TikTok star shares morbid news on cruise-ship deaths

Cruise ships, at least family-friendly lines like Royal Caribbean, Carnival and MSC Cruises, generally offer free soft-serve ice cream. 

At a station on the pool deck, a cruise-line worker hands out cones filled with vanilla, chocolate or swirled soft serve. It's a cruise-ship tradition and something many kids look forward to since unlimited ice cream access isn't something that generally comes up at home. 

Before the covid pandemic, those stations were self-serve in some cases, but now they're generally staffed and have more limited hours.

Related: Why Carnival, Royal Caribbean don't offer key entertainment option

Hard ice cream, at least on Carnival, Royal Caribbean and MSC ships, generally costs extra. All three have on-board ice cream or gelato stores where you can get cones, cups, sundaes and shakes. In some cases, however, they will scoop hard ice cream at the buffet and it's always an option for dessert in the main dining room. 

Those three cruise lines serve families and generally have younger audiences on board. 

TikTok star Dara Starr Tucker said she worked on a cruise line — she does not specify which line — that had a much more morbid reason for offering free ice cream. 

It's important to know that the line she worked for was not Royal Caribbean, Carnival or MSC, at least based on what she said about the average age of passengers on board.

A morbid reason for free ice cream

Tucker, who said she was a cruise-ship singer about 10 years ago, explained that her cruise line was not simply being generous when it gave out free ice cream.

"If the crew suddenly makes a bunch of ice cream available to the passengers, free ice cream party!" she wrote. "It is often because more people have died on the ship than they have room for in the morgue."

Her ship, she said, had an average passenger age of 75, and Tucker said that people died on every cruise.

Her ship, she said, had room for seven bodies in its morgue.

“If more than seven people died on that particular ship, they would have to start moving bodies to the freezer, which meant they needed to make room in the freezer,” she shared in the video, which has more than 1 million views and nearly 230,000 likes.

“So when that happened, ice cream party, woo,” she added.

Tucker's numbers, however, do not generally match up with widely accepted global statistics for the cruise industry.

How many people die on cruises?

While Tucker might have worked for a cruise line with an exceptionally old and frail customer base, industry statistics claim that about 200 people — 3 or 4 per week — die on cruise ships. (Those numbers aren't complete, as not every cruise-ship death gets reported.)

"There are approximately 30 million people who took a cruise in 2019," wrote Emma on her popular "Emma Cruises" page. "Assuming that each took a cruise for one week that means that there are around 500,000 guests at sea at any one time. 200 deaths out of [30 million] yearly passengers equate to 1 in 150,000 guests. This means that there are around [3 to 4] deaths per week."

She did note that the actual number was likely a little higher, but 10 people dying on a single cruise would be unusual based on the overall amount of deaths on cruise ships. Most deaths, she said, are from natural causes, although there have been suicides and even murders on cruise ships. 

"Although cruise-ship murders are incredibly rare, they do happen," she wrote. "Murders are usually committed by a person that the victim knows and the majority of cruise ship murders involve arguments that escalate or a previous history of abuse. For obvious reasons murders which happen on cruise ships are very rarely pre-planned."