Revisiting an accident story from 2012 (w/videos)

There was a time back in February 2012 (the last time I actually was on a cruise) where the dock workers had a bit of an accident. I'm here to bring it up again.

What do I mean by accident, you say? Well, let's start from the top.

It was a partly-cloudy day in Louisiana. An overcast was coming, ready to take over the whole region in a few hours. I had been waiting on this day since October: the day that I would finally get to take to the Gulf of Mexico once again, having previously done so in November 2010 aboard the ever-so-marvelous Carnival Triumph. This time, the Carnival Elation is in its place, and despite not being as big as Triumph, it was still a great sight...at least, in my 11-year-old mind, it was.

1:45 on the dot, and I was still in school. Suddenly, the office calls me out of my class to come to the waiting room. My mom had called in, telling the secretary I would be leaving early today. In that half hour wait for the pickup, after being in 7th grade pre-algebra class for 40 minutes, I had plenty of time to think. My mind was all over the place, going crazy over the thought of where we would be within less than 3 hours.

And then the pickup came. Loading up everything we could in our poor little sedan, we were off, and leaving our country town with great (but hilarious) haste. Immediately after passing Hammond and crossing into Manchac/Lake Maurepas territory, the sight of the seemingly never-ending lake made me think: what would happen if something were to go wrong? Of course, the brain's response is "Nah, don't worry. It'll be fine." Needless to say: it wasn't necessarily fine. Nothing catastrophic happened, but we had a big problem impending.

By 3pm, we had entered the New Orleans city limits, and upon approaching the riverfront, were immediately greeted on the overpass route to the Julia Street Terminal by a line of traffic stretching at least 3/4 of a mile long. In typical city fashion, horns were sounding every few seconds. 20 minutes of this was irritating and headache-inducing enough. After finally getting a parking spot secured in the garage adjacent to the terminal, we unloaded our car and moved quickly. A stevedore offered to take our bags, which we kindly declined. Lucky decision on our part.

With the lines inside the terminal moving as if it were an airport, we finally boarded Elation within under half an hour of entering the terminal. Stepping out of the boarding bridge and into Elation's gangway, it hit me. This is it. This is where the four day ride begins. Then came our usual routine of getting to our cabin and wiping it all down out of fear of bird flu. Then at 4:15pm came the news: we had an "oil accident."

I was the first to pick up on this. Immediately leaving our room (which, unlike our previous cruise on Triumph, was actually an ocean view room - we ordered an interior room, and got this, because this was the Mardi Gras 2012 cruise), I took to the Lido deck with my new Christmas present: a red smartphone-sized Vivitar camera. From this came a 3 minute walkaround of the 10th (Lido) and 11th (Verandah) decks that still survives today. Not thinking to look over the side facing the city, I took my leave of the place, returning to the cabin to decide what to do.

Within less than an hour, we figured out what was going on. Virtually everyone on board had seen it. My friend Jonathan, a security guard who works at the Julia Street Terminal, called me and told me exactly what had happened. He had witnessed the whole incident through the wide open window of the terminal. A tanker on the dock, offloading an unknown type of oil from the ship, suffered a malfunction. A hose had overflowed in the tank. People, both on the docks and on the ship, shouted at the tanker driver to get his attention. Panicking, he drove forward with the overflowing oil, and ironically made the situation worse by spilling the oil onto the crates used by the stevedores to load luggage onto the ship. This was going to put a huge dent in our plans.

Soon after our discovery, the callours began. A person on the intercom, reporting in every 5-10 minutes, began calling out passenger names, ordering them to go to the library on deck 8. These were the people who had their luggage boarded. In the library, they were to be informed of the fate of their luggage. Unknown to us, they were allowed to leave the ship and make runs to nearby Walmarts to buy more bags and clothes. In an ironic twist of events, even the Walmarts ran out, forcing Elation to sell out their own stock of souvenir clothes as well.

By 7:30pm, I was out and about on my own, free to do more walking around of the ship. At 7:35, a new person came on the intercom in place of the callout lady - the voice, which sounded thickly Italian, was none other than that of Captain Quierolo, who had taken the intercom to inform the whole ship of the status of our departure. Optimistically predicting 9pm as a departure time, we ended leaving quite a bit later. By this time, the cleanup operation was in full swing. Having had my Vivitar camera filming this whole time, I gave it a peek over the edge of the ship at the mess below.

When it came time for dinner, the dynamics of it had changed entirely. Since the accident had left many people with no formal or semi-formal dress, the staff was forced to loosen up the dress code. But in doing this, they may have gone too far. The most obvious example of this lies in the fact that Jonathan (who had been assigned to patrol the ship) and I saw a man carrying a six-pack of beer into the dining room. Jonathan could only stand there in confusion.

With much patience, the time finally came. My trusty old flip-phone at hand, I checked the time - 1:20am. A minute later, we felt it. The Elation finally brought itself to power, performing its reversal turn to head south down the Mighty Mississippi. After 10 hours of waiting and irritated oil spill victims playing their anger off in true Carnival style, we were off.

This was an event that was covered on exactly one topic in CruiseCritic, and never spoken of again. My friend Jonathan, under the working alias Darris XTMRage, revived this topic in 2013, posting pieces of footage from my Vivitar's reel. However, I would like to bring these to light myself, having told my story of this night.

First up:

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The 3-minute walkaround of the Lido and Verandah decks. Just a quick display of the conditions that day.

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Just a hilarious dance party, filmed around 4pm. May contain a sound of my terrible 11 year old laugh.

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7:35 - the Captain's announcement. Hard to understand thanks to the camera's oversensitivity to sound, but still there.

And last but not least...

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My two separate shots of the spill from the Verandah deck, from midship and aft.

As it turns out, I'm apparently the only person who actually filmed this cruise in particular. At least 2 other people took photos, but not videos. I just felt like bringing this gem of mine back out. If you have anything to say about it, feel free to.

PS- The full video reels from my camera still survive on a busted laptop of mine. Should I ever find this laptop again, I will do whatever I can to get the video files out of it.