Equator Crossing Question

-----Original Message-----
From: Marc
Sent: Wednesday, January 16, 2008 11:44 PM
To: Mike
Subject: The Equator

Mike, I recall that in the past years I remember reading that whenever one crossed the Equator on a ship, there was some of a carnival on board, with the passengers wearing strange clothes, etc. Does this still takes place or is it a practice that has been discontinued for whatever reason. Best, Marc

-----Original Message-----
From: Mike
Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2008 8:13 AM
To: 'Marc'
Subject: RE: The Equator

Hi Marc,

The old kind of silly traditions, such as costume parties, amateur talent contests, and the venerable King Neptune equator crossing ceremony were major aspects of long sea journeys. When ocean liner crossings got faster and then ships came out purely for cruising, it appears that many of these onboard events were modified and many were dropped for lack of interest. In my experience, it seemed that some passenger groups, most notably a group of Japanese on my first small ship cruise in the early 1990s, insisted on the fancy dress party but couldn't care less about the other traditions which were really hold overs from very long (and boring) sea journeys.

The new cruise ships are much too big to have anything like the old ship-wide ceremonies. What they do have is just one of many events on the daily schedule, and the old traditions (such as they are) often have less attendance than the daily bridge competition or perhaps an ice carving demonstration.

The ships of Silversea Cruises have 200 to 350 passengers on the ocean crossings, mostly seniors and definitely frequent cruisers. I've seen some very minor and tongue in cheek attempts at the Neptune ceremony on Silversea, but usually I'm at the bow, looking at the ocean or reading with most of the others who are awake during the afternoon. The dozen or so passengers who attend the ceremony are either already at the pool bar when it started or are first time passengers who wander away before the cruise director takes off his false beard. The "ice cream social" usually gets a lot better attendance, at least if the band isn't too loud. The picture above is from a Silversea cruise of February 2002 from LA to Sydney via Aukland. With all those days at sea--we couldn't stop at Fiji due to typhoon damage to their sewage system making the port off-limits--a minor effort towards a King Neptune equator crossing ceremony was made. Note that the Executive Chef had something to do with throwing a paying guest in the pool while King and Queen Neptune looked on. They (as all the rest of us) were very bored.

In my experience on the half dozen Silversea cruises that crossed the equator on a major "crossing" itinerary, the King Neptune ceremony was held in varying degrees on about half. I've crossed Zero Degrees Latitude a number of times briefly--coming South out of Singapore but then swinging north into the South China Sea, for example--and that wasn't mentioned by ship's staff. United Airlines has been notably lax in all celebrations on their crossings.

This trip counts, of course, as a "major crossing itinerary" as the sea portion will be approximately 6,000 miles (over 5,000 nm) from -33 degrees South to 22 degrees North lattitude. Air travel (without celemonies but lots of movies if I'm lucky) will cover great circle 16,214 miles.

M.