The situation was slowly changing. Yet, it was changing in such a way that no one quite knew what to think. There were too many sources of information and too little actual knowledge. The struggle continued on all levels. Through the announcements, it was clear that the captain and his team were doing their job, trying to navigate this chaos. But problems kept popping up one after another. Feeding the guests sandwiches and canned food continued. Not only was this “killing” our colleagues in the galley, but it was also far from a sustainable solution. That evening, after talking to one of the restaurant managers, it became clear we had a new, major problem. The guests had been eating dry food for two days now. Firstly, their eyes would soon start popping out from such a diet. Secondly, no matter how much stock we had, the plan wasn’t to feed everyone like this for days on end. Since we had generously distributed “surpluses” on the first day instead of rationing a strict limit per person, now—after only the second day—we were running out of even that food. What happens now?

This became the priority problem, bigger than any other. Dinner tonight, maybe breakfast tomorrow, and after that—the end. What then? Do we all start fishing off the deck? A solution had to be invented. Naturally, we couldn’t share this information with the guests, as it would cause even greater panic. Hope was, once again, all we had. It was obvious that something or someone from the outside had to help us because we couldn’t solve this on our own, even if that hadn’t been publicly admitted yet.

Our guests obviously shared this opinion, as we could see almost everyone with a phone in hand. Just as our management was calling for outside help, so were our guests. Everyone was calling family, acquaintances, or whoever one calls in an emergency. If nothing else, at least we could send the news out, inform someone. We weren’t in the era of the Titanic when Morse code was everything. Surely, all these calls would “birth” some solution. Even these calls had to be rationed, primarily due to battery life. There was no electricity; only every fiftieth outlet on the ship worked on emergency power. The rest were dead. In the meantime, hopefully, our distress calls would reach someone who could actually help. Given the situation, I wanted to activate myself a little. To make a small personal contribution, however, I could. I suggested to my manager that I go around the ship and take photos. To document whatever I came across, so we would have some record of this extraordinary situation. It’s not every day that a ship catches fire and becomes a drifting shell. It would be an interesting story for someone when all this is over. To my great surprise, the answer was totally unexpected and negative. “Absolutely not… We must not photograph this. We have to show as little as possible. It’s bad for the company; this must be quiet about this…” and other arguments that seemed completely insane to me. We are going to cover this up?? How!?!

Maybe such thinking was justified somewhere, somehow, from the perspective of bad publicity, but executing it was simply impossible. How do you intend to cover this up when every single one of the 4,000 guests has a camera phone or some kind of camera? On top of that, 90% of them are Americans, all with internet access on their phones, capable of sending images anywhere instantly!? Almost all of them had already told their families what was happening, taken pictures themselves, and we were going to hide it?! There was no end to my amazement at his arguments, but I had to obey the boss’s decision. His word was final, not mine. Arguing would get me nowhere. It was just one more reason to remember my previous managers, the Macedonian and the Romanian. Where they could read between the lines, here it was the opposite. I think I could have communicated with them now with just a look, but here, I wasn’t able to. Fine, at least I tried.

If I couldn’t shoot for them, I could shoot for myself. No one could forbid me that. So, I took my personal camera and photographed and filmed everything I thought was interesting. After all, so did every other crew member. Everyone was snapping pictures of whatever they could. There was no chance to ban or prevent it. In the meantime, night fell again, much like the previous one. We continued to drift, not knowing what tomorrow would bring. But the new day finally brought some real decisions, which meant radical changes and events.