Cruise Lines, Shuffleboard, and You!
June 02, 2005
Okay, shuffleboard on a cruise ship isn't exactly breaking news. When was the last time you heard about a cruise line like Celebrity, Carnival, Royal Caribbean, or Norwegian advertising the fact that they feature shuffleboard on their cruise ships?
Exquisite cuisine, contemporary luxury, plenty of shuffleboard.
Hardly.
No, with ice skating rinks, pools and Jacuzzis, movie theaters, lavish casinos, unbelievable destinations, and more, cruise lines have many other ways with which to entice the passengers. For instance, besides featuring rock climbing walls on their cruise ships, Royal Caribbean is introducing several cruise ships with a unique type of bungee jumping onboard. Celebrity offers a stunning Cirque du Soleil program on some of their cruise ships, as well as many other enriching activities. Carnival and Disney each have loads of family entertainment, games, and activities on their ships, although couples can easily find lots to do as well. Doesn't seem like there's much room for an old game like shuffleboard, does it? So what's become of this cruise ship relic?
Well, sometimes it is nice to revisit history a little to see just how far you've come. First, the game didn't begin on a cruise ship. It actually began back in England sometime in the 15th century as an indoor table game. The aristocracy needed something to do when they had the itch to play a heated game of lawn bowling, but couldn't because of bad weather. So they created specially made tables about thirty-feet in length, down which a metal weight was slid—the goal being to get the weight as close to the edge as possible.
The lower classes and yeoman played a slightly modified version too, but they had to keep their games a secret after Henry VII issued an edict in 1522 that forbid anyone but the aristocracy to play shuffleboard. Although this edict may have been more of an attempt to stop his archers from playing shuffleboard when they should have been practicing archery (you can't fight France without good archers), the effect the policy had on the general public was evident. No wonder so many people made the transatlantic journey from England to America's shores soon after!
Fast forward about three hundred years. Shuffleboard has gone through many incantations and rule changes, but when a recreation director for P & O Cruise Lines creates the cruise ship version of the game in the 1870s, cruises changed forever. Created so that people will have something to do in between ports of call, the game was moved from the table to the floor, and instead of people moving the weight with their hands, they used a long pole to push the disc. After that, shuffleboard was practically synonymous with cruising.
Shuffleboard turned cruise ships into more than simply a means of travel; its addition to cruise ships laid the first brick in the long, scenic avenue of onboard activities and entertainment that cruise ships provide passengers with today. Nowadays, cruise ships are laden with so many exciting things to do and see onboard that people often look forward to the time in between the ports of call as much as, if not more than, the ports of call themselves.
So has shuffleboard been thrown overboard for better and more exciting activities? Are the shuffleboