Carry on cruising

Mel Mason recounts the experiences of passengers on the liner Triton, who found themselves all, at sea when their ill-fated cruise was curtailed part-way through its itinery.

YOU will have heard of the television programme, even if you have never watched it.

Holidays from Hell holds a particular fascination for those who take pleasure in witnessing the misfortune of others.

Well, let me assure viewers that when you become a victim of a holiday nightmare, it just isn't funny.

For those of us caught up in the Triton fiasco, the memory of it will burn deep for years to come.

The 11-day Mediterranean and Ancient Egypt cruise offered the prospect of spending Christmas and New Year being pampered, along with the chance of visiting great cities such as Rome, Cairo, Alexandria and Athens.

No joining the seasonal supermarket scramble for brussel sprouts or having to endure the predictable aspects of festivities at home.

But for the 600 people on board Triton - owned by the Greece-based Royal Olympic Cruises, whose slogan is The Intelligent Way to See the World - it certainly turned out to be a memorable experience.

However, not in the way they envisaged or hoped.

The first night on board was to prove to be a portent of things to come. High seas had possessions flying around cabins and passengers requiring the services of the ship's doctor.

Things did not get much better on day two.

Triton berthed at Civitavecchia, in Italy, but planned excursions to Rome failed to go ahead because tourist guides had gone on strike, passengers were told.

Day three and more problems. Captain Nikos Koufogiannis announced that the planned visit to Messina, in Sicily, had been cancelled. High seas, causing slower than expected progress, were blamed.

Christmas Day, like the day before, was spent at sea. On Boxing Day, people at last got a chance to set foot on dry land for a few hours on Crete. Sadly, virtually everything was closed.

Never mind, the highlight of the cruise lay ahead - two days sight-seeing in Egypt. And for once, things did, largely, go to plan. Except, of course, for the fact it rained while we were in Alexandria. It doesn't do that often. Cairo and the pyramids the next day made up for it, and the sun shone!

It stayed with us the following day as we headed north to Greece. But storm clouds were gathering. The lightning bolt was delivered while we were part way through dinner that evening.

In a grave voice, the captain told stunned passengers that, due to the company's financial problems, we would not be able to call at Athens. Instead, we would make an unscheduled short visit to Rhodes while plans were devised to get us home.

To soften the blow, the captain announced that drinks were now free. And the passengers did what comes naturally at such times of crisis - they threw a party that went on much of the night.

But as heads cleared the next day, so the worries began creeping in as to how we were to get home.

With information hard to come by, rumours started to circulate about what was behind it all and what would happen next - some fanciful, some mischievous, but few based on hard evidence.

Feeling like captives aboard the vessel, heading for places we never expected to visit and powerless to do anything about it, we were taken on a tour of the Aegean, Ionian, Mediterranean and Adriatic.

Eventually, we berthed at Patras, in Greece, on the evening of New Year's Eve. After dinner, passengers were disgorged onto the dock and herded onto the car deck of the ferry Pasiphae Palace, where our luggage had been piled.

The captain assured us the transfer to the ferry and our subsequent journey to Venice (another unscheduled port of call from where we were to be transferred to our airports) would be as smooth as it was possible to imagine.

The truth was very different. Many passengers were left on the car deck for up to three hours while upstairs a near riot was breaking out. The company had booked berths on the ferry for all the passengers. Unfortunately, most were in four-berth cabins, while the majority of Triton's passengers were couples.

When told they would be forced to share a cabin with strangers for the next two nights, many people revolted.

The reaction of a demure French woman in her early sixties encapsulated the mood. She slammed her hand onto the counter at the crowded reception area and gave vent to a stream on invective, shouting "I am not an animal and I will not be treated as one."

Some passengers attempted to barricade themselves in their cabins, refusing to allow others in. One couple said they placed lifejackets under the sheets of spare bunks to convince staff they were occupied.

A female English pensioner, asked to share a cabin with three German men, chose instead to sleep on a chair. It was an option favoured by many, the result being that parts of the ferry were later to resemble a refugee camp.

Tempers were so frayed that the two male ROC representatives were assaulted. A distraught female hostess from Triton was in tears. She condemned her employers for the situation, telling passengers "They did not tell you, they did not tell me, they did not tell anybody."

Amid all this chaos, Triton had slunk back out to sea - to what fate her erstwhile cargo of passengers neither knew nor by this time cared.

New Year was celebrated, but after that people simply had to pass the time in the best way they could. It was no longer a holiday, more an endurance test, with the prospect of a five-hour coach journey across Italy to Genoa to catch flights home at the end of it.

Now finally home, what lies ahead? A fight for compensation, naturally. And certainly much more sympathy in future when told of the holiday horror stories of others.