Anne Murphy

Age: 36
Occupation: Court Reporter
Number of Cruises: 7
Cruise Line: Carnival
Ship: Legend
Sailing Date: July 8th, 2005
Itinerary: Eastern Caribbean

A group of us just returned today from the Carnival Legend 8 day cruise that left out of NY. I have been on several cruises but what happened on Wednesday, July 13th , 2005 at approximately 5:10 P.M. was the scariest thing I have ever experienced. We had left Tortola 3 hours earlier and were cruising back to NY when all of a sudden the ship went out of control. It suddenly veered to the right which caused the ship to tilt to the other side. It actually appeared for a few seconds as it tilted down lower and lower to the ocean that it was not going to come back up and it appeared that it was going to capsize. As this happened, dishes, bottles and glasses started crashing down all around. People were screaming, crying and running in a panic. The 3 pools on the lido deck (where I was at the time this happened) emptied out and flooded the deck. People were falling down and vomit was everywhere. My friend was on deck 2 at the time and said the ocean water was covering the windows on the side that tilted. One announcement was made a few minutes later which said for all crew to report to deck 2 but we were not told what was happening until approximately 20 minutes later. The captain came over the speaker and said (although it sounded like he was reading from a script) that there was a computer glitch that caused that to happen and that the problem appeared to be taken care of. Needless to say, I nor my fellow cruise mates rested comfortably for the remainder of the cruise. Actually, for the first time in my life I could not wait for a cruise to end. Other than that… the food was bad, the cruise director was horrible (you rarely ever heard from him as to the daily activities) and the captain really seemed a bit snooty. On the plus side, the ship was kept clean, the room steward and bartenders (most of them anyway) were very good. Not that it would have mattered if the ship had capsized, but I do recommend you pay attention to the mandatory lifeboat drills and make arrangements to meet your family in case of a similar occurrence, as it was scary not knowing if the rest of my family and friends were OK.

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