A Week at Sea with Dissidents and Freedom Fighters
Last week I was one of the paying guests on the Mark Steyn At Sea cruise of the Adriatic. This was on the Holland-America ship msOosterdam; there were about 270 in Mark’s group among about 1,800 passengers in total.
For those readers who don’t know who Mark Steyn is, here’s a tribute article I wrote recently.
I had never been on a cruise before and had not had a holiday since the onset of my wife’s frontotemporal dementia in 2019 - a condition that rapidly deteriorated after she got (against my advice) two doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine in March and April of 2021. But my daughters encouraged me to go on this trip and arranged to take time off work to look after my wife while I was away. I wasn’t planning to make any of this trip public, but pictures got out quickly on social media, so I’ve decided to provide my own account of it.
Mark Steyn has already written up his own extensive account of the trip - including covering how his serious health problems curtailed much of his activities. So, I will not repeat what he covered, but rather focus on some personal experiences and highlights. This is quite a long report which covers both the social and political aspects of the trip. For those who might be offended by such things I warn that it also contains obviously gratuitous photos of very attractive ladies. While I highlight some things that could have been arranged better, this was a truly fantastic experience and (assuming Mark holds up) I would strongly recommend everyone to go on his next cruise (which is to the Caribbean in Feb 2024).
Getting there
Getting to the ship was not the greatest experience. In all their material Holland America said the ship left from Venice and that you had to provide them details of your flights to and from Venice so that they were sure you wouldn’t arrive too late or leave too early. You were not allowed to arrive later than 12.00 on 7 July and leave earlier than 1.00pm on 14 July. For me this meant booking a flight to Venice on 6 July and an overnight stay near the airport. I assumed I could just get a taxi to Venice port to board the ship but (having booked my flights) I then discovered that the ship left from Trieste port (about a 2-hour drive away) not Venice. I was told that I needed to get the official Holland America transfer by bus from Venice airport ($100 each way) to be sure of getting to the right place on time. So I booked that. I later discovered that I could have got a direct flight from my local airport Stansted to Trieste (instead of the much more expensive flight and journey from Heathrow). And I could have spent a nice evening and morning in beautiful Trieste and walked from the centre straight on to the ship.
I also assumed that there would be transfer buses from Venice airport that were exclusive to the Mark Steyn group but none of the people I saw in the airport waiting for the transfer to the Oosterdam were part of the group. It was only after an hour of chatting that I discovered that the person sitting next to me on the bus - Shirley Zurba from Canada - was one of the few fellow Steyners. Shirley celebrated her 90th birthday during the cruise!
On entering the gangway to the ship the first person I bumped into was Leilani Dowding, which was amusing because for almost 24 hours up to that point we had been sharing our tales of travel woes on WhatsApp; while my flight was delayed it was nothing compared to what Leilani went through as her flight from Birmingham to Venice via Frankfurt ended in Cologne due to closure of Frankfurt airport. She finally got to Venice from Cologne after an 8 hour delay.
On board
Once on the ship everything was fantastic (although regular cruisers kept telling me that this ship was poor compared to other newer and bigger ones they’d been on). After meeting the legendary Andrew Lawton when we got our information pack (followed by a great lunch) I went out onto the Lido deck and was made to feel a minor celebrity myself when a few people (Peter and June, Martin and Maggie) recognised who I was (during the trip it was mainly Brits and Australians, not Americans who did) but I was amazed to find that Kathy Gyngell of The Conservative Woman was there. We'd both been at a sceptics drinks get together at a London pub just the week before, but neither of us knew the other was coming on the cruise. Kathy was a great companion throughout the trip.
Because the Steyners were just a small proportion of people on board the only way to know who were they were (if you didn’t already know them) was if they happened to be wearing their Mark Steyn lanyards. Moreover, except for the opening and closing reception parties (each one just an hour long before dinner) there was no ‘place’ to meet up and mingle with everybody. On 6 of the nights we were assigned to a different table for dinner, but that meant you only were guaranteed to meet about 30-40 Steyners in total. Obviously, everybody was together in the theatre for the shows and panel sessions, but that wasn’t an opportunity to meet and talk. Kathy and I and a few others managed to get the word out that we would normally meet each night for an hour before dinner at the Lido bar and after dinner in the top floor bar. So a few people did meet up in those places, but if you wanted to find people (including the celebrity hosts) at any other time of the day (breakfast, lunch, afternoon) there was no one place to go. This meant that many of the paying guests never even got a chance to meet or speak with most of the celebrity hosts.
