The cruise ship Carnival Fantasy rescued 23 people on Sunday who had been drifting in the Gulf of Mexico for days. According to reports 22 Cuban nationals sailed from Cuba to Mexico on a wooden boat when it lost power, setting them adrift for days.  A Cuban-Mexican raised them to his sport fishing boat, but then he also suffered an engine failure and the group spent another three days at sea. They managed to establish contact with the US Coast Guard and requested evacuation from the stranded boat.

The Spanish search and rescue agency Salvamento Maritimo performed a remarkable evacuation of a Brazilian woman who was in labor on a cruise ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. After experiencing contractions and almost giving birth on board MCS Seaview the woman was airlifted from the vessel some 400 miles of the coast of Gran Canaria on Monday, April 8, 2019.

An elderly passenger has died onboard the cruise ship MSC Splendida while the vessel was in Sir Bani Yas, United Arab Emirates on April 02, 2019. According to a passenger sailing on Splendid, the man died during dinner presumably of a heart attack. Revival was attempted by the crew, and emergency personnel came to transfer him to the hospital where he was pronounced deceased.

A crew member wishing to remain anonymous has sent us a message claiming that many Indian employees working for Norwegian Cruise Line have been fired by the company. The crew was terminated from their working positions after they finished regular contracts and without any particular reason received a letter by NCL  thanking them for their services. The crew member has sent us a copy of the so-called “Thank You Letter” signed by the Fleet Talent Management, which says:

2000 crew members were evacuated from Oasis of the Seas after a large crane crashed on the cruise ship during dry dock in Freeport, Bahamas. The incident caused the ship to list on one side and parts of the dry dock are damaged. All the crew were safely evacuated on land and expected to stay overnight in Freeport city, Grand Bahamas.

A large construction crane collapsed today on the Royal Caribbean cruise ship Oasis of the Seas during the dry dock refurbishment at the Grand Bahamas Shipyard. Eight people are reported injured in the incident, company officials said.

“We are responding to a construction site incident at the Great Bahamas Shipyard, where Oasis of the Seas is currently in dry dock.”

A cruise director of the British cruise ship M.S. Serenissima was attacked and robbed of his belongings yesterday March 30, in Georgetown, Guyana.

After investigating the incident Norwegian Maritime Authority announced today that the cruise ship Viking Sky motors failed because of relatively low oil levels in the engines. Lars Alvestad, the head of Norway's Maritime Authority, said that low oil levels were the "direct cause" of the engine failure that stranded Viking Sky over the weekend while the vessel was sailing from Tromso to Stavanger with 1,400 passengers and crew on board.

Evacuation of passengers and crew is underway, after the cruise ship Viking Sky experienced engine failure today, March 23, 2019. Some 1300 passengers and crew are to be evacuated, by helicopters and if possible, by SAR boats in heavy storm conditions. The vessel is currently one kilometer off the coast of Farstad, Norway. According to the local media, this is one of the worst places to have problems due to strong wind, waves and hundreds of reefs.

A fire broke out today March 21, 2019, aboard the cruise ship Carnival Triumph during the dry dock refurbishment in Cadiz, Spain. According to the reports hundreds of workers who were inside the ship were evacuated after a small fire broke out on deck 4 of the bow-starboard side. The fire started in the early afternoon when welding works were being carried out. Navantia shipyard fire crews responded to the emergency and put down the fire.