April 5, 2016 Sea Day

This was a quiet sea day as most of the passengers were preparing to disembark the ship in Southampton, England the next day. There was a farewell event hosted by Michael Langley the cruise director who had prepared a short video of the crew saying farewell. They had been filming segments of the video over the past several weeks. It was very funny with crewmembers from all over the ship dressing up and being silly doing something around the ship. They then had about 400 of the ships 600 crewmembers on stage to say good-bye.

Professor William Morris Welch presented a lecture on the wreck of the Medusa and what this tells us about the politics and society in 19th century France. In so many ways the politics at that time were not so different from today with the captain of the Medusa saving himself and letting his crew and passengers fend for themselves. Most of them unfortunately died from lack of food and water or exposure to the sun and seawater.

We had lunch in the lido with one of the dining room supervisors by the name of Joris or as Kent called him, gorgeous Joris. He is a bright young man from the Netherlands who has a degree in hospitality and has only been working on the ship since December. He would like to open a restaurant in the Netherlands one day. We enjoyed learning a bit about his life and aspirations.

In the afternoon and evening, Kent made rounds saying good-bye to friends and crewmembers he had met onboard. Mark spent the better part of the afternoon working on a puzzle in the library.

The evening’s entertainment was a variety show featuring Tony Pace the Las Vegas headliner and David Schofield the pianist. Both of them had performed for us earlier this week. We briefly attended a Farwell Party in the Crow’s Nest to say final good-byes.