The Achille Lauro and Her Mystique: All Aboard

The Achille Lauro was sometimes called the Blue Lady. She was also called the Blue Bitch by some of her crew. She was also referred to as Fawlty Towers at sea, a reference to an English sit com of some note. She was home to me for nine months. Working aboard as the massage therapist brought me hours of pleasure across several bodies of water. The bodies on my massage table were sources of income, experience working with tense muscles, and lessons in handling a wide variety of moody passengers. Some of the crew members came to the massage room for company as well as relief for sore muscles. The massage room was on one side of an upper deck, and the beauty salon was on the opposite side. The young lady who worked as the lone beautician was Swiss; quite pretty, physically fit, and conveniently spoke five languages. As the only American aboard the Achille, I was somewhat of a novelty. The first night on the ship was a revelation in regard to the one event that gave the Achille Lauro one facet of her mystique.

I had heard of the hi-jacking years before, but knew little of the politics involved. As Veronica showed me the beauty salon and the massage room (sauna included), she told me about the killing of the Jewish American passenger in the wheelchair. She also showed me some of the bullet holes in the side railing on one of the inside staircases. She had not been aboard the Achille then, but she knew a little about what had happened. I soon learned that the movie that had been made was shown on every cruise. In a perverse way, that hi-jacking gave the Achille Lauro and her crew her fifteen minutes of international fame. Every subsequent day on the ship she revealed a little more of her magic as we cruised for six weeks in the last cruises of the season in the Mediterranean. After those cruises the ship would return to her home port of Genoa, Italy for two weeks in dry dock for repairs and preparations for the journey to Australia.