Cruise Ships and Passenger Safety

In light of today’s world events, the cruise lines are quick to promote the safety and security of passengers on their cruise ships as their topmost concern. With only one attempted hijacking of a cruise ship and more recently a pirate attack; the cruise lines have boastfully sold their product as safe. For the most part, that boast is correct. The cruise lines were fortunate that in the Achille Lauro hijacking, only one American was shot to death and the ship and its hostages were released after intense international negotiations. With regard to the Seabourn Spirit attack, the cruise ship relied upon the LRAD, which is not necessarily carried on the majority of cruise ships, to repel the attackers. Had the pirates boarded the ship and caused harm to the passengers and crew, the economic outcome for the cruise industry would have been remarkably different.

Strictly speaking, while the external threats to cruise ships are great, the record shows that in regards to pirates and terrorists, there have been few incidents. So, the cruise industry boast continues while unfortunately, the statistics also show that the internal security practices onboard these behemoths are less than sufficient to handle not only the external threats from pirates and terrorists, but from the associated problems in the increasing numbers of tourists who flock to these shipboard vacations.

For both cruise lines and the public, it is difficult to ignore the headlines that dominate the media today on a recurring basis. With such disturbing footnotes, one can not avoid coming to the conclusion that these ships are not really as safe as they purport. What conclusions for example can prospective passengers and the cruise industry draw from the following banners?

“Deep Blue Mysteries - Mysterious Disappearances on the Deep Blue Ocean go Unsolved – Last month George Smith and Jennifer Hagel were enjoying a wedding cruise in the Mediterranean. The weather was great, the ports of call wonderful, and like the travel brochure-life aboard ship consisted of dancing, drinking, and gambling with their fellow passengers. But on July 5th, something went terribly wrong. The new bride may now be a new widow.” [i] (MSNBC Headline – August, 2005)

“Dozens injured when cruise ship tips - Miami, Florida -- A cruise ship listed sharply off Port Canaveral, Florida, injuring at least 93 passengers, 16 of them seriously, according to the Cape Canaveral Fire Department.” [ii] (CNN Headline – July, 2006)

“Scandal on the High Seas? - Congress Holds Hearing on Cruise Ship Safety Amid Assault Allegations: It's estimated that more than 10 million Americans go on cruises every year. Now, after complaints of onboard assaults, thefts and even mysterious disappearances, Congress investigated today how safe these vacations are.”[iii] (ABC News Headline – September, 2007)

The cruise lines boast that cruise ship travel is as safe if not safer than any land-based vacation destination. They seem to believe that the inherent risks associated with being on a ship at sea is less than the risk assumed by living in a crowded city. Their corporate slug line is that the number of rapes, assaults, and other criminal acts is proportionally lower on ships, while cruise line critics argue the contrary. Both critics and the industry embrace statistics to “prove” their side of the argument. One side uses them to prove land-based crime is higher, the other uses them to illustrate that shipboard crime is proportionately low. In reality however, both critics and the industry have been misled by the “statistics” in trying to prove their side of the debate and have figuratively speaking, missed the boat on the issue. They have been comparing apples to oranges while ignoring the real question: that is, how safe are you on a cruise ship? Not how safe are you in a particular city or town vs. a cruise ship, but on a cruise ship? When it comes to violent crime, it would appear that one assault or one rape is one too many regardless of whether it occurred on land or at sea, particularly if you are the victim.

The very existence of any crime on cruise ships suggests that there indeed is a problem that must be dealt with. Comparing crime on ships with crime in a city however provides no useful indication of how safe passengers are once onboard. But according to Michael Crye, president of the International Council of Cruise Lines (ICCL), a trade association for the cruise industry based in Washington D.C., taking a cruise is as safe as “your average community in the United States and, I would think, safer than staying at a motel.”[iv] That comparison in itself can be interpreted differently depending on what you want to prove. If Mr. Crye is suggesting that crime on a cruise ship is about as average as Cleveland, Ohio or Minneapolis, Minnesota for example, then crime really is out of control on these ships. For example, both these “average” communities in the United States had the highest statistics for forcible rape per 100,000 inhabitants in 2005. New York, New York incredibly, had one of the lowest ratings for forcible rape, just above Bakersfield, California.[v] These statistics however could be flawed for the same reasons that crime reported on cruise ships is low. The above statistics reflect only crime that is known, that is; incidents reported to the police.

