You can tell a lot about people by how they behave in a crisis. And it’s safe to say the voyage of the Carnival Triumph, better known as the Poop Cruise, was an icky, smelly, particularly grotesque kind of crisis — and that brought out some wild behavior.
It happened way back in 2013, but chances are some of the details are emblazoned in your memory. The Triumph, set to cruise from Galveston, Texas to Cozumel, Mexico, suffered an electrical fire that knocked out the engine and air conditioning. And then, the coup de poop: the electrical toilets stopped working. This was definitely a problem with more than 4,000 passengers and crew onboard. And you thought Lord of the Flies was bad.
The story is told anew, and with a heaping helping of snarky humor, in the new Netflix documentary Trainwreck: Poop Cruise, part of a series that looks at mishaps of varying severity (previous installments this season have focused on the 2021 Astroworld tragedy and scandal-ridden Toronto mayor Rob Ford). Not to belittle the trauma of anyone unfortunate enough to be aboard the Triumph, but this Trainwreck, premiering Tuesday, intentionally toes the line between tragedy and comedy. Here are five lessons learned and, er, highlights:
It wasn’t really a story until the poop took over
An initial press release relayed news of a fire aboard the cruise, but it was under control. A cruise ship adrift in the Gulf of Mexico, with no engine power or AC: interesting, unfortunate, but not the stuff of sensationalist headlines. Then passengers started calling in with their own grisly details, which got a lot grislier once the tugboats showed up and tilted the ship just enough to set loose the previously-somewhat-contained human waste. Voila: Poop Cruise.
Former CNN anchor Brooke Baldwin recalls in the doc that then-new CNN president Jeff Zucker made the decision to go all-in on the story. “We needed eyeballs on the screen,” she explains. Only then did we get to hear Wolf Blitzer intone that “Sewage is dripping off the walls.” Soon the hashtag #CruiseShipFromHell was ubiquitous. Oh, the humanity.
There’s a lot of sex being had on cruise ships, and the Triumph was no exception
If you don’t believe us, take it from Hanna, a bartender aboard the Poop Cruise and star of some of the doc’s most candid moments. “There is so much sex on the cruise ship,” she says in the doc. “So much sex, you don’t want to know.” (Oh, but we do, Hanna. We do). “Everything is hard and fun.” (So to speak).
Later, Hannah admits she was not actually in her cabin when an alarm (“Alpha team! Alpha team!”) signaled the crisis. She was in the bed of another crew member. And after a couple of days adrift, when the decision was made to serve free drinks, a newlywed couple could be spotted having sex on a deck chair for all to see. To be fair, panic had long since set in.
The passengers did not approve of the poop disposal plan
Once news of the toilet malfunction was announced, a contingency plan followed: pee in the showers, and do what most people in the doc call “a No. 2” in little red biohazard bags. (Never will you hear so many people speak in childhood euphemisms about bowel movements.) Nobody seemed to like the bag idea. Some opted to pop Imodium. Others went the grin-and-hold-it route. Once the free drinks flowed, some drunken revelers Tossed the full red bags overboard. Meanwhile, others tried to use the out-of-service toilets. Abhi, a Triumph chef with an endearing habit of saying things were “fucked up,” describes the toilet horror: “People were pooping on top of toilet paper, then pooping on top of that. It was layer after layer after layer. It was like a lasagna.” At the end of the doc, we learn that Abhi “has never looked at lasagna the same way.”
Social order largely disappeared aboard the Triumph
Things fell apart; the center could not hold; mere anarchy was loosed upon the Poop Cruise. There was the hurling of feces bags, and open fornication, and peeing (or “going No. 1,” if you prefer) off the side of the deck. There was also food hoarding. Passengers fought over deck chairs and deck square footage. Once again, Hanna the bartender, who grew up in the Soviet Union, delivers the goods: “It made me think that now all these Americans somehow can feel what it was like in a dictatorship country, where shit like this happens and it doesn’t surprise anyone. Welcome to the Soviet Union, people.” Once the Bible study broke out, along with full-throated hymns, the whole thing came to resemble a Cormac McCarthy novel, or maybe a Hieronymus Bosch painting. Repent, Poop Cruisers! Repent!
The ordeal changed Carnival policy
Once the Triumph was tugged safely to Mobile, Alabama, after five days stranded at sea, Carnival insisted that the fire was an accident, that recommended actions had been taken to prevent incidents similar to previous electrical malfunctions, and that the vessel was fully compliant and had been certified to sail by regulatory bodies. The company carried out fleet-wide safety upgrades aimed at preventing engine room fires, and changed its terms and conditions, removing caveats about wholesome food, sanitary and safe living conditions, safe passage, and a sea-worthy vessel. Passengers were given a full refund, transportation expenses, and a $500 payment. They were also offered a free cruise. Carnival spent $115 million cleaning, repairing, and retrofitting the Triumph. The vessel is now called the Carnival Sunrise, should you wish to book passage.
In a statement to Rolling Stone, Carnival called the ordeal a “teachable moment” for the entire cruise industry. “A thorough investigation following the incident revealed a design vulnerability which was corrected and led Carnival Cruise Line to invest more than $500 million across our entire fleet in comprehensive fire prevention and suppression, improved redundancy, and enhanced management systems, all in support of our commitment to robust safety standards,” they wrote. “We are proud of the fact that since 2013 over 53 million guests have enjoyed safe and memorable vacations with us, and we will continue to operate to these high standards.”
June 24, 1:20 p.m.: This article has been updated to include comment from Carnival.