As Crystal Cruises was hastily ejecting its last passengers before taking the ships into neutral waters in an alleged attempt to dodge the arrest warrant, hundreds of clients of the cruise operator faced "bedlam", Cruise Law News has reported.
The two ships that have been arrested, Crystal Serenity and Crystal Symphony, dumped their passengers in Bimini, the Bahamas at the end of the last month before sailing off to neutral waters. Some of the passengers were expecting to be shipped to California afterward, but with Crystal Cruises facing difficulties, they were left to fend for themselves after being transported to Fort Lauderdale via a ferry.
Crystal Serenity passengers
© Photo : Allyn Jaffrey Shulman // Facebook
The ejection of passengers itself apparently was not 'smooth sailing' for Crystal Cruises either: as one of the company's customers unleashed a series of complaints on the company's Facebook page over "cancelled ports", only to be "censored" by its moderators for allegedly violating the page's rules. She later described the hardships that the passengers of Crystal Serenity had to endure after being dumped in the cold.
"We walked to the ferry where we waited for 2 hours. Werner and Norma were half-frozen when they arrived. The ferry ride was 2 more hours. [...] Five hours in, we get off the ferry only to find all the luggage dumped everywhere, colors and numbers NOT together, luggage falling down, no porters and NO CRYSTAL REPS. NONE. No one giving instructions. No one helping the older folks. It was a shameful sight", Allyn Jaffrey Shulman said in her Facebook post.
Despite setting sails for the high seas, the Crystal Cruises' two ships were eventually arrested on a US arrest warrant issued as a result of a lawsuit by Peninsula Petroleum Far East. The company claims that Crystal Cruises owes it $4.6 million in unpaid fuel bills.
Crystal Cruises' third ship, Crystal Endeavor was also reportedly seized in Ushuaia, Argentina. Seatrade Cruise News reported that it disembarked all passengers, but was eventually released and departed for its destination in Uruguay.