Cruise Law News

06/23/2026

Federal agents arrested Joseph Samuel Doria, age 28, on felony charges related to the possession and transportation of child sexual abuse material (“CSAM”) as he disembarked from the Regal Princess cruise ship in Port Everglades over this past weekend.

Upon disembarking the Princess cruise ship, Doria was flagged and referred to a secondary inspection. CBP officers searched his cellphone and discovered multiple illicit images and videos involving the sexual abuse of young children hidden within his device’s “Recently Deleted” folder. The material explicitly depicted the severe sexual abuse of young children, some estimated to be toddlers.

Read: "Princess Cruise Passenger Arrested For Possession of Multiple Child Sexual Abuse Videos at Port Everglades" below in comments.

06/19/2026

Federal grand juries have indicted Christopher Michael Lawhon, 36, and Tajareia Lawon Aikee Blackwell, 25, on separate child sexual exploitation charges after federal agents discovered child sexual abuse material (CSAM) on their cell phones.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office declined to name the cruise line or cruise ship(s) on which Lawhon and Blackwell traveled. However, the only cruise ship which returned to the port of Jacksonville on May 7, 2026 (after a 4-night Bahamas cruise) and June 8, 2026 (after a 5-night Bahamas cruise) was the Carnival Elation.

It is disturbing that Blackwell, who was reportedly already facing state charges in North Carolina for statutory r**e and indecent liberties with a child, was permitted to cruise on the Carnival cruise ship. Carnival claims that it performs background checks on cruise guests for sexual offenses prior to being permitted to cruise, but this case serious raises doubts about that claim.

Blackwell was released from the a county detention center after somehow satisfying a $750,000 bond. The conditions of release state (in bold):

“DEFENDANT IS A DANGER TO THE COMMUNITY BASED ON THE SERIOUSNESS OF THE CHARGES AGAINST HIM. DEFENDANT IS TO HAVE NO CONTACT WITH THE VICTIM ANS NO UNSUPERVISED CONTACT W/ANY MINOR UNDER AGE 18.”

Notwithstanding the terms of his release, Blackwell took the very same 14-year-old child he r**ed in February with him on the cruise in June together with the CSAM.

06/18/2026

A passenger aboard Royal Caribbean’s Allure of the Seas was arrested by Broward County Sheriff’s Office detectives for taking photographs under a 13-year-old girl’s dress while the cruise ship was at sea. Matthew Stilwell, 25, of Pawnee, Illinois, now faces three counts of video voyeurism after the cruise ship returned to Port Everglades on June 7.

According to the arrest report, the girl said this happened three times before she ran to her mother and reported it. Investigators later reviewed surveillance video that they said corroborated her account, and Stilwell was taken into custody after the ship returned to South Florida. He apparently confessed to the detectives.

06/17/2026

"Cruise ships have turned Mahahual into one of Mexico’s busiest Caribbean port stops, but residents and researchers say the boom has delivered far less to the town than promised. As cruise traffic grows, Mahahual is being left to absorb the environmental damage, infrastructure strain and economic leakage that come with a tourism model designed to keep most of the profits onboard, according to El Pais newspaper."

Mahahual has become a test case in Mexico’s cruise economy, with residents and researchers arguing that the town bears the environmental and infrastructure costs of cruise tourism while seeing little of the financial benefit.

06/15/2026

I wonder which cruise ship these violent passengers were from? Many suggest Carnival Cruise Line, but it seems they may have been on a Royal Caribbean ship. Probably drunk. Over $47,000 in fines. An expensive time ashore!

Five American tourists are in custody after a confrontation linked to Nassau Cruise Port escalated at a police station and left four officers injured, Bahamian police said.

06/10/2026

From the popular German "Cruisetricks:"

"A lawsuit filed by former Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings President and CEO Frank Del Rio is both amusing and infuriating the industry . . .

Del Rio himself apparently admits that he has never been consulted since leaving the company, meaning he provided no consulting services whatsoever. Nevertheless, he collected the fee of ten million dollars over the agreed-upon 2.5-year period without delivering any services whatsoever.

As is so often the case in American law, the matter is quite complicated. Jim Walker, a lawyer known in the industry for his aggressively critical stance towards cruise companies, describes the many facets of the lawsuit in detail.

Walker describes Del Rio's lawsuit as a "freak show of a lawsuit."

Eine Klage des früheren Präsidenten und CEO der Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Frank Del Rio erheitert und erzürnt die Branche gerade gleichermaßen. Del

06/10/2026

In April, possible victims of a cruise ship crew member who planted a hidden camera to watch a young girl undress in her cabin obtained a significant legal victory in Fort Lauderdale federal court. That ruling has now been upheld in the long, ongoing judicial process, giving them a second win.

Royal Caribbean’s attempt to require that all potential victims go through individual arbitration with the cruise line, generally a secretive process and often favored by corporations. That decision, the Miami Herald first reported then, removed one of the biggest obstacles each plaintiff or guest was facing in holding the company accountable and receiving damages depending on how far the case advances. Miami Federal Judge Darrin Gayles, in charge of the overall case, had requested Shaw-Wilder make a recommendation on that motion. He would then accept, reject or modify it. On May 26, he accepted her ruling completely. After reviewing Royal Caribbean’s arguments and the magistrate’s conclusions, he wrote that he “agrees with Judge Shaw-Wilder’s well-reasoned findings and recommendation,” according to a court document.

06/08/2026

Del Rio’s latest money-grab is best understood considering that he is by far the highest paid CEO of a cruise company in the history of the cruise industry after collecting over $175,000,000 from January 1, 2015 to June 30, 2023.

Is it really worth the risk of a SEC investigation by coming up with a legal theory that he secretly agreed to additional compensation and conspired with the directors to kept the shareholders in the dark in the hopes of collecting another $8,000,000?

Why isn't the SEC conducting an investigation into Del Rio?

Seatrade Cruise News reports that Frank Del Rio, former president and CEO of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings (NCLH), is suing NCLH and four past

06/05/2026

This season 124 cruise ships will generate NOx, SOx, and particulate matter over our waterfront and neighborhoods, and discharge an estimated tens of thousands of metric tons of toxic scrubber washwater into Casco Bay — all while cruise passengers represented just 7% of Greater Portland’s visitors and roughly 1% of direct visitor spending in 2024.

06/03/2026

Carnival discovered the unauthorized activity / "hack" (see article in comments) in April and later determined that personal information had been copied from its systems. The company said it blocked the activity, launched an investigation, brought in outside cybersecurity experts and finally began notifying affected individuals on May 27.

Carnival is offering two years of free credit monitoring and identity-theft protection through TransUnion (available only to U.S customers, see comments below).

Reaction from affected customers was swift. Some users discussing the breach online said they were especially concerned that passport numbers were part of the data set, while others complained that Carnival’s offer of free credit monitoring did little to ease their concerns after so many large-scale data leaks in recent years.

This is not the first cyberattack linked to Carnival-owned cruise lines. In 2020, we reported on a cyberattack affecting Carnival owned AIDA and raising questions about whether Carnival owned Costa ships were also affected.

The latest breach is far larger in scale: nearly 6 million people were affected, and Carnival’s own notice says passport and driver’s license information was among the data exposed in some cases.