One of the more unsettling news events of the past fortnight was the report of an elderly couple on a Seabourn cruise in Europe who were put ashore for failing to show up for a lifeboat muster drill.
Some of the facts are a little unclear, but the main outlines are these: The couple showed up for the first drill without incident, but it was a multistop cruise and on a subsequent muster drill in Lisbon, the 84-year-old woman stayed in her cabin. Her 90-year-old husband went to the safety briefing without her.
When a crew member came to the cabin, she said she wasn't feeling well. Soon thereafter, they were put ashore.
Seabourn initially declined to elaborate further, leading some readers to wonder why the punishment seemed so harsh, particularly since Seabourn, by its own account, allows sick passengers to do a makeup "when their health permits," a practice that wasn't followed in this case.
After a week of blog posts and comments from readers, some of whom remained mystified by the company's response, we received further word from Seabourn that the passenger "refused" to attend, "despite multiple, explicit warnings."
That puts things in a different light.
The couple's travel agent, Steven Shulem of Strictly Vacations in Santa Barbara, Calif., believes that "Seabourn could have handled this differently."
Perhaps it could have, but the repertoire of possible responses to "refusal" is not large.