The story of the 2013 Carnival Triumph cruise, which descended into chaos after the toilets gave up in the middle of the sea, has been turned into a wild Netflix documentary
Elevator pitches don’t get much more captivating, and possibly revolting, than “poop cruise” – a modern day Gilligan’s Island tale that’s almost too good to be true.
For those who may have missed the headlines in 2013: a two-day transit from Galveston, Texas, to Cozumel, Mexico turned disastrous when an engine room fire struck the Carnival Triumph and stranded its 4,100-odd passengers and crew in the Gulf of Mexico. The fire devastated the Triumph’s electrical nerve center and crippled the auxiliary systems aboard the ship, from the wifi to the toilets – which literally backed up into cabins and spilled into the hallways. After three days adrift, the Triumph was towed to Mobile, Alabama – but not before the limits of socially conditioned behavior approached a breaking point.
To widespread relief, however, the saga ended with passengers kissing the ground and laughing off the calamity as they disembarked – and the stricken Carnival cruise went from a potential Titanic epilogue unfolding in real time to the ultimate shaggy dog story. “When you hear ‘Poop Cruise’, you think ‘… OK’”, says Bafta-nominated director James Ross. “But actually there’s a lot more layers and twists and turns to the story.” His latest film, Trainwreck: Poop Cruise, follows recent documentaries in Netflix’s Trainwreck series on the fall of Toronto mayor Rob Ford and the Astroworld festival tragedy. Poop Cruise doesn’t just dive head-first into the graphic details; it deftly walks the line between the serious and the side-splitting while reconstructing the epic yarn in 360 degrees.
