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The stranded crew of a debt-ridden cruise ship marooned in Halifax say tensions aboard their ship are reaching the boiling point and could erupt unless they are paid their wages and given passage home.The Sea Breeze I was one of three ships brought into port last week by a Federal Court order after creditors of Premier Cruise Lines of Port Canaveral, Fla., complained the company owed them millions of dollars.
Crew members say the once-luxurious ship is becoming a fetid, floating jail. The air conditioning has been turned off, food is spoiling in the galleys and garbage is piling up in the hallways.
Some of the 450 crew members left aboard the ship say tempers are flaring aboard the ship because sailors have not been paid and are getting no information from the cruise line.
Most, like steward Basil Abbott, just want to go home.
Abbott, a former banana farmer from St. Vincent in the Caribbean, is owed at least a month's wages plus a $400 U.S. fee he paid to be placed aboard the Sea Breeze I. He is also owed $100 deducted from his pay each month of his 10-month contract in case the company had to send him home.
"They can keep all that. Just give me a ticket home," he said.
Abbott, who sent his wages home to help support his nine kids, has only $100. His contract with Premier ends tomorrow, and he doesn't know how he is going to get home.
"I tell you, my friend, it is not very good what they are doing to us," he said. The cruise line was shut down last Thursday after its primary lender, the New York investment bank of Donaldson Lufkin Jenrette, seized four ships that had been put up by the company as collateral on a $20 million U.S. loan.
The ships, Sea Breeze I, The Big Red Boat II and Rembrandt were ordered to port in Halifax, leaving hundreds of passengers and crew members to fend for themselves. Many of the passengers left early Friday morning aboard the Rembrandt and The Big Red Boat II, or struck out on their own, but about 450 crew members, many of them still owed months in wages, were left no option but to stay with their ship.
Benjamin Young from Honduras said the company has told crew members that if they want to go home, they have to buy their own ticket from Halifax.
"They still want us to work," he said. "If we don't, they said it is a breach of contract."
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