I sympathise with Martin Heard's suggestion for cruise companies to vet passenger health before embarkation (Health checks should be for passengers too, April 2020 Telegraph letters). In addition to checking for Covid-19, cruise companies could check that passengers can walk to muster stations, see safety notices, hear safety announcements and follow safety instructions. I suspect if cruise companies were to implement such draconian checks, they would lose a significant portion of their clientele.
However, it is not cruise companies that require seafarers to have health checks; that is the responsibility of the maritime regulator IMO. The IMO also has responsibility to ensure passenger safety facilities are fit to use, but paradoxically no responsibility to ensure passengers are fit to use them! Until IMO closes this loophole, cruise companies will continue to transfer responsibility for the welfare of infirm and disabled passengers to ship's staff.
Roger Parnell
More letters
Catch up with old Clan Line colleagues
The annual Clan Line reunion will take place this year at the Liner Hotel in Liverpool on Wednesday 1 October 2025.
The latest consequence of shortsighted policy-making
Having read the article about UK defence on your website, I thought it was spot on about needing to secure the future of the Merchant Navy if the government wants a defence capability.
Britain's WW2 government acknowledged Merchant Navy sacrifice
As you will know, this year marks the 80th anniversary of VE Day. I enclose a copy of a transmission, sent by telegraphy in May 1945, from the Admiralty to 'all ships', expressing the victory message to the Merchant Navy, from the minister of war transport.