I am convinced a potential bestseller is waiting to be written. “Life Below Decks: The Secret Lives of Cruise Ship Staff”.

In which a veteran employee of the cruise ship industry, preferably someone with a job that puts them in daily contact with passengers, dishes dirt on the cruisers as well as fellow crew and the international corporations for which they work.

We have more than 900 crew, on the Celebrity Constellation, to handle 2,100 passengers and to make sure the ship gets from one port to the next, and on schedule.

We see the crew all the time. We ask them to straighten our rooms or bring us a drink or cook up an egg to order.
We know they are from all over the world; it was announced on departure day that we had crew from something like 56 countries. (In some ways, it reminds me of Abu Dhabi; everyone speaking English, more or less, but very few native English speakers.)

Yet we know almost nothing about them. When we are nosy, we attempt to read the name of their home country, which is on the name tag they wear on their shirts. And maybe find out how long they have been at sea.

But what else can we learn from them, while they are working?

Nothing much, aside from that they disappear at night. One of the staff involved with entertainment related how a passenger asked: “Do you sleep on the ship?”

He said he replied, “No, we are picked up by helicopter every night, and I sleep ashore.”

Other unknowns, about the uniformed people all around us:

–OK, where do they sleep? In the lower decks, presumably, below the water line. The Constellation has a draft of 26 feet; probably at least two decks below us, and maybe three.

–How do they sleep? My recollection is that the average steward/bartender/waiter sleeps four to a room. The typical two-person stateroom on most cruise ships can become a quad by dropping a couple of beds from the ceiling and attaching ladders to the ends. Which must make for some very crowded conditions for using the toilet or shower.

–What is their schedule? Daily? Weekly? Annually? Overall, it seems to be something like “six months on, two months off”. A guy from Mauritius said he had eight weeks off as soon as we dock in Amsterdam. I think they get parts of a day off when the boat is docked.

–Do the crew make friends? Almost certainly. We see them on shore, in groups of three or four. Even more, especially among the little guys who are never seen “upstairs” — electricians and engineers and such. Can they request to be in the same room with these three other people?

–What sort of Peyton Place-ish lives do they lead? Are relationships common? Does the company discourage romance aboard ship? How serious does a relationship have to be before the couple can “get a room” without two other co-workers also in it?

–How is the crew recruited? Where did Celebrity get the croupier from Bulgaria? The steward from Bosnia? The dozens of men from Mauritius? Why is there practically zero staff from the U.S.? (We have not seen one Yank at work here.)

–Are cruise ship jobs good jobs? Are there scads of applicants to fill every job? How did they go about finding a position that fits their skills?

–When their work days are finished, how do they eat? (They are not allowed to eat upstairs with the guests, on most days.) Are they allowed to drink to excess, as long as they get to work sober and on time? What sort of code of conduct do they have, down there, when it comes to mood-altering substances?

–To what do they aspire? To be headwaiter? To open a bar ashore somewhere? To make enough money to get kids through school and then go home? Or do they want to continue to circumnavigate the world?

–What sort of tales of high seas and awful weather does a veteran have? Anyone who has done a half dozen of these has to have stories of heaving seas and heaving passengers.

And the best parts, of course, would be the sublime and ridiculous tales  of interacting with passengers — who spill stuff, get seasick, fall into the water at the dock (happened in Warnemunde; the clumsy tourist was saved by a crew member who dove into the cold water), have no idea where your country is (cruisers are far less informed than those who travel by land) and are like locusts at the buffet.

We also can be rude. And oblivious.

I think a book on the inside of this beast could be revealing and fun. Someone should start writing down the stories they have lived and heard. I would read it.