If I’m on a Cruise Ship, What Laws Do I Have To Adhere To?

By: Julia Layton  | 
Is it easier to get away with a crime on a cruise ship? Actually, it might be. Maritime laws are murky and jurisdictions overlap. These ships are in the harbor of the U.S. Virgin Islands. See more pictures of paradise.
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Millions of people step onto a cruise ship each year and leave the real world behind. The law seems not to apply in this floating city of swim-up bars, slot machines and faraway ports of call. And in a way, it's true: The law of the land doesn't quite make it to the high seas. This is great news for a resident of Maryland looking to get in some poker on vacation. It's not such great news for the victim of a crime on board a cruise ship.

Aside from the distant possibility of an onboard fire, hitting an iceberg or getting raided by pirates, cruise ships seem entirely safe. Piracy does still happen — in 2005, a cruise ship off the coast of Somalia was hit with grenades in a failed hijacking attempt (or, as the FBI calls it, an attempted "vessel conversion").

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But an onboard crime? Where would someone run to after they've stolen your wallet, or worse, committed rape or murder? It's a logical line of thinking, but it doesn't always apply. About 400 people have gone missing from cruise ships in the past 20 years, which works out to about 20 people per year.

That might not seem like much when you consider the tens of millions of people who take cruises each year. But it seems like a huge number when you consider the difficulty of enforcing the law on the open seas. Very few of those cases have been thoroughly investigated, let alone solved.

The problem is that maritime law— the law that applies to people on the water— is famously convoluted. Not all cruise ships are required to report crime statistics to any governing body, so the question of who's supposed to investigate when a crime does occur is a sticky one.

So what happens when a cruise ship passenger or crew member commits a crime? Do they just get away with it? Let's find out what laws apply when you're on a cruise.

Maritime Law: Murky Jurisdiction

A cruise ship in the open ocean follows the laws of the flag it flies under.
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In 2006, Laurie Dishman, a passenger onboard a Royal Caribbean cruise ship sailing the Mexican Riviera reported being raped in her stateroom. She immediately returned to Los Angeles, where two FBI agents took her statement a week later, and told her there was nothing they could do. Ultimately, this case prompted the following year's congressional hearing.

International maritime law requires that cruise ships take every possible measure to provide safe passage. But when something goes wrong, jurisdiction is difficult to sort out.

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At the time of the alleged rape, the ship was in international waters, but Royal Caribbean is registered in Liberia, and the ship was docking in Mexico through the voyage. The cruise line noted 66 cases of alleged sexual assault between 2003 and 2005, without a single one prosecuted successfully. Dishman was instrumental in having the 2010 Cruise Vessel Security and Safety Act passed by Congress. This requires cruise lines to report sexual assaults and other crimes that occur on cruise ships.

Shockingly, 220 sexual assaults on cruise lines had been reported to the U.S. Department of Transportation between 2016 and 2019.

Because maritime law is so difficult to clarify (in part because every country has its own version of it), most cases of cruise ship crime are decided on a case-by-case basis. Law on a cruise ship (or any other ship) starts with the flag the ship is flying under. A ship flies the flag of the country where it's registered, and, in general, the laws onboard a ship are the laws of that country. However, when figuring out which laws apply to a sea vessel, the territory also must be taken into consideration. Legal jurisdiction on the sea goes something like this [source: Justia]:

  • A country's internal waters— areas like bays and ports — are a part of that country. So when a ship is docked at the Port of Miami, all U.S. (and Florida) laws apply to the ship, its passengers and its crew.
  • Almost all of a nation's laws also apply in its territorial waters which extend up to 12 miles from its coastline (we'll look at an exception a little later). A ship departing from a U.S. port cannot open gambling activities until it's 12 miles out since gambling is illegal in most parts of the United States.
  • A nation has limited jurisdiction in its contiguous zone— the area 12 miles to 24 miles from its coast. A country has certain rights within that zone, such as patrolling its borders. For instance, within 24 miles of the U.S. coast, the U.S. Coast Guard is allowed to board any ship suspected of drug smuggling, regardless of which flag it's flying under.
  • Once a ship is 24 miles from any coastline, it's on the high seas (or international waters). With the exception of certain rights within the contiguous zone, the law of that ship is the law of the country whose flag it's flying. So, a Liberia-registered cruise ship that's 25 miles off the coast of California isn't subject to U.S. law; it's subject to Liberian law.

Lawsuits against a cruise line are different, though. While it might seem like a U.S. citizen robbed in U.S. territorial waters off the coast of Los Angeles could sue the cruise line in Los Angeles, it actually depends on the cruise ship ticket's fine print. If the ticket says the cruise line can only be sued in Seattle, then a Los Angeles court will almost always refuse to hear the case.

This can all be bad news for the victim of cruise ship crime. But for the millions of people who take a cruise so they can engage in all the good-natured debauchery they want, the legal freedom of the high seas is actually good news. After all, if U.S. law applies on a U.S.-registered ship, how can that ship allow gambling? It's all about international waters.

The High Seas: Breaking Loose

Royal Caribbean International's "Freedom of the Seas" cruise ship, before a one-night cruise.
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From the 1950s to 1990, a cruise ship flying a U.S. flag had no gambling onboard. U.S. law applied — end of story. Of course, the law changed after the gambling ban left only three U.S.-registered ships.

The United States Flag Cruise Ship Competitiveness Act of 1991 made it legal for a U.S.-registered cruise ship to offer gambling once it made it to international waters. Since then, the U.S. cruise industry has been thriving. Aside from gambling, cruise ships typically offer inclusive alcohol packages as part of the price of an adult ticket, with only the cruise ship determining whether someone should be cut off. And considering no one onboard is going to be driving home, few people are cut off. (This, along with scalable railings, might account for a few of those 28 cruise-ship disappearances).

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This legal leniency could extend beyond gambling. Technically, a cruise ship registered in the Netherlands, where prostitution is legal, could offer prostitution services while the ship was on the high seas (although Holland America doesn't do that). And a cruise ship registered where marijuana use is legal could allow passengers to smoke pot on board when it's in international waters — although it would run the risk of illegal smuggling between countries.

Lots More Information

Related Articles

  • Congressman wants better data on cruise ship crime. Tampa Bay’s 10 (AP). http://www.tampabays10.com/news/local/article.aspx?storyid=26877
  • Crime on the High Seas. FBI.gov. May 22, 2006. http://www.fbi.gov/page2/may06/cruise_crime052206.htm
  • Cruise Ship Law Overview. Justia.com. http://www.justia.com/admiralty/cruise-ships/
  • Cruise Ship Safety Questioned After Alleged Rape. Sacramento News. November 6, 2006. http://www.kcra.com/news/10258276/detail.html
  • Does international law apply to individuals or states? International Law and Organization. March 10, 2005 http://academic.umf.maine.edu/~erb/classes/law6.htm
  • Outsourcing: A sea change. Asia Times Online. May 6, 2005. http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/GE06Df02.html
  • Rose, I Nelson. Casinos on Cruise Ships, Why Not on Airplanes? Gaming Law Review. November 6, 2006. http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1089/glr.2006.10.519?cookieSet=1
  • Schaffhauser, Dian. From Offshore to Ship-to-Shore. SourcingMag.com. April 5, 2005. http://www.sourcingmag.com/blog/archive/from_offshore_to_ship_to_shore.html
  • Weiner, Eric. Cruise Ship Crimes in International Waters. NPR.org. March 8, 2006. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5251675

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