Mr. Crye provided the following statistics in congressional testimony following the disappearance of George Allen Smith IV. He cited that the violent crime rate in the United States is about 465.5 per 100,000 inhabitants. The FBI reports that on average, there are only 50 crimes a year against U.S. citizens (on cruise ships) that are both reported and investigated by the FBI. According to the Bureau of Justice, 1 in every 1,000 persons are sexually assaulted (on land), but on ships there is only one alleged sexual assault for every 100,000 passengers.

On the surface these statistics seem relatively impressive however; underneath they suggest a deeper problem. The figures are artificially low. The statistics do not include crimes against non-U.S. citizens for which the cruise ships are not obligated to report to the FBI and do not necessarily include crime against crew members committed by other crew members. The statistics also do not reflect cases that go unreported. Unreported crime is a problem also prevalent in reporting land based crime. Many victims, especially in cases of sexual assault are unwilling and afraid to report such crimes out of fear of humiliation, embarrassment or belief that nothing will be done to bring the guilty to justice or that the crime will go unpunished. They fear being disclosed to parents, guardians, husbands or wives or retribution from the alleged perpetrator. Statistics are also near to impossible to calculate with regard to sexual crimes being reported by employees of the cruise ships themselves. The FBI records indicate that those statistics are virtually non-existent.[vi] Evidence suggests however that crime directed by crew against other crew members is very alarming, especially with regards to sexual assaults.

In most cases, a shipboard incident demands that the cruise ship security department conduct a preliminary investigation. They will conduct interviews with suspects and victims and collect what they perceive to be evidence. But many times, the security department is under pressure from the ship’s officers and from the corporate office to return the ship to its normal routine. In so doing, they have sometimes inadvertently altered, cleaned or destroyed the crime scenes. And who can blame them. It is not in the best interest of the ship to have these investigations being conducted while in the middle of a cruise with paying customers trading gossip in the buffet line, let alone have ghastly crimes scenes filled with blood lying around while waiting for the FBI to arrive. This is very disturbing to passenger comfort levels.

Unfortunately, the cruise lines hire employees to act as “security,” and are very liberal in their approach to internal security. Using Gurkhas or Indian nationals who owe their allegiance to the cruise lines creates partiality and a predictable response to serious security incidents. For example, on the P&O cruise ship Pacific Sky in which Dianne Brimble died in 2002 under a cloud of allegations of date rape, there were reports of shocking shipboard conduct with some passengers running naked through the ship’s passageways. Shipboard employees later reported that this behavior is fairly typical and that shipboard security routinely looks the other way.[vii] If what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, then most assuredly, what happens at sea remains at sea, far out of reach of official and in most cases a legal response.

Not surprisingly, the Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations began looking into cruise line safety spurred on by the Seaborne Spirit attack and the strange July 2005 disappearance of a 26-year-old honeymooner in the Mediterranean from a Royal Caribbean vessel. This was not the first time however that Congress has banged the drum for reform in this industry that many including those in Congress consider loosely regulated. In this instance, the subcommittee was being led by Christopher Shays, of Connecticut. Shays accurately summed up on December 13th, 2005 in his opening statements before the subcommittee, the problems currently facing the cruise industry with the following sentiments:

“Just two days ago, Coast Guard officials began conducting search operations in the waters north of the Bahamas because a cruise ship passenger was reported missing. In early November, modern day pirates fired mortars at a cruise ship off the coast of Somalia. These are two recent additions to a growing manifest of unexplained disappearances, unsolved crimes and brazen acts of lawlessness on the high seas. According to industry experts, a wide range of criminal activities, including drug smuggling, sexual assaults, piracy and terrorism, threaten the security of maritime travel and trade. Today we begin an examination of the complex web of laws, treaties, regulations and commercial practices meant to protect lives and property in an increasingly dangerous world. Ocean travel puts passengers and crews in distant and isolated environments and subjects them to unique risks and vulnerabilities. Like small cities, cruise ships experience crimes – from the petty to the profoundly tragic. City dwellers know the risks of urban life, and no one falls off a city never to be heard from again. Cruise passengers can be blinded to the very real perils of the sea by ship operators unwilling to interrupt the party for security warnings. And after an incident occurs, a thorough investigation can be profoundly difficult when the crime scene literally floats away, on schedule, to its next port of call.”[viii]

