Oldies cruising into trouble

Watch the television coverage of the return of the passengers rescued in the South Atlantic from the cruise ship Explorer, and you can see why they all got off the stricken vessel and into the lifeboats so successfully. This was an adventure cruise, and the passengers are clearly healthy people in the prime of life. It could have been so very different

The average cruise ship, the sort that bobs incessantly around the Med, is frankly a floating home for the old folk. Sometimes it even resembles a geriatric ward. As an experienced, but now retired, 'guest lecturer' on board, I came to know my audience well. And in the prime of life, most of them are most definitely not.

It's getting about that is