Cruise Ship with 300 Million Aboard Rammed by Iceland

LONDON, United Kingdom (The Daily Gordian) — The United States Coast Guard has identified the ship that ran aground near Reykjavik on Saturday as the USS Columbia, the world’s largest cruise ship. According to Coast Guard Admiral Amanda Burkhardt-Klein, the Columbia had been drifting aimlessly for years and was finally hit head-on by the country of Iceland in 2,500 meters (8,200 feet) of water.

Only two of the 300 million passengers chose to abandon ship despite a severe tilt to starboard and calm North Atlantic seas. “The main bulkheads and decks under the casinos are still tight,” said Adm. Burkhardt-Klein. “So far, there has been no trickle down to the lower compartments.” She did reveal that bickering among first-class passengers is hampering retrieval operations. “Factions have formed and are arguing over control of the ship once it is unstuck. Apparently, the captain retired from the bridge three years ago and began issuing eloquent proclamations stuffed into empty gin bottles. Yesterday, as soon as he realized the ship was in trouble he took one of two operable lifeboats—a jet-powered craft provided to him by the board of Capital Cruise Line LLC—and disappeared.”

Interviewed later in a Reykjavik hotel, the ship’s captain, Orlando Savoir, insisted that he was not responsible for steering the cruise ship onto the rocks. “For direction, I trust the free market,” said the captain, a twenty-five year veteran of Capital Cruise Line LLC. “Besides, passengers demanded that I join them for another funny hat night in Ballroom 13B. You can understand why I might abandon them, ne c’est pas?”

Regarding the eventual completion of the cruise itinerary, the captain said that no one seemed to care where the ship was going as long as “Bedtime for Bonzo” was being looped from satellite TV in the ship’s fifty casinos.

Capital Cruise Line LLC could not be reached for comment, but there have been reports that its board of directors had, just the year before, voted to remove lifeboats, life vests and safety nets from all CCL LLC ships. The reason given at that time by Capital Cruise Line President, Ms. Amanda Burkhardt-Klein, was that “just-in-time” emergency measures would be more efficient. “At the first sign of trouble, the crew will teach passengers to swim using an Olympic training video pre-set to fast-forward,” she had said.

Over his fifth Rusty Hull in the hotel bar, Savoir confided that the whole Mexican crew—pursers, stewards, chefs, musicians, medics, engineers and deckhands—had been dumped on a beach near Vera Cruz following a demand by angry passengers just days before the disaster. “We are the passengers. You are just the crew,” the mob had chanted. Asked if this might not constitute a mutiny, Savoir responded, “Not at all. It was a perfect example of navigational democracy.”

Discussing qualifications of a new captain to carry on once the Columbia is again ship-shape, most passengers agreed that this time they needed someone with more business experience who would have fired the crew and dumped them overboard without waiting for landfall. “That was the mistake,” said Reverend Bobby Djipster, the ship’s corporate chaplain. “We waited too long and invoked the wrath of our most merciful God.”

First-class passengers, at a closed meeting held on the bridge, saw several opportunities in their current predicament. Mrs. Nicola Davin proposed that the ship’s bunkers, loaded with Canadian tar, might be offloaded in Europe for a tidy profit. “After all,” she reportedly said, “most of us are not super wealthy. We’re more, like, in the top 2 or 3 percent. Oh, yes, I would also favor offloading those other passengers at the same time—the whiney ones, portside steerage. They have become such a nuisance.”

After agreeing to a plan to turn the Columbia into a pirate ship, balconied passengers at the meeting still wanted the craft to carry on, as is. “With no captain and no crew, we will continue to make progress without internal hindrance,” said Albert and Jalbert Semple, billionaire twins from Texas.

The two passengers who elected to leave the ship after it was impaled by Iceland were Sigurd and Hannie Egeqvist from Slackjaw, North Dakota. They said they had to get home for the start of walleye season. The Egeqvists were not able to provide The Daily Gordian with photos of the Columbia. “She was way too big. We tried to row the lifeboat far enough away to get her all in the picture, but by then she was over the horizon, just like our grain elevators when we’re driving State 17 to Wolford,” said Mrs. Egeqvist.

Mrs. Egeqvist later sent The Daily Gordian a picture, shown below, of the football stadium in Bozeman, Montana, where her sister lives. Mrs. Egeqvist said she thought it looked a lot like the ill-fated cruise ship. 

-TBM

Read More Magpie:  For another dose of Jay Moor's top-shelf brand of local political satire, try last month's "Course Syllabus, ANTH 218: The Political Archeology of American Democracy."