To paraphrase Christopher Shays, city dwellers know what urban risks they face when they leave their front door. This is in sharp contrast to the possibility that while at sea, a passenger may experience criminal activity that is both unreported (to law enforcement authority) and unprofessionally investigated. And with little legal recourse from the cruise lines or international maritime law, the risks would appear to be understated. The reason that these phenomena are now occurring in greater and greater frequency is simple. As compared to even the great luxury liners of yesteryear, cruise ships today are competing for the title of the largest, the biggest and grandest cruise ship in the world. It is only logical to assume that such problems would come along with such growth.

Cruise ships of the modern day are floating communities and it would be naïve to think that all the elements of society, both good and bad are not represented on these ships at any given moment. Passengers are under the mistaken assumption that criminal laws are not enforceable on the high seas. Security and safety incidents have always occurred on cruise ships, but until now they have not received the kind of negative publicity that the cruise lines fear. The general public has a choice to travel on cruise ships and the paying passenger has a right to expect certain measures of security and safety. The alarming truth however is that criminal incidents, safety accidents and unacceptable crew and passenger behavior will likely increase as more and more passengers are crowded onto these ships. As cruise ships expand and multiply in size and number, as ports become more and more crowded; these incidents will increase proportionally. It is only a rational assumption.

Admittedly, some of these security issues are far beyond the cruise lines ability to control. However, that would not exclude them from advising their passengers about inherent dangers that they may encounter while they are guests aboard the ship or when venturing ashore. With the obligatory lifeboat muster at the beginning of each cruise, the cruise ship believes it has satisfied most if not all of the mandated safety requirements. Other than presenting a cruise card when boarding or disembarking the ship, security is hardly mentioned again after the cruise begins. But security threats and the security situation over the entire world are ever changing and require constant updates, both to the ship and to the passengers. This may even include the cruise line’s responsibility to cancel or reschedule certain ports-of-call from the cruise itinerary due to high crime rates in certain ports, a potential terrorist threat, increased health risks, or political instability in a particular country.

While itineraries do get altered from time for some or all of these reasons; cruise lines risk losing their established base of customers as well as the potential cruise market by advertising that there are inherent risks associated with their product. Cruise lines have the capability and certainly the resources to meet those challenges as their fleets continue to grow in size and the numbers of passengers increase. The record demonstrates however that they lack the ambition because the environment in which they operate in not only permits crime, lawlessness, and unsafe activities, but encourages them.

This does not imply that these ships are operating without any standardized safety or security regulations. Quite the contrary. In general they are heavily regulated and inspected by multiple layers of governmental and international oversight. However, one area of the shipboard environment that is not regulated or inspected is the ship’s internal security capabilities especially with regard to criminal investigations and crime prevention. In other words, there is no Office of the Inspector General for the cruise industry that oversees the professionalism of its security forces. That leaves the cruise lines open to interpret what security on their ships should look like and how it should react. Is this a big concern? It is if you are the victim of a crime.

Because the professionalism of the security staff is questionable, it is not all that alarming to look at today’s headlines and read about passengers falling off cruise ships or disappearing into thin air or some other cruise-ship mishap. From this, one surmises that despite the cruise line’s best intentions or efforts to secure their product, there are still significant risks to both passengers and crew that need to be addressed. Real progress can only be made when real efforts are made to counter and stop these incidents from occurring instead of sweeping them under the carpet to prevent them from all costs in making headlines. This is an activity that the cruise lines spend a great deal of time engaged in, bad publicity after all, can sink a cruise ship quicker than any iceberg.


