Shipboard life not all cruising

Press, 9 July 1983, Page 13

Shipboard life not all cruising

Mr Adrian Chandler’s job, most people would agree, takes him to some rather pleasant spots. He is chief officer of the Cunard Princess, a cruise ship plying the Caribbean, the Canadian coast from Alaska to Vancouver or, soon, to Mexico from Los Angeles. Mr Chandler is an Englishman who now keeps his home in Christchurch. Two months out of every five he flies home to his wife a New Zealander, and three young children in Avonside. He arrived back last week for his latest two-month break, Doesn’t that arrangement

make domestic life rather difficult? “It is hard on the wife, no

doubt about that. A lot of marriages break up at sea,” Mr Chandler said. “But I am fortunate. Jane met me aboard a ship; she has been with me on cruises; she knows what the life is like.” The job, he said, was quite unlike its portrayal on the television series, “The Love Boat.” “I think that programme has done a lot for cruising, but there is a lot they don’t show of our job. I sometimes get so frustrated when people come aboard the ship and they obviously have a totally unbelievable idea of what the job is.” The Cunard Princess has

a crew of 320. She has British officers and a mixed Hong Kong Chinese and Caribbean crew of ratings and catering staff. “My job is administration — man management, looking after about 30 Chinese sailors; and 90 per cent shuffling paper — cost control, invoicing, things like that. I am fighting desperately to get a computer,” Mr Chandler said. The mixture of races had not produced ar.}' disharmony. “We quite honestly have no racial problems on that ship at all, with all the variety of nationalities we have. “We did a count once and found we had 37 different nationalities in the crew. It is an excellent example of how when people need to work together they do.”