A Florida company offers 'euthanasia cruises' on which terminally ill and suicidal passengers end their lives by jumping overboard.
If you need help, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255. Or contact Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741. For most people, voyages aboard cruise ships are pleasant diversions, a form of recreation that allows vacationers to travel to exotic destinations while taking the comfort and luxury of a fine hotel room along with them. For some people, cruise ships have even become a way of life, as a few retirees have opted to spend their golden years permanently at sea. Have such ocean voyages now become a way of death as well, with a company offering 'euthanasia cruises' on which the terminally ill (and others wishing to end their lives) can quietly expire in the company of like-minded individuals by sliding overboard into the sea? A Snopes reader writes: Is this true? 'A group of Florida businessmen has created a company called Euthanasia Cruises, Ltd. Each month the company takes 25 passengers on The Last Supper, a three-masted luxury sloop, for three days at sea before the passengers voluntarily end their lives by jumping into the ocean. Although a few passengers are terminally ill, most are able-bodied adults.' Not quite. The information about 'Euthanasia Cruises, Ltd.' quoted above was taken from a satirical column by prankster Alan Abel which was published in the Fairfield County Weekly on 16 February 2006. (Abel is a regular contributor to that publication; similar recent spoof articles by him have featured a Michigan restaurant called 'Hitler's Drive-In,' operated by a proprietor who is the spitting image of his infamous German namesake, and plans to build a Miles Standish-inspired 'Pilgrims' Casino' in Connecticut.) Although the example article cited here was published in 2006, the 'euthanasia cruise' column is actually a rehashing of a hoax Alan Abel first unleashed back in 1993.
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