[i] Clint Van Zandt, “Deep Blue Mysteries - Mysterious Disappearances on the Deep Blue Ocean go
Unsolved”, MSNBC, Aug. 15, 2005, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8961958/

[ii] Rich Phillips and Susan Candiotti, “Dozens injured when cruise ship tips” CNN, July 19, 2006 http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/07/18/%20cruise.return/index.html

[iii] Jake Tapper and Matthew Jaffe, “Scandal on the High Seas? - Congress Holds Hearing on Cruise Ship Safety Amid Assault Allegations” ABC News, September 19, 2007 http://abcnews.go.com /US/Story?id=3627042&page=1

[iv] Christopher Elliott, “Mystery at Sea: Who Polices the Ships?”, The New York Times, February 26, 2006, http://travel.nytimes.com /2006/02/26/ travel/26crime.html

[v] “Crime Rates for Selected Large Cities, 2005 - offenses known to the police per 100,000 inhabitants”, [Internet on-line], available from: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0004902.html; 15 May 2008

[vi]Christopher Elliot, “Mystery at Sea: Who polices the Ships?”

[vii] “Cruise death case: ‘naked behavior not unusual’”, LLOYD'S LIST, June 27, 2006 (No.59195) , p 3

[viii]“Shays, Souder Hold Hearing on Cruise Line”, Safety http://www.house.gov/shays/news/2005/december/deccruise.htm; December 13 2005,

"Two if by Sea"

On April 18, 1775 Paul Revere made his famous ride from Boston to Concord to warn people that British troops were coming. The warning signal: “one if by land two if by sea” came from the clock tower of the old North Church in Boston. If the British were coming by land, one lantern would be lit. If the British were coming by boat, then two lanterns would be lighted. Paul Revere waited and watched the tower. Then at midnight he saw two lanterns. He knew they were coming by boat so he rode his horse as fast as he could to warn the colonists that the British troops were coming. This warning gave the colonists a chance to get their army ready to defeat the British troops

Just like Paul Revere who had received advance intelligence about the coming British attack, the Indian government was alerted before the terrorist siege. US intelligence agencies warned India in October of an attack on hotels and other targets in Mumbai, launched from the sea, and even listed specific targets, including the Taj Hotel. But unlike the warning received by Paul Revere, the detailed information was not acted upon prudently.

The important part of the story is not where the intelligence came from or how it was obtained, rather that it was ignored or not taken seriously. Indian authorities acknowledged that a warning was received and said it was passed to the navy, coastguard and police. But these agencies say it did not reach them. 'It appears to have been lost in the system,' one Indian official said.[i]

Terrorist attacks launched from the sea are nothing new. The deadly and notorious “Coastal Road attack” and the attack on the Savoy Hotel in Tel Aviv in the 1970’s in Israel would appear to have been the precedence for the concept of attacking land based targets from the sea. Similarities between the two attacks are striking.

Since the first maritime terror incident in Israel in 1953, there have been over 80 maritime plots either foiled or conducted against Israel involving the potential for great loss of live, or the actual murder of innocent civilians, security forces, naval personnel and foreign tourists. Attacks have ranged from small raids on Israeli towns and cities launched from the sea, deliberate suicide attacks on vessels, and plots to blow up cruise ships in foreign ports.[ii]

The first terror plot took place in June, 1974. Three Palestinian terrorists sailed in a small boat from southern Lebanon and landed on the beach in Naharia in northern Israel. The terrorists seized four Israeli hostages from an apartment building who they subsequently killed before being killed themselves in a gun battle with Israeli security forces.[iii] Eight other civilians were wounded in the attack. The result was the first attack on Israel conducted from a sea approach. Despite hardened security along Israel’s northern border with Lebanon and new maritime security measures, the PLO was still convinced of the potential for maritime terror attacks against Israel but needed to find a way around the Israeli obstacles. They turned to a tactic which is currently in use by the Somali pirates along the eastern coast of Africa. This tactic uses a “Mother Ship” to transport pirates far out to sea away from the coastal patrols and naval ships and then launch them in small dinghies which come out of nowhere to prey on unsuspecting merchant vessels. This tactic was used by pirates to attack the cruise ship Seabourn Spirit in November 2005. The PLO’s tactic was essentially the same. They would transport the terrorist fighters in a mother ship from ports in Lebanon and who then would come in from Israel’s ‘blind spot’ and attack Israel’s larger metropolitan cities.