Not being as shy as others - and also having met some of the celebrity hosts on previous occasions at meetings in London - I managed to get to speak with most on the first night. The first person I introduced myself to when I went into the reception was Alexandra Marshall who I think has been impressive as a regular guest on Mark’s show. It was also great to meet up again with (that force of nature) Eva Vlaardingerbroek.
I was also especially excited to meet Michelle Bachmann who I’d been following ever since she was a candidate for President of the United States in the 2012 election; she was far and away the most impressive American politician I had seen but inevitably was smeared for her conservative and religious convictions and lost the Republican nomination to the useless Mitt Romney.
At dinner Kathy and I had the privilege of being at the table hosted by Mark Steyn himself. Although I’ve been on his show, this was the first time I’d met him in person.
Another celebrity host - Eva’s best friend Raisa Blommestijn - who I’d never met before - was on our table. As demonstrated later in her two panel appearances Raisa is a formidable analyst.
Unheard stories
Many of the paying guests had their own remarkable (and often tragic) stories to tell of their experiences during the covid era. I was lucky enough to get to know and hear from some of them and, since they never had the opportunity to tell the whole group their stories, here’s a brief summary of three diverse stories that encapsulate the covid insanity and evil:
Linda Keen lost both her mother and her father. She was not allowed to visit her mother who was in a nursing home and her mother was one of the many in the UK whose deaths were caused by the bungled and deadly response to the virus rather than the virus itself (see this whistle blower testimony from a nurse). Her father died of a turbo cancer induced by a covid booster jab.
A lady (who wishes to remain anonymous at this stage) with 20 years loyal service in the US military was forced out because she refused the vaccine mandate.
Russell McBride from Australia was an employee of Kirkland Lake Gold (subsequently acquired by Agnico Eagle) in 2021. Every employee was offered a gold ingot worth around $2,000 as an incentive to get double vaccinated by 30 Nov 2021. Russell said he will send a photo of the ingot (engraved with the word ‘vaccinated’) when he gets back home.
The panel sessions
On most days there was a one hour afternoon session in the theatre (which sometimes extended to closer to two) that followed the same format as the Mark Steyn Show. That is with Mark starting with a brilliantly inciteful and funny monologue (except the last day when Andrew Lawton stood in for Mark) and then him hosting a panel session with a subset of the celebrity guests interspersed with music by Tal Bachman.
The sessions were excellent, especially those addressing the “The Great Migration” and the “Rise of the Globalists”. Although the sessions were followed by a Q&A session, typically there was only time for a very small number of questions even though many people had their hands up. I managed to get the following question in after the Migration session as it’s one I’ve been dying to ask all politicians:
Anybody who opposes mass immigration from the Middle East & Africa is called racist. They say we need these immigrants because they will be the future doctors, nurses, teachers etc needed to support our economy (even though they almost all happen to be uneducated fighting age men). So why can’t we turn that racist slur back on the mass migration supporters by accusing them of racism as their policies are depriving the poor countries of their best people?
While all the discussions were stimulating and thought-provoking anybody expecting these world leading dissidents and freedom fighters (and yes I can’t think of any people outside this group who are as good) to produce a coherent plan to defeat the WEF/UN global elite’s New World would have been disappointed. Eva V suggested that her “Resist Much, Obey Little” strategy could work and asserted the need to invest in cryptocurrency to avoid the impending slavery of the Central Bank Digital Currency, but there was an air of pessimism among most of the panellists. The optimism expressed by James Golden, Michelle Bachmann and Eva V was all based on their sincere belief in God but, judging by many guests I spoke with afterwards, this belief was not widely shared.
One of the most incisive contributions came from Kathy Gyngell in a question after the Rise of the Globalists session. She asked about the loss of the culture war dating back to the 1990s. She clarified her position on this in a brief interview I conducted with her after the session:
The ‘evacuation’ of Santorini
The beautiful Greek island of Santorini was supposed to be the destination highlight of the trip. Unfortunately, for many it turned into an experience more akin to the World War 2 evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk with everybody on the ship that evening recounting horror stories of how they managed to just about escape.
The problem was that because of wind, the tender boats from the ship to the dock didn’t start leaving until about 9.45am and people only had until 4.30pm to catch the last tender boat back to the ship in time for a 5.00pm departure.
I travelled with Kathy, Leilani and Dominique Samuels (another one of Mark’s all stars) and there was already a very long queue for the cable cars gets to get up to the main town Thera (the only other way up was by donkey). So, we each paid 30 euros for what we were assured was a ‘speed boat’ to take us just along the coast from where we would be taken in a private bus to the lovely village of Oia; from there we would get another private bus to Thera. The ‘speed boat’ turned out just to be a slow tender boat and when we got off there was an 800-metre steep uphill walk to the bus. Oia was beautiful - the pictures above were taken from a cafe overlooking the sea (11 euros for a soft drink!). But we had to rush to get the bus to Thera.
