We had a stowaway on the Vistafjord 1990 world cruise. He managed to sneak onboard by mingling in with the garbage gang in L.A. Somehow he evaded ships security for several days using the public bathrooms to keep clean and feeding himself at the buffets. I remember seeing him around, he was noticeable as he was always wearing the same clothing. Once he had been apprehended he was actually given a cabin and put to work in the galley.
His story was interesting, he was a Turkish national who was writing a book on how to travel the world at minimum cost. I know this will upset some of our Cunard security folks but he preferred to stowaway on Cunard ships as they were apparently easier to sneak onboard!
The pursers office tried to put him ashore in Hawaii with no success, same thing occurred at all ports travelling west until we reached Australia who said OK. When they went to find him he had already disembarked and disappeared into Sydney.......
To be perfectly honest Chris, up until Twin Towers it was relatively easy to get on most ships, although it was getting more difficult, it wasn't impossible.
When i joined Vistafjord in Sept '96 all a passenger had as a 'boarding card' was a flimsy piece of paper with their name on it, which was easily lost or just forgotten to take ashore with you.
Then around 1999/2000 photo ID was being introduced and i was fortunate to be on Vista when it was installed and had the opportunity to take it into service. Then when i transferred to RVS the installation team came over their so i was then ahead of the game, so to speak.
The system initially was called CALM, no idea what CALM stood for though, but it had many, many uses that only a small number were ever used by Cunard. A later version was in use on QM2 when we went to Athens and one of the changes we made to Passengers Cards was the colour of the block in the top corner. It was usually Blue for Passengers, Red for Crew, Green for Visitors and Yellow for Agents etc. For the Olympic Charter we changed ALL passengers to Orange and then on completion reverted to Blue again.
As with any computer based system, the amount on information that it collected was amazing, there was no argument over returning back onboard times for crew who were late after that. Mind you, to this day the Manufacturers have never been able to explain why the Japaneses man was showing as onboard in the Purser's Office yet ashore at the Gangway, and onboard in the Security Office!
