A cruise ship employee has shared some eye-opening discoveries from a guest’s cabin.
Lucy Southerton, who operates the Cruising as Crew YouTube channel, spilled the beans during an episode of the Sail Away: Uncensored Cruise Podcast.
Discussing crimes at sea, Lucy disclosed that she had personally encountered theft while working in the onboard shops.
It seems that some sea-faring pilferers are bolder than others, with one individual nabbing a variety of unexpected items and stashing them in their cabin.
Lucy recounted: “One that I’ve been witness to more than a few times is theft, having worked in the shops. You see it all the time. I remember this one guy; he stole…I was working in the beauty shop on PandO and he stole some like face cream.”, reports the Express.
She elaborated: “But I saw him do it but you’re not allowed to say anything until they’ve like left the shop because technically, until they’ve stepped out of the shop, they haven’t stolen anything.”
“But I told my manager because that’s what you’re supposed to do, so (I) got security involved. Security went to the cabin and we just thought he had the face cream because that’s obviously all we saw.”
“They got to his cabin; he’d taken like three chairs from like venues, different venues. He had a painting from the art gallery. He’d been stealing from all the shops.”
When probed on the feasibility of art theft, Lucy mentioned that reports indicated the artwork was missing, yet she wasn’t privy to the “ins and outs”.
Maritime crime is not a novel concept; indeed, in March, there surfaced reports of a cruise ship bar steward who attempted to sneak in more than £2m worth of cocaine into the UK.
The criminal was caught red-handed with 28kg of cocaine tucked away in his cabin while trying to pass it off to an organised crime syndicate via a dinghy.
But drug smuggling is not the sole form of seaborne malfeasance; murder mysteries have also unfolded on the waves. Notably, in 1947, deck steward James Camb flung the body of the actress Gay Gibson out of a porthole.
Camb, who at first denied any encounter with her, subsequently contended that Gibson passed away from medical complications, claiming her sudden “frothing at the mouth” led him to panic and dispose of her body through the porthole.
Initially handed down a death sentence, Camb managed to elude the gallows as discussions of a no-hanging bill were occurring in parliament at that time.