As the noise of multiple slurred countdowns to the New Year echoed down my street I imagined the passengers of one of the largest cruise ships in the world, the Allure Of The Seas, celebrating: “… five, four, three, two, one, HAPPY NEW… CHRIST, A TIDAL WAVE!” And just like in The Poseidon Adventure the passengers with the most money, having the most sex, drinking the best champagne and laughing the loudest, all die horribly.
“Open your private balcony and take in the beautiful view”, says the Allure’s website. Wainright Forsyth-Jenkins calls out to his wife waxing herself in the deluxe bathroom: “Portia, just popping out on to the balcony to take in the beautiful view” seconds before taking in a monster mouthful from the monster wave. Portia would have drowned too if she hadn’t first been impaled on the complimentary grand piano.
The Allure Of The Seas is 360 metres long, weighs 225,000 gross tonnes and can carry 8,565 passengers and crew with a total area of 25 hectares. It has 24 restaurants, a boardwalk, nightclub, jazz and comedy clubs, a shopping promenade and a theatre with the Broadway production of Chicago. And while it floats on 361 million sq km of water it still insists on having twenty one swimming pools, a floating park, two wave surfing machines and an ice rink.
Now, while I’d love to take a cruise in one of these decadent behemoths I cannot help thinking they’re an abomination. “Hey ocean, you’re not going to stop us doing whatever we want, wherever, whenever we want”, the passengers taunt. But someone should tell them that on average at least two rather large ships disappear somewhere in the world’s oceans every week. It is assumed that massive seas are to blame. There have been eyewitness accounts of huges waves rising from perfectly still waters like enormous slabs of black marble, perfectly vertical, and waveless at their top. The sea contains unseen powerful forces and all sorts of fluid dynamics that scientists can’t fully explain.
We like to replicate the gorgeous aquamarine of tropical seas – “like the juice of emeralds”, commented Clive James looking down at the suburban pools of Perth from an aeroplane. Most resorts have a designer pool that looks like a tropical beach twenty metres from … a tropical beach.
The sound of ultramarine conjures mesmerising images of intense blueness but also connotations of the ocean and its extremities: the ultra depths where the blueness gives way to darkness.
Mostly though it’s a cold forbidding and unnatural place for land dwelling deriving-oxygen-from-the-air creatures . It’s not just the dying; it’s the thought of entering the deep dark void.
The scenes from The Poseidon Adventure as the ship capsizes were rather frightening to a young boy watching but my fear didn’t lie with the desperate passengers dangling from the Christmas tree or hanging from the tables that used to be on the ground and plummeting fifty metres to their death into the glass light fixtures that used to be on the ceiling but the people – those who haven’t already been taken by the Orca in the semi submerged comedy club – who will soon be swamped by the dark freezing (oh, shudder) ocean. And not so dark that you don’t find yourself wondering if that’s a piece of seaweed there or an unblinking black eye. And what’s that white bit: a fin, a set of serrated teeth? And if you survive the carnivores of the sea you have to contemplate the slow descent to the dark depths to lie on the ocean floor never to be found
In Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Grandpa Joe played by Jack Albertson is a so called invalid getting fed and bathed (presumably!) by poor Charlie’s worn out and emaciated single mum (where is the dad by the way: killed in an industrial accident at the toothpaste factory? Sleeping with the Mayor’s wife?) until the Golden Ticket arrives and for the first time in 20 years leaps from his bed to proclaim: “I’ve got a Golden Ticket!” and Charlie, ignoring the sad faced figure of his mother standing behind, implores Grandpa Joe to accompany him on the factory tour only for the garrulous and selfish old fool to nearly get the poor kid shredded in a ceiling fan.
Albertson’s next role the following year was in The Poseidon Adventure. Unfortunately his character survived while his lovely wife died saving another passenger.
And for crying out loud who was responsible for making the film Titanic a LOVE STORY (and boy-man DiCaprio as a serious love interest)? Throughout the film I was thinking only of the people who would soon be dropping into the frozen North Atlantic and the photographs of the ship’s sunken staircase covered in silt and molluscs.
I nearly drowned, in the days before Bondi Rescue, off Bondi Beach. Noticing eventually that no other swimmer had ventured out I began to swim towards those frolicking in the shallows. After several vigorous strokes I realised I was slowly being drawn away from the shore. The small blue gap between me and the other swimmers began to look like a fatal one, as did the brown one over by the sewerage outlet.
Surfers often refer to their experiences of the sea as calming and therapeutic.
Iconic Japanese film director Takeshi Kitano, expresses his deep affinity for the ocean because it is where human life began. It did but the evolved species can’t fully return to it.
To those who believe we still belong, there are these sobering words from Kimmo Lahtinen, former president of AIDA, a global federation for free [ie holding your breath] diving: “You know, we are playing with the ocean, and when you play with the ocean you know who is the strongest one.”
For anyone contemplating a trip on the Allure Of The Seas I offer this from a review: “There will be little to celebrate in Turku, Finland. The shipyard has no more work after Allure, and half of its 3300 employees have already been laid off”.
So, there were blokes working on the ship, hammering and welding away, knowing they would soon be sacked?
I suggest you take a room well above the waterline and if you hear anything that sounds like a rivet popping, ABANDON SHIP!
What are the chances of that? The Thoughts of Andrew Sutherland 