Using the mother-ship tactic, the PLO launched an attack on Tel Aviv on March 5th, 1975. Eight terrorists were transported by ship from Lebanon and transferred to small boats who then proceeded toward the beach in Tel Aviv. They immediately raided the Savoy Hotel and barricaded themselves inside with thirteen hostages while demanding the release of Palestinian prisoners being held in Israel. As the standoff continued, an Israeli commando unit attacked the terrorists early the next morning. An intense gun battle erupted which resulted in the deaths of three soldiers and eight hostages. However, the commandos killed seven of the eight terrorists and captured one.[iv] The use of mother-ships to land terrorists on Israeli soil instilled fear in the Israeli population which regarded no place in their homeland safe from the terrorists. Additionally, as a result of the attacks on the Savoy Hotel in Tel Aviv, Israel’s hotel industry suffered greatly with bookings primarily by foreign tourists dropping off sharply. But the worst attack launched from the sea was yet to come.

In March, 1978 thirteen terrorists, landed just norh of Tel Aviv from two small boats launched from a mother-ship. Once on the beach, they immediately killed an American photographer and six other people they encountered before they seized two buses. In the process, they took 70 Israeli hostages, mostly women and children. The resulting massacre became know as the Coastal Road attack which eventually killed 37 Israelis and wounded more than 70 in the deadliest attack on Israeli soil.[v]

The terrorists had packed the hostages onto one of the hijacked buses and attempted to drive into Tel Aviv but were blocked by police. The terrorists exploded a hand grenade inside the bus which resulted in it catching fire. The resulting gun battle killed nine of the terrorists and two were captured. But because the plot had originally included 15 terrorists, 2 of which had drowned on stormy seas on the voyage to the shore from the mother-ship, Israeli security officials become alerted to the possibility that two of the terrorists of the Coastal Road attack had escaped.[vi] They called for a curfew between Tel Aviv and Nethanya, the first since 1968, to help locate the missing terrorists. It was suspended the following day when the total number of terrorists involved was determined.

The Israelis enacted several more stringent maritime security measures including increased naval patrols and aerial surveillance. These measures seemed to stem the threat of maritime guerilla attacks launched from southern Lebanon although several attempts were still made using this approach. The last successful attack was carried out in 1979 by the PLF who landed several terrorists in Naharia, in northern Israel in a rubber boat and murdered an Israeli father and his four-year old daughter before police were able to kill them in a gun battle. Abu Abbass, the terrorist leader of the PLF who would later mastermind the hijacking of the Achille Lauro in 1985, said that the Naharia raid and murder was in protest against the Egyptian-Israeli Camp David peace accords.

As the facts of the Mumbai massacre unravel, it appears that the Indian authorities are alerted to possibility of more terrorist gunman who have either not been captured or accounted for, or died in the approach to shore as did two of the Coastal Road terrorists. Nine days before the assault, the terrorists who have now been identified as Pakistanis belonging to a group of Muslim extremists from Kashmir, sailed from Karachi, Pakistan in a Mother-ship. They soon intercepted an Indian fishing trawler named Kuber. The lone terrorist captured after the raid admitted the terrorists boarded the boat and killed the four crewmembers and dumped their bodies overboard. They apparently kept the Kuber’s captain alive at least until he safely navigated the boat close to Mumbai. A local Mumbai fisherman said that he witnessed the killing of a fisherman aboard another fishing boat just before the killing spree began. The terrorists had slit the captain’s throat.

The terrorists then loaded a small rubber boat with grenades, automatic weapons and headed toward shore. Indian Police discovered the boat which curiously had equipment for at least 15 including jackets and toothbrushes. It has been confirmed that 9 terrorists had been killed in the ensuring gun battle and one captured. What has puzzled investigators is the presence of over 15 blankets and the same number of “winter jackets” and toothbrushes on board Kuber. These jackets have been described as not ones used by “regular fishermen.” Investigators have also found two engine covers and a second raft case on the fishing boat. This leads to the possibility of another raft that may have been used.

Prior to the hijacking of the Achille Lauro in 1985, Israeli Intelligence had warned the intelligence services of Italy and several other friendly governments more than six months before the hijacking that terrorist groups had been training to hijack a ship, although they could not identify a target or a specific terrorist organization. While advance intelligence may not have prevented the eventual attack on the city of Mumbai, the advance warning given that an attack was imminent, especially given that a target, the Taj Hotel was specified, may have prevented the deaths of innocent victims. The Taj Hotel, while it apparently had received some warning and implemented additional security measures, dropped them a short time after because they were disruptive to hotel guests. The Mumbai terrorists had prepared themselves for at least a year before the attack and like their Muslim brethren in al-Qaeda, were determined to take as many lives as possible in the attack before being martyred.

