Someone slips an envelope under your stateroom door, and the card inside says something like this: “The captain of the (your ship here) cordially invites (your name) to have a dinner with him. Please meet the hostess at the entrance to the dining room at 8:30 p.m. on (date of the dinner, usually the same evening that the card appears). Dress: Formal or Jacket & Tie.”
The first time I received a summons like that was also the occasion of my first cruise-aboard a ship touring Alaska’s Inner Passage-and the ceremonial stiffness of the invitation reminded me, oddly, of a major-league ballplayer I had heard about.
From the minors upward, baseball teams take buses from the hotel to the park, and the players traditionally call the driver “Bussy.” One outfielder carried that practice a bit further, using the same salutation for cab drivers (“Comiskey, please, Bussy”) and chauffeurs (“Home, Bussy”). One time he even addressed an airline captain that way (“Nice, smooth landing, Bussy”) and couldn’t understand why the pilot scowled.
So, I thought, on that magic Alaskan evening, Bussy wants me to have a dinner with him. I would personally get to meet the guy behind the wheel. The invitation with its golden border implied that I should feel honored, flattered, maybe a touch reverent. Thinking of the host as just another Bussy softened only slightly my instinctively American resistance to European grand gestures-however well meant-when they smack of “exclusivity.”
Cruising lore is full of accounts describing glamorous nights at the captain’s table, where privileged passengers dressed in their finest listen raptly to tales of adventure on the high seas and shake with laughter at the barnacled jokes told by their uniformed host. Struggling with my starched white shirt and knowing I would miss the congenial and egalitarian companionship of my usual table mates, I fought down a sense of resentment. No CTA driver would put me through this.
Attitude adjustment
Still, this vessel had considerably more grandeur than the Hyde Park express. Considering he is in absolute charge of a huge boat, scores of crew members and hundreds of passengers, it’s a wonder the captain has time for a leisurely dinner at all. My respect for him rose a notch, but I still didn’t feel particularly honored. The cruise line was sailing the Alaskan route for the first time, and on inaugurals of this sort, newspapers and other media often assign people to cover the event. Journalists learn to recognize the difference between sincerely friendly gestures and public relations; I knew my dinner with the chief officer fell into the latter category.
That night, one guest at the table, a London reporter, seemed especially underwhelmed. She kept shooting dark glances at a sleek woman seated beside the captain. The woman, like the London reporter and all the rest of us, had a media connection. She was producing a videotape to be used in cruise line promotions and later sold to passengers as a souvenir.
The dinner, filled with numbing small talk and artificial smiles, seemed to take an eternity. And afterward, the captain insisted we join him in the show lounge, where the now inescapable performers bombarded us with Broadway kitsch. The sleek videotape producer again sat at the captain’s side, while the London reporter glowered into her complimentary after-dinner drink.
At last, after handshakes all around, the captain, deep in conversation with the videomaker, took his leave. The rest of us scattered, and a few minutes later I ran into the London reporter in one of the bars.
“I hate Alaska and I hate this ship,” she snarled. “Did you see the way the captain carried on with his tot? How dare he! I am not amused.”
Tot? I hadn’t noticed any children at the captain’s table. I asked the reporter what she meant. “The tot! The tot! The one in the white gown. Surely you noticed the way she and the captain flirted so shamelessly during the whole dinner and cuddled so closely during the show. Disgraceful!”
No, I hadn’t noticed, but I learned something that night-something besides the way a tipsy young Brit pronounces “tart.”
The London reporter, who covers the travel industry for a living, had taken numerous cruises. And because she found this one such a crashing bore, she filled the empty hours inventing outrageous scandals, dining on room service (with the exception of that subpoena from the captain) and refusing to leave her cabin until it was time for her nightly pub crawl through the ship’s lounges and discos, where she would be sure to find an audience.
Two more invitations
I have taken two more cruises since that Alaskan voyage, and on both of those Caribbean swings, the captains again requested my company at dinner on their special night. Because an editor asked me to report on those experiences, I sought my invitations long before departure (which I learned any passenger is free to do). A representative at one cruise line, Royal Caribbean, readily agreed. At the other, Radisson Diamond, someone told me, politely, “I’ll ask, but only the captain decides who sits at his table.”
From my limited experience and a bit of informal inquiry, I discovered that captains seem to prefer breaking bread with repeat customers, travel agents, members of the news media and potential clients. But those who lack such credentials-particularly if they ask well ahead of departure-sometimes do make the invitation list. It helps to mention that you’re celebrating a significant anniversary.
On the Radisson Diamond, three representatives of a Detroit Yellow Pages publisher and I were entertained by Capt. Rainer Hemming Tornqvist and hotel manager Fabrizio Caviglione. The publisher would be hiring the entire ship as a reward for outstanding sales personnel.
On Royal Caribbean’s Sun Viking, I dined with Capt. Per Moen and four couples, three of them frequent sailors. The other man and his wife hadn’t the slightest idea why they were there.
Moen, from Norway, and Tornqvist, a native of Finland, both displayed a dry, northern-latitude sort of wit. But on the Radisson Diamond, the dinner became more of an executive planning session than a romp.
Compulsive talkers filled our Sun Viking round table, so Moen merely smiled most of the time, nodded sagely and agreed at one point that 30-foot waves will suck the Dramamine right out of anybody, even the most seasoned tar.
Meanwhile, the Sun Viking waiters serving the table were at their most obsequious. They hovered and solicited, not to say groveled. At their normal stations, they tell little jokes, play little pranks and offer advice about menu selections-behavior that apparently did not befit the dignity of the throne. Just before coffee, a photographer appeared and solemnly recorded the moment, as if we had just signed some kind of maritime treaty.
The women who wait tables on the Radisson Diamond consistently act cheerful and professional-never rambunctious-whether they are serving the captain or not. This was less like a state dinner and more like a business lunch.
So the guests and their captains leave the banquets with a sense of mutual relief. On the Sun Viking, sometime later in the evening or at breakfast the next morning, regular tablemates got in their digs, which cut virtually the same way in the Caribbean as they had in Alaska:
“We saw you eating with the captain last night. You probably think you’re too good for us now. Ha ha. What’s he really like? Is that his real hair?” And then all the outsiders get to make wisecracks along those lines for the rest of the trip.
Averted eyes
Meanwhile, the captain’s chosen few tend not to speak with one another again, unless they happen to be partners or colleagues. The strangers among them nod curtly when they meet on deck and avert their eyes, as if they shared an embarrassing little secret.
The following evening, all of the Sun Viking honorees received a commemorative menu and two copies of the group photograph. No souvenir or photo was forthcoming on the Radisson Diamond, although the Detroit execs probably came away with an ample supply of numbers to crunch.
Hey, Bussies, it was real. Thanks for the memories. But if I cruise again and that invitation slips under the door, I think I’ll plead seasickness.
