A captain who has spent over 30 years working for a major cruise line has opened up about life at sea, including how ships navigate storms, what it’s like to conduct 100 weddings at once – and how he met his own wife onboard 20 years ago.
Captain Craig Street, from Norfolk, began his career aged 17 with Princess Cruises as a cadet, choosing maritime adventure over a spot at Edinburgh University.
Inspired by his father’s Royal Navy service and the cruise-themed comedy series The Love Boat, Craig pursued a career at sea, rising through the ranks to become a Captain 17 years ago.
He’s since cruised all over the world, visiting Antarctica four times, spending 20 seasons in Alaska, and calling to port in bucket-list destinations like New Zealand, Hawaii, The Orient and Mexico.
Over the years, Craig has seen first-hand how the cruise line’s fleet has evolved and expanded in size.
In contrast to the intimate 630-guest, 27,000-tonne Island Princess, one of the captain’s newer vessels, the Sun Princess, is a 177,000-tonne megaship accommodating 4,000 guests.
Beyond the evolution of ship amenities, dining, and entertainment, Craig’s role as captain has also undergone interesting changes.
When he’s not commanding the ship and overseeing 1550 crew members, he spends a good portion of his time conducting weddings.
Captain Craig Street has shared details of his 30-year maritime career on Princess Cruises
The captain has cruised to countless destinations across the globe, including Alaska (pictured, with a Princess Cruises vessel) – a journey he’s made over 20 times
Across his career, he has performed over 100 legal weddings, and even held a group ceremony on Valentine’s Day for around 100 couples in the Piazza, the heart of the ship.
What is especially unique about such occasions, Craig says, is that each couple has likely tied the knot in a location no one else has been married in.
He says: ‘We have to conduct legal weddings outside 12 miles from land – it is a special event, as nobody in the world would probably ever have had the chance of somebody else being married in that exact location.
‘I have had couples who have come on at the start of the cruise, seen another couple getting married, and we’ve set things up for them on a sea day before the end of the cruise. We also set up surprise engagements for couples at sea, too.’
On one particularly special occasion, the captain married a couple who had met while working on the ship. He recalled how a staff engineer and his fiancé, who had a role elsewhere on the vessel, tied the knot in a service attended by 200 officers and crew.
But the crew members weren’t the only ones to have found love at sea – Craig himself met his wife onboard two decades ago, marrying just two years later.
When they aren’t travelling the world – benefiting from a perk that allows his wife to join him onboard – the couple enjoy quietly gardening at their home in Scotland with their two rescue cats.
He says: ‘My wife and I met 20 years ago on the Caribbean Princess. She worked on board as a scuba dive instructor. We got married 18 years ago, moved to Canada, now back to Scotland.
When not overseeing a 1550-strong crew, Craig (pictured, centre) officiates weddings onboard – on rare occasions marrying up to 100 couples at any one time!
‘I’m very fortunate in the position I’m in – we can bring family on board the ship. We have house sitters for the cats when [my wife] is away, but she’ll generally come with me on each trip. So the company looks after us very well.’
Another perk Craig enjoys is a healthy work-life balance.
‘It’s a very busy working environment onboard the ship. Although I’m not up 24 hours a day, I can be called anytime if there’s an emergency or anything else to look for.
‘So it can be some more working hours on occasion, but then we get very good leave to compensate for that as well.
‘It’s nice to have the time off to be able to, you know, to do all the things that we do in the house.
‘We’ve also got a large garden, so I quite enjoy being out in the garden, especially when it’s nice weather. So that’s a very good very good balance, and we’re well looked after, with family being able to come on board as well.’
Although Craig has ‘lost count’ of the destinations he’s visited over his 35-year career, there are a select few places he holds dear.
He said: ‘We go to some wonderful ports of call – even places like Sydney, where you sail in and see the sunrise over the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House. You’ve got New York, San Francisco, many other places around the world.
‘But my favourite really is Hawaii and French Polynesia. When I go on holiday, I like to go to the quiet places. My wife and I had our honeymoon in Hawaii, and we did island hopping, so that’s definitely one of our favourites, along with French Polynesia.’
Although cruise holidays are often associated with sunshine and warm weather in far-flung destinations, conditions at sea can shift rapidly, forcing changes to the route and affecting those on board.
Craig explains: ‘The weather can be unpredictable, as we always know, though ships are built for going into rougher seas. Obviously we want to get the ship from A to B, but safety and comfort is a priority as well.
One of the captain’s favourite destinations is Hawaii (pictured), as he enjoys quiet locations and the opportunity to island-hop
Captain Craig is thrilled to star in a new Channel 4 docuseries, Cruising to the Ends of the Earth
‘We have great weather providers and we always plan our routes, so we don’t go into any area where it’s going to be too rough. We look at the weather routing and change the routing of the ship [if the weather is bad].
‘We have two large stabiliser fins, which we often utilise and deploy, which counteract the rolling of the ship. Although we’re very large ships, that cuts down on the movement as well.’
While seasickness is a common concern for newcomers, as with handling poor weather, Craig notes that ships utilise advanced onboard technology to minimise rocking.
His advice for sudden on-board nausea? ‘You can readily get sea sickness medications on board the ship – but I always tell people, the best thing to counteract seasickness is to be outside, get fresh air, and look at the horizon,’ Craig says.
Currently on leave, Craig is enjoying time at home in Scotland with his wife before joining his ship in Rome in three weeks.
But beyond just returning to sea, Craig is thrilled to feature in a new Channel 4 series starring Princess Cruises.
Cruising to the Ends of the Earth, which launched on 26 April, is a spectacular eight-part series that explores some of the world’s most remote and dramatic destinations reached by sea.
Craig said of the first episode: ‘I had a brief part. It was also just nice to watch my colleagues, which I’ve grown up with. And being able to see the destinations that we go to – I think it’s going to really stir up a lot of interest.
‘There’s great things to see. It never fails to amaze even having seen it before. Once they see these great places, it’s really going to make people want to go on cruises with us and book.’
He adds: ‘It’s a great way to see the world. I think: You wake up in a different port pretty much a lot of the time – every day or every other day – and you can enjoy the ship as you do it.’
Stream or watch Cruising to the Ends of the Earth on Channel 4 on Sundays, 8pm.
