As a major part of the tourism industry, the cruise ship is an offshoot of the ocean-crossing vessels of years gone by. Since crossing the ocean rarely took less than four days in the middle of the 20th century and on the heels of the introduction of intercontinental jet travel in the 1960s, people began traveling by ship less and less.

So to bring passengers back to the cruise ship, companies began using their ocean-going vessels to take people on southerly cruises during the cold season. The Hamburg-America Line was the first to use their trans-Atlantic vessels to offer southern cruises during the bitter winters of the North Atlantic.

“The Love Boat” television show, featuring Princess Cruise Line’s Pacific Princess, did wonders for the cruise ship industry beginning in 1980. It depicted ordinary people vacationing on a cruise ship that was previously believed to be a getaway only available to the very rich. The cruise ship business began to really grow as a result and now these types of vacations are now available through just about any part of the world. Eight or nine new cruise ships have been added each year since 2001.

In fact, cruise ships are the only way for most people to visit some areas such as the Arctic and Antarctic and their routes have grown considerably since their first trips through the Caribbean, Alaska and around Mexico.

Floating Hotels

As the cruise ship industry began to flourish so did the size of the boats. Today’s cruise ship is more like a floating hotel with the capability of carrying upwards of 3,000 passengers and in addition to the ship’s crew, houses a staff to take care of the passengers. On some of the more luxurious cruise ships, it’s possible to have more crew than passengers.

Meals are served basically around the clock and stocking enough food for a weeklong voyage can be a daunting task with some of the larger vessels serving over ten tons of beef and close to 30,000 eggs.

But their use isn’t limited to weeklong vacations, as many were called into service to provide housing for people displaced by hurricanes in the Gulf Coast in 2005. The Federal Emergency Management Agency contracted three ships from Princess Cruise Lines to be used as temporary housing. Cruise ships also served as hotels off the coast of Greece during the summer Olympics in Athens in 2004 due to the shortage of rooms on dry land.

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