Lectures

[Hlitner]

Lecturers are more common on longer cruises.  HAL and Cunard have long had active lecture programs which are very common on their longer cruises and voyages with many sea days.  Many of the luxury lines (i.e. Seabourn, Silverseas, Regent, etc) have lecturers on many of their cruises (especially those with a few sea days).   We have also had some lecturers on a few of our longer Celebrity cruises (which had a few sea days).  One common thread is that lectures work well on sea days and are not a common thing on port days.  

 

I would be remiss without mentioning the best lecturer we have ever heard during more than 45 years of extensive cruising.  He was Dr. Alan Wright, a retired Astronomer from down under who, at one time, was the Director of the largest Radio Telescope in the Southern Hemisphere.  Dr Wright lectured on a Oosterdam trans pacific cruise where we had many sea days.  I think he did 9 or 10 lectures.  Within a few lectures the word got around and the main theater was packed.  After his last lecture he got a long standing ovation (we had never seen this with other lecturers).  He later became a regular lecturer on the Viking Orion.

 

Hank

 

 

[Honolulu Blue]

Though I'm sure this isn't what OP is looking for, Carnival (yes, the whale tail) has some lectures on its longer Journeys cruises.  The ones offered cover social media, the history of celestial navigation, and basic photography.  They even offered pins to those who attended.

 

Now that I've horrified everyone, some notes I found interesting:

 

1. It's interesting to see the various takes on social media by the different lecturers - one would show us the basics of how to build a blog, while another gave us security tips.
2. Also interesting is that one of my social media lectures also turned out to be the lecturer for celestial navigation.  The qualifications seem to be pretty low.  😉
3. Carnival had a lecturer for my trip to Hawaii describing the flora and fauna of that group of islands.  That was a one-off, though we did have announcers on my various trips through the Panama Canal.

[cruisemom42]

20 hours ago, Hlitner said:

I would be remiss without mentioning the best lecturer we have ever heard during more than 45 years of extensive cruising.  He was Dr. Alan Wright, a retired Astronomer from down under who, at one time, was the Director of the largest Radio Telescope in the Southern Hemisphere. 

 

The best lecturer I ever experienced on a cruise was John Julius Norwich:  https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jun/01/john-julius-norwich-obituary

 

He gave a series of memorable lectures aboard Aegean Odyssey on Venice, on Istanbul, on Sicily and on the general history of the Mediterranean.