Mutiny, Knife Fights, Engine Trouble : Tourists Abandoned as Cruise Goes Bad

Texas authorities have shut down a San Antonio cruise line company after it canceled several sailings of its ship, the Galaxy, allegedly failed to make refunds to hundreds of people, including many from Los Angeles and Orange counties, and finally left 90 passengers in Panama.

According to several Southern Californians who were on the most recent voyage of the Galaxy, scheduled to cruise from Acapulco through the Panama Canal to Cancun, Mexico, a crew mutiny erupted off Costa Rica, the captain engaged in knife fights with crew members and blood was found afterward in the main lounge.

Passengers aboard the ship, run by Golden Cruise Tours, also told of cabins without air conditioning, poor food, an unshaved crew and land tours that were delayed until after dark.

Susanne Burke of Huntington Beach said the worst trouble began when the vessel’s captain, whose name she was not told, fired one of the cooks, putting him ashore in Guatemala. This angered other members of the crew, she said.

“What happened was the bartender was freely dispensing liquor to the deck stewards, the waiters and the other cooks,” Burke said. “The crew got drunk and several members came up to attack the captain. The captain was not hurt, but there was blood on a couch afterward. . . . When we got to Costa Rica, the next port, he fired 45 crew members and hired a skeleton crew from Costa Rica.”

She said that while 16 of the passengers left the ship in Costa Rica, she and her husband joined 90 others who stayed aboard, believing the troublemakers were gone.

However, after the ship had negotiated the Panama Canal, she said, “the captain announced he had been unable to correct air-conditioning problems, the saltwater flushing of the toilets was out and the ship had an engine problem. That’s when he had to put us off. He told us his concern was the safety of the passengers.”

Beverly Appel of Cypress said she and her husband were among those who left the ship in Costa Rica.

“It was a nightmare,” she said. “The ship was filthy. It was hot without air conditioning. . . . The food was sparse and not good. . . . We had been on four cruises before on other lines and this had none of the amenities the others had.”

After refrigeration of perishables broke down, the crew threw much spoiled food overboard, Appel said, and “after awhile, the waiters and even the ship’s doctor ended up cooking the meals.”

But, she said, in recompense the captain did frequently order free drinks for all passengers.

The Galaxy had encountered so many delays and appeared to be in such bad shape for its last voyage that only 106 of the 250 passengers scheduled to sail on it from Acapulco actually got aboard, authorities said.

A spokesman for the Texas attorney general’s office, Ron Dusek, said passengers stranded in Panama finally secured a charter flight and flew home via Mexico City, with some assistance from the U.S. State Department.

Court Order Obtained

Dusek said Texas authorities have obtained a temporary court order barring Golden Cruise Tours from doing business and ordering it to refund much of the $4.6 million collected from would-be passengers since last summer.

“Actually, they had already shut their doors and left the state,” Dusek said. “They did not file for bankruptcy, and we have no idea where they are now.”

He said authorities are seeking the whereabouts of Lorna and Fernando Inigo, San Antonio tour agents, and the three owners of the cruise line, Fernando Mendrillo, Fermin Gutierrez and Manuel Fernandez.

“We got complaints from all over the country over a period of months,” Dusek said. “The ship was apparently a piece of junk. They had canceled at least five trips in the past that people were supposed to go on, and had told people it would be six months or so before they got a refund. Those people have never gotten refunds.”

Phone Unanswered

Calls to the company’s office in San Antonio on Tuesday went unanswered, and one Orange County couple, who said they paid $3,260 for a cruise that had been scheduled to start this week, said they had not been able to reach anyone from the line or its agents for the last week.

“We were originally going to cruise from Cancun to Acapulco,” said Lillian Kemp of Mission Viejo. “They informed us in January that one cruise had been canceled and we would have to go the reverse way. We called in Feb. 19, because we had received no tickets. They said they would send them by Feb. 24 by Federal Express. But we never got anything, and now we can’t get through on the telephone.”

Kemp’s husband, Ed, said the couple had originally been attracted to the cruise line because it was advertising its cruise of 12 days in The Times for $1,390, less than half the usual fare for such a voyage. He said that after including air fare and two nights in an Acapulco hotel, the couple finally sent the line a total of $1,630 each.

Now, the Kemps said, they cannot even get confirmation of the two nights in the hotel they believed they paid for in Acapulco.

“If it (an ad) sounds too good to be true, it’s probably not true,” Texas Atty. Gen. Jim Mattox said this week. He suggested that would-be cruise passengers be more cautious in making their plans.