Inside Scoop: A Cruise Ship Worker Reveals What Happens When a Passenger is Arrested Onboard

Jess Battison

Cruise ships really seem to have it all, they’re almost like mini little towns or well, floating resorts, I guess.

The big fancy ones often have water parks, a load of restaurants, theatres, and just all sorts of things to do – enough for people to live aboard even. But cruise ships do also have slightly darker features, like morgues.

And while you’re enjoying a big cruise holiday, the only kind of ‘jail’ you might imagine ending up in is during a family game of monopoly.

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But a dancer onboard one cruise ship has explained just what happens when a passenger gets arrested on board.

Because yep, as well as morgues, the ships come fitted with their own little ‘jails’ for when things get out of hand.

TikTok user ‘ethanjamesx’ works as a dancer on a cruise ship and said passengers who are arrested typically get put in the Brig – ‘which is like a jail cell that we have on board’.

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The Aussie explained that on a ship he previously worked on there was a number of occasions where ‘people were put in the Brig’.

“Usually the main reason was when a fight broke out,” he said.

“Now we did have this really big fight that broke out and multiple people involved.”

But obviously, they couldn’t just put all those people into the same room together.

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So Ethan explains that they put them into their cabins, with security standing outside ‘depending how long the cruise is’.

The TikToker explained it all depends on ‘the severity’ of what a passenger has done.

For example, usually if it’s a fight you stay onboard ‘but you’re confined’.

“When it comes to anything further than that, you’ll be most likely debarked at the next port and passed on to local authorities,” he said.

As blogger Emma Cruises explains, cruise ships are fitted with a ‘Brig’ in the crew-only areas.

These are used as a ‘place to hold guests suspected of breaking the law or those who are acting dangerously or recklessly’.

It’s pretty much a ‘last resort’ to have a guest kept in the Brig and Emma says that ‘cruise lines try to avoid [it] as much as possible’.

She also adds that Brigs tend to be a ‘simple room’ with a bed and little else.

A user joked in the comments of Ethan’s video: “What ever happened to walking the plank?”

One reckons it’s ‘a bit much’ as another put: “Imagine being grounded on a cruise.”

Topics: TikTok, Travel, Cruise Ship

Jess is an Entertainment Journalist with a love of all things pop culture. Her main interests include keeping up with the Twitter girlies, waiting for a new series of The Traitors and losing her voice at a Beyoncé concert. She graduated with a first in Journalism from City, University of London in 2021 and has previously worked at MyLondon.

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