The Unexpected Duty Your Cruise Ship May Have To Take On If There's An Emergency At Sea

Most cruise ship passengers board their vessel, luggage in tow, big plans sloshing around in their minds. Perhaps one stop is earmarked as their most alluring destination. Or they're looking forward to sipping daiquiris on the deck and live comedy and music. Few suspect their trip may suddenly involve drones, life rafts, and surprise announcements from the captain about an impromptu rescue. All are possible, as cruise ships have an unexpected duty to rescue distressed vessels and people during an emergency at sea.

Passengers aboard a Royal Caribbean cruise witnessed such a rescue on September 28, when their ship changed course to save a raft full of people in the waters between Mexico and Cuba. Travelers noticed the ship turning as the captain announced plans to investigate a possible distressed vessel. Witnesses aboard told of a dilapidated raft floating helplessly in the distance, its passengers using flashlights as a distress signal. Two drones were sent to assess the situation. Then, two of the cruise ship's lifeboats were dropped and retrieved everyone on the raft. "It was a very surreal, very exciting, very scary thing all at once," passenger Jeffery Walker told NBC News. And fortunate. The cruise ship had diverged from its original course to sidestep Tropical Storm Imelda and Hurricane Humberto. Had the cruise ship not made the detour... well. "Their raft didn't have much time left," Walker added.

The nighttime operation in the Caribbean Sea by the vessel Enchantment of the Seas may strike cruise ship regulars as unique, and the captain, courageous. It's definitely not one of the worst things to ever happen on a cruise ship. The captain and crew's bravery notwithstanding, they were fulfilling an article within international maritime law — and no, it's not one of those bizarre cruise ship rules.

The cruise ship crew and many others who conduct rescues at sea are following the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. The "duty to render assistance" demands that all shipmasters save people in distress at sea, as long as the rescue doesn't also put their own vessel in danger. This includes a collision at sea, demanding that all parties skip the initial shock and perhaps anger to ensure everyone involved is safe. (If you need any sense of the law's overall scope, its next articles prohibit the transport of slaves, then address piracy.)

If you do find yourself aboard a ship in the middle of a rescue, don't panic. Every crew member aboard a ship knows the protocols for helping distressed boaters, "standing orders" in jargon. Same as they do for when a passenger falls overboard. It's not all that rare either, according to one Reddit user with a decade of experience working on a cruiser. "We rescued tons of boaters/people! Definitely happens more than most people think." Don't let it be one of the reasons to avoid taking a cruise.