Just as Israel learned to strengthen their coastal defenses and intelligence gathering capabilities through numerous deadly attacks on their homeland, so too can we be reminded of the vulnerability of the sea being exploited by not only crazed terrorists, but criminals and pirates alike. Two if by sea is a time tested naval strategy which has obviously been learned very diligently by these entities.


[i] “Massacre in Mumbai: Under doctors' care, the gunman who carried out the hospital attack” by David Williams, December 1, 2008, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1090719/Massacre-Mumbai-Under-doctors-care-gunman-carried-hospital-attack.html

[ii] Akiva J. Lorenz, “The Threat of Maritime Terrorism to Israel”, Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center at the Israel Intelligence Heritage & Commemoration Center (IICC), October 1, 2007 pg 6

[iii] Ibid, pg 8

[iv] Ibid, pg 9

[v] Ibid, pg 10

[vi] “Bodies of Coastal Road Massacre perpetrators to be handed over”, Israel Matzav, July 2, 2008, http://israelmatzav/. blogspot.com /2008/07/bodies-of-coastal-road-massacre.html; “Israel has agreed to turn over to Hezbollah in exchange for the bodies of kidnapped IDF soldiers Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, the bodies of the perpetrators of one of the worst terror attacks in Israel's history: The Coastal Road Attack. The bodies of two Palestinians who hijacked an Israeli bus in Tel Aviv in 1978, will be handed over in the prisoner swap with Hezbollah, the Fatah-affiliated Dalal Al-Mughrabi Brigades announced on Tuesday. Dalal Al-Mughrabi was killed in the ensuing battle with Israeli troops on March 11 1978 and Yehyah Muhammad Skaf died later in an Israeli jail. The Brigades said in a statement that the bodies had been kept in a mortuary for the past 30 years.”

Rearranging the Deck Chairs

Maritime security is perceived in recent years to have been boosted through the implementation of the International Ship and Port Security (ISPS) Codes in July 2004. Most of these security efforts are aimed at preventing terrorists from gaining access to ports and/or ships and inserting weapons of mass destruction (WMD) into the maritime domain. Far from port however ships on the high seas face peril from new pirate tactics that mimic terrorist attacks and from terrorists who seek to take advantage of maritime “soft targets.” In my previous book, “Rearranging the Deck Chairs,” I examined the inherent risks to cruise-ship passengers both onboard the new “mega” cruise ships coming into service in the last decade and the risks assumed by the ship and passengers when visiting foreign ports.

My experience as the Director of Security for Princess Cruises was used as a basis for examining these threats. In Rearranging the Deck Chairs, I was critical of the security preparations of the cruise industry on many issues. I detailed the threats from pirates and terrorists and the emerging tactics being used by these groups to disrupt maritime shipping. A new threat, aerial attacks by suicidal jihadists already used successfully to bring down the West’s tallest buildings has the possibility of being applied in the maritime domain to create a tactic of frightening possibilities. Terrorist groups such as Hezbollah have already employed anti-shipping cruise missiles against Israeli naval vessels and the advent of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) technology has opened the possibility of low tech attacks against Western shipping. Little if any maritime security focuses on threats from the sky let alone from the traditional surface or subsurface threats.

Notwithstanding the risk to cruise ships and other sea-going vessels from pirates and terrorists, I detail the inherent risk to passengers on cruise ships in Rearranging the Deck Chairs. In the years leading up to the implementation of the International Ship and Port Security (ISPS) Codes, the cruise lines came under scrutiny by Congress and passenger ship victims’ advocacy groups among others. The industry has experienced a remarkable expansion of its fleets with the addition of ultra-large luxury liners that cater to every pocketbook and vacation experience. The industry however has also been a victim of its own phenomenal growth. Cruise ships have recovered relatively quickly from every conceivable disaster at sea and cruise-ship scandal but not without fierce criticism from Congress and the aforementioned cruise-ship victims groups. Cruise ships continue to grow in size and develop new marketing strategies to tap into the huge North American market where according to their own statistics, only 14 percent of the U.S. population has ever taken a cruise.

Cruise ship incidents involving mysterious passenger disappearances, underage drinking as well as sexual and physical assaults have continued to occur at an alarming pace. It is only natural to assume that such incidents would follow when increased passenger loads on cruise ships in previous years averaged 1500 passengers but now average 3000 souls with even bigger ships coming online. Passenger loads on Royal Caribbean’s Project Genesis for example will be nearly 7000. Notwithstanding the phenomenal potential for safety or security incidents occuring ashore, the reasons for such occurrences happening onboard cruise ships is easily understandable. Cruise lines hire personnel to act as “security” on their ships and provide no real law enforcement response to violent sexual assaults, barroom brawls or thefts of personal property. Worse, there is no international standard for the prevention of crime onboard ships or for crimes professionally investigated at sea. The disappearance of George Allen Smith IV off Royal Caribbean’s Brilliance of the Seas in the Aegean Sea in July 2005 is a perfect example. The response of the FBI and the faulty professionalism of Turkish investigation as well as the actions of the ship all combined to present a haphazard response to the loss of life at sea which hinted at a cruise-line cover-up. The attitudes of the cruise line executives who run these fleets are no less discouraging to the prospective passenger. The former CEO of Carnival Cruise Line who referred to the disappearance of George Smith as a “non-incident” seems to trivialize such occurrences and does not seem to be in sync with the IMO's Safety of Lives at Sea (SOLAS) requirements. Such has been the approach of the cruise industry, a sort of “rearranging the deck chairs” while their ships are at risk and maritime security challenges abound.

In the larger scheme, maritime security efforts in today’s threatening world are both encouraging and impressive. Yet with all its strengths and weaknesses, the maritime domain still is at risk from traditional enemies as well as new and emerging threats. At the outset of World War II, Nazi U-Boats roamed freely in the North Atlantic and sent to the bottom of the sea, countless tons of allied shipping bound for the war effort in Europe. As the war progressed, Japanese submarines patrolled the Pacific and preyed on merchant vessels and warships before the allies were able to gain control of the oceans through naval sea power. Threats to merchant shipping and navy ships were numerous and included mines and suicidal kamikaze attacks later in the war. However, early on, the primary threat came from U-boats attacking convoys in wolf-packs. Although the movement of these convoys was secretly guarded, the wolf packs seemed to be everywhere lying in wait for the heavy loaded merchant ships.

The Department of War’s Office of War Information in the United States promoted a public awareness campaign to reel-in the loose talk of sailors and the public on the home front about the schedules of military and merchant vessels. "Loose Lips Might Sink Ships" was one of several slogans which all came under the campaigns basic message - 'Careless Talk Costs Lives.' The slogan was in use by 1942 as this example from the Maryland paper “The News,” in May 1942 shows: “attendees at the local county school registered in the high school lobby before the opening of the meeting, they were surrounded on all sides by placards bearing such admonitions as "Loose Lips Might Sink Ships", "Defense On The Sea Begins On The Shore", "Defense In The Field Begins In The Factory" and other patriotic creeds and slogans. [1] Another wartime poster with the catch-phrase “Someone Talked” featured a man adrift in the sea pointing towards the homeland was used to illustrate the need for operational security or "OPSEC" in the overall effort to stem the tide of war against allied shipping.

As discussed at length in Rearranging the Deck Chairs, the need for OPSEC is as important today as it was in WWII. Just as the terrorists who hijacked the Achille Lauro in 1986 and killed an American passenger had studied the deck plans and had used a predeployed spy, so too did the 9/11 terrorist’s hijackers conduct their due diligence before striking. In researching the strengths and weaknesses of the security procedures to board the doomed U.S. aircrafts, they also prepared themselves for actually commandeering and flying the aircraft into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. They succeeded in carrying out their attack with military precision. Indeed, the precedence for such preparation for maritime terrorist attacks was set by the hijackers of the Achille Lauro.

