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My Life below Deck

If I ever had to pick up a place to describe the most intense cultural and living experience that I ever had, I would easily choose the placed call “Mariner of the Seas”, a ship from Royal Caribbean Cruise Line which I work for endless seven months. It may sounds like the dream job, travelling around the world from port to port on a grand all-expenses-paid tour. However, working on a ship cruise should be considered one of the hardest roles in the world. With 84 work hours per week, seven-month stretches with no days off and wages so low that workers rely on tips. So perhaps it is no surprise that life below deck consists of frequent liaisons, riotous parties and heavy drinking, despite the cramped shared cabins.

I was one of few Brazilians working on Mariner of The Seas, a medium size ship with more than 1900 hundred crewmembers who were working, living, sharing feelings and different cultural backgrounds in such a “small place” that sometimes was easy to lost our own identity.

The worst part of the job is being 'owned' by the corporation. They control what you eat, when you eat, when you can use the toilet, the temperature of your cabin, your sleep hours and absolutely everything. It is very alike to the Big Brother reality show, with one single difference; none of us would become millionaire by the end of the ‘show’.

It does not matter if you already have worked 12 hours on a day, if they need you for another four hours, you will work with no questions to be asked. The structure of the days is another thing that really bothered me; they have never given me a full night of sleep during the whole duration of my contract. My sleep time was around four or five hours a night (that's after 12 hours or more of labor). Most crew takes advantage of any ‘time off’ to take a nap. After couple months in this routine you enter in perpetual zombie-mode. Working long hours is unfortunately not made better by a healthy wage, and as a bartender my salary relied mostly on tips. The work was constant and also very menial. In one single day I could work in three or four different stations: casino bar in the morning, dinning room bar during lunch, swimming pool station in the afternoon and once again to casino bar through the whole night.

Yes, life below deck is hard, but it also has a positive side. You might be surprised to hear that any romance between staff and customers is very rare and also strictly forbidden. Believe it or not, almost nobody breaks that rule. The job is too hard to get and being caught means instant firing and being dropped off in whatever country the very next port is. However, the relationships between crewmembers it is not just allowed but it is also part of a whole different story. Onboard it is almost a “crime” to date someone of your own ethnicity. Ship lives give us a very rare opportunity to taste the world, so to speak. The crew rotates in and out every single week, so there is always a “fresh meet” arriving to be part of the crews. Actual relationships are exceedingly hard to keep up when you’re working more than 80 hours a week in rotating shifts. I have only met a handful of couples that made it work. What really impressed me is how some of the crew members create two distinct realities by working on a ship cruise. I would say the main motive that drives people to start working on a ship cruise is the idea of providing a better quality of life to their families who live ashore. What I could never imagine is that even having a family overseas, man and woman living this intense life, also arrange another spouse onboard. This way they can have an affective life inside the ship even knowing that their relatives are outside waiting for them. In 99% of the times, the spouse onboard knows about the existence of a spouse ashore, but not the other way around.

Being a couple is the only way that they can live together sharing the same cabin. The crew cabins are in general very small, and with the exception of a “married couple”, man and woman do not share this space. My cabin was so tiny that I was required to sleep with my luggage every night due to the lack of space. They were located in decks under the passenger areas, and some of them, under the water line, which can be very noisy due to vibration, hum of the engine room and the waves outside. The beds are bunk style. The sheets, blankets and pillow are provided by the shipping company.

At the beginning of my contract I shared my cabin with a girl from India, couple months later a girl from Colombia was living with me. By the end of my contract I had lived with five different women and each one of them from different parts of the globe. Today, I can tell you, nothing teaches you more about other cultures than sharing a tiny space with a foreigner. 

For those who ever watched the movie “Titanic”, you may remember that crazy and full of fun parties that happened almost every night below the deck. You may be wondering how the crew manages to find time to party when they have to work such long hours. One thing I can tell you, the parties that happen below deck are some of the greatest ones that I ever had.

Considering that we were been in zombie-mode for so very, very long, you would be amazed at what the human body can handle. Everything you have heard about sailors being wild drunks is true. The alcohol is not free; however, they are very cheap. As a bartender I had the privilege of getting all of them for free.

And before you start thinking that crewmembers eat the same food as the passengers, I would advise you. This is not true! Crewmembers have their own mess hall and food preparation personnel. Even though food and sodas are free, they were not good at all. Mariner of the Seas had 45% of its crewmembers from Philippines, and 35% from India. The rule was clear; crewmembers’ kitchen would prepare the food accordingly with the majority of the ethnicity onboard. I lost the count of how many times I have tried to have a “normal” breakfast when the crewmembers’ kitchen was early in the morning serving only rice, beef or fish omelet.

Ship’s life is like this, people living together from all over the world, trying to find common grounds by speaking some English. Having a life, even so, for a short period of time is really a unique and unforgettable experience, very difficult to compare to a land job. Few jobs offer the chance to see so many places in the world, exotic views and meet so many people from so different countries. Obviously, after such experience, you’ll become a well-rounded and worldly person, and get a better understanding about global problems and people from around the world and their culture and way of life. Certainly, the only way to know if you like it is to try it.