It was clear Thera was overwhelmed with tourists; Kathy and Dominique wanted to go to the other side of the island to swim, but I was already concerned that such an adventure would be cutting it fine for a 4.30 departure. So, when Leilani said she preferred to go straight back to the ship I was only too happy to join her. It turned out that even at that time (about 1.00pm) the queue for the cable cars to go down was over an hour long. So, we decided to walk down the donkey path. This was exceptionally hazardous, not just because it’s steep and very slippery, but also because it’s clogged with donkeys and their excrement everywhere (I slipped over once despite walking carefully). When we eventually got down it turned out that the Oosterdam tender boats had dropped us off at the wrong place because there were no tender boats going back to the ship from where we were dropped off. Only after much searching did we find the dedicated Oosterdam ‘dock’ where the tender boats should originally have dropped us off but failed to do so. I sent a message to Kathy and Dominique warning them not to return to the cable cars later than 3.00pm.
In fact, it turned out that by 2.30pm the queue for the cable cars to go down was 2 hours. This mean that anybody arriving after about 2.15pm (i.e. almost all the ship travellers!) was going to have to walk down. And anybody arriving after 4.00pm was going to have run down that treacherous path very fast. Because many of the passengers were old this resulted in a lot of chaos and some serious injuries. One man arrived on the boat with blood all over him and another fell over while carrying his elderly mother. Moreover, because even after getting down, passengers were unable to easily find the location of the Oosterdam tender boats, many still arrived after the 4.30 deadline. The only reason that (as far as I know) no passengers were left behind is because the ‘official’ Oosterdam tour also got heavily delayed, meaning that there was a tender boat leaving as late as 5.00pm. The ship left over 30 minutes late.
Other highlights: Places and people
Kotor (Montenegro) is the perfect cruise stop. Spectacularly beautiful and you can simply walk straight off the ship immediately into where all the action is. I climbed the 1700 steps with Kathy G. to the top of the Kotor fortress.
It was great to meet John O’Sullivan amd James Golden and to be able to spend so much time with the fabulous Kathy G, Leilani D and Dominique S
Here Leilani and Dominique expressed the importance of being among like-minded people in this impromptu interview I did with them:
It was also wonderful to make the new friends shown in the photos below including Chris Edwards (surrounded by the beauties in the top middle photo), Jennifer Clark (bottom left), Jekka Geffre (top right) and Yvonne and Lee Drury (bottom right - a photo taken during an immediate post-cruise reunion in London with Jennifer Clark).
One amusing anecdote for my friend and colleague Jessica Rose
: one night at dinner I was seated on a table with six Americans. None of them knew who I was, but they were all extremely excited to discover that I knew Jessica well.Some messages from Eva
And Mark’s all-stars at the final evening reception
Going home
We had to leave the ship by 8.30am on the last day and get the transfer bus back to Venice airport. Unfortunately, my flight was not leaving until 6.30pm so I was in for a long wait in the airport. If I had known about the direct flights between Stansted and Trieste I could have spent a leisurely morning in Trieste and taken the afternoon flight back to Stansted arriving back home before 4.30pm (rather than 11.30pm which I did from Heathrow eventually).
Fortunately, I was in very good company at Venice airport. Kathy G was there until 2.00pm and (lucky for us but not her) Leilani’s flight home was cancelled and she was forced to wait for a much later flight via Amsterdam. Linda and Michelle Keen also joined us. Before boarding my flight, I discovered that Jennifer Clark and Yvonne and Lee Drury were also on it. While Yvonne and Lee were lapping it up in business class, I managed to end up switching seats to be with Jennifer for the flight. But Leilani’s nightmare bad luck with travel continued right to the end when she finally arrived after midnight only to find her car had a flat battery:
All in all it was an incredible experience and I would love to be able to go on the next cruise in Feb 2024, but I doubt my personal circumstances will allow it.
A well deserved break Professor. Sorry to hear about your wife. Here is a (very long) list of AZ adverse events from Belgium. Horrific.
https://lawyerlisa.substack.com/p/belgian-government-tracked-the-following
Is it just me, or does it seem that you spent an inordinate amount of time in the presence of attractive young ladies? ;)
How wonderful to be in the company of free-thinking, intelligent and astute people - I've quite forgotten what that's like. The pink suit rocks too.
My Greece guide book said, '...a short bus ride...' - it was a short bus, but the ride was long.