Today’s terrorist groups who are already active in maritime terrorism have little value for negotiating terms for their captured comrades like in the Achille Lauro hijacking. Their intentions for attacking maritime targets has turned instead to the complete destruction of the ship and all aboard. Their suicidal tactics have rendered some of the traditional maritime security precautions obsolete. The stark reality according to the experiences of recent history show that the jihadists differ from their terrorist predecessors in their goals. They do not seek autonomy, independence, revolution, control of the reins of government, or political reform. The jihadists have much broader aims, achievable only through perpetual war. The jihadist enterprise aims at incitement. Jihadism is more than a military doctrine: It is about conversion and personal salvation.[2]

The threats to the maritime domain do not end with jihadists’ plots to attack shipping. The overriding goal of the United States’ maritime strategy is to prevent weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) from entering the maritime global supply chain. Previous terrorist groups understood how useful the possession of WMDs could be, although acquiring them remained in the realm of fantasy. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, suddenly the possibility existed that WMD could be used by terrorists and rouge actors. The jihadists are distinguished from their terrorist predecessors in their organized pursuit of WMDs. By the 1990s, the “new terrorism,” carried out by religiously motivated, bloody-minded fanatics determined to indiscriminately kill and murder innocents in mass quantity, coincided with growing concern about the proliferation and inadequate security of weapons of mass destruction. Whereas terrorists holding a city hostage with chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons had been the nightmare scenario of the 1970s, terrorists armed with nuclear weapons destroying a city without warning became the nightmare scenario of the 1990s.[3] Today, after the experience of 9/11, those nightmare scenarios center squarely in the maritime domain.

The United States in coordination with the international community has launched several high profile efforts to prevent these acts. In the equivalence of a maritime shell game, the hundreds of thousands of shipping containers entering the United States through the maritime domain are targeted by government officials and the private sector for their potential for transporting WMD. While there are flaws with these programs, the efforts so far have prevented an equivalent "maritime 9/11" from occurring in the U.S. or anywhere in the world.


While the security efforts in the United States maritime environment have been robust and have branded government together with the private sector, the world has shown that it is not a nice place and does not suffer fools. Therefore, more effort is needed to confront and suppress the dedicated adversaries of the maritime domain. Maritime security efforts however have not been applied across all of the maritime industries. The cruise industry for example has been a passive participant in the efforts to secure the maritime domain. They have borrowed on the requirements heaped on the shipping industry by programs such as C-TPAT, CSI and SAFE-Port without adding anything in return. These initiatives all seek to prevent external threats from entering the international supply chain. Shipping companies risk loosing their competitive edge if not active participants in these government programs. Improvements to port infrastructure and shipping company operations to ensure the integrity of shipping containers are required before a company can receive expedited benefits of their cargo. Their combined efforts keep the entire maritime domain more secure. Other maritime industries such as the cruise lines, passenger ferries, fishing and salvage are not required to participate in these government partnerships because they do not have commercial elements subject to its requirements. However, while these industries piggyback exclusively on the shipping industry’s maritime security efforts and enjoy their benefits, thry all have an equal stake on the maritime domain being used and threatened by criminals, pirates and terrorist groups in particular.

The United States is now engaged in building maritime security partnerships in many regions of the world. A worldwide initiative aptly called the “1,000 Ship Navy” aims at partnering maritime resources, including those of military and law enforcement of all maritime nations into strong informational sharing partnerships to increase maritime situational awareness. The major challenge is raising the maritime domain awareness of all these partners to strengthen the ocean environment against those who would use it to disrupt trade along the sea lanes, choke points and trade routes. Such individuals or groups try to do this by taking advantage of the traditional anonymity that the ocean provides. [4]

Loose lips might sink ships is as prevalent a mantra for today’s maritime threats as it was in World War II. The world need not suffer another USS Cole attack or disruption of the sea lanes with an attack on oil tankers like the M/V Limburg before it acts. The lessons of Loose Lips Sink Ships have already been demonstrated across all the threat environments be they land, air, sea space and even cyberspace. Just as the allies reacted and overcame the threats to their naval fleets and merchant shipping in WWII, so too can the enemy be defeated through an open awareness of both the traditional and emerging threats in the maritime domain. After all, just like the popular and successful WWII informational campaign to protect shipping , at its core, awareness is really what Loose Lips Sink Ships is about.















[1] http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/237250.html

[2] Brian Michael Jenkins, James O Ellis III, (et. al.), “Terrorism: What’s Coming The Mutating Threat,” Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT), 2007, pg 7

[3] Ibid pp 5 -9

[4] National Academy of Sciences, “The 1,000 Ship Navy: Maritime partnerships (Executive Summary) http://www.nap.edu/catalog/12029.html