each other to get out of the meeting!

The reason safety onboard was so important on the Star (other than it just is!!) was a few years earlier in 2006 there was a bad fire onboard that was started most probably by a cigarette butt being left alight / thrown overboard where it blow onto another balcony and started a fire around 3a.m in the morning. One PAX died of smoke inhalation and hundreds of cabins were lost in the blaze but thanks to a well trained crew, they were able to get the fire under control. Crew onboard who had been their during the fire had told me how if it had been a less experienced Captain onboard back then the situation could have been much worse, in other words ship safety was a much bigger deal on the Star as it had crew who had lived through an emergency.

‘Now you might think that cruise ships today are bigger and better built than the Titanic but let me tell you the Titanic’s hull was four times stronger than the ship you are on now, also the Titanic sank crossing the Atlantic this ship is going to Antartica where there is a hell of a lot more ice’ the fleet safety guy told us. Suddenly many of us were quite happy we wouldn’t be going to Antartica in a few months ‘Also do you know what the official maritime advice on cruising in Antartica is? (We clearly did not) ‘The official advice is don’t cruise in Antartica!’ we were happily informed!

We were also told that two cruise ships had to be in direct line of sight of each other the whole time both of them were cruising there, it didn't matter if they were not from the same company.

Now years later that line about the Titanic's hull thickness and the official advice to not cruise in Antartica I'm fairly happy I never went there and become the first videographer to fail to beat the previous years targets which of course did still happen in my time with the company.