A cruise ship is a cruise ship is a cruise ship, right? Well, that’s what we thought, until we started seriously considering what precisely makes one type of ship a cruise ship. What are the essential attributes of a cruise ship? If a cruise ship lacked one of these attributes, would it cease to be a cruise ship? Are there characteristics of a ship that necessarily make it a cruise ship? This is a grave ontological question, at least for those of us who take our cruises seriously, so below you’ll find a list of characteristics that ships must possess in order to be properly labeled a “cruise ship.”
The first and most important attribute of a cruise ship is that it must be a vessel used for the pleasure of its passengers. Taking a cruise is about enjoying yourself – it’s a vacation, plain and simple. If a ship doesn’t serve this function, then it can’t be a cruise ship.
But then what about things like sail boats and yachts? Many of these are used exclusively for pleasure, but surely sail boats and yachts aren’t cruise ships, right? That’s right, so all cruise ships must necessarily have on-board amenities that are designed for entertainment. These amenities include, but are not limited to, restaurants, movie theaters, bars/clubs, and casinos. And this brings us to our next essential characteristic.
Cruise ships must be fairly large, although we hesitate to put a specific figure on this lest one counterexample explodes our size requirement. The basic point of this criterion is that it must be possible to enjoy yourself on-board in some of the ways that you enjoy yourself on land, and this is only possible if the ship is of considerable girth. For example, you can take a walk on land and not pass the same point several times in ten minutes, and you can purchase items at retailers – the same must be possible on a cruise ship.
These last three points suggest our last characteristic: cruise ships must only take voyages that are for the sake of themselves. That’s a little convoluted, so allow us to explain. Cruise ships take people on trips that serve no other function than to take people on trips. Cruise ships are not in the business of transporting people or things from point A to point B – they are designed to carry people around a specified part of the world and then return them to the port from whence they departed. So, again, cruise ships must embark only on those journeys that seek no greater end than the journey itself. If a ship doesn’t do this, it’s probably an ocean liner or something like that.
Before concluding, two remarks are in order. First, we don’t pretend that this list covers all of the essential attributes of a cruise ship; there could be others. However, this list does list characteristics that all cruise ships must possess. In other words, we have listed the necessary conditions of a cruise ship, but we make no claim that they are sufficient. Second, our list makes the implicit suggestion that a ship may at one point be a cruise ship and at another not a cruise ship. This is reasonable, even if as a matter of fact most cruise ships stay cruise ships, and other ships don’t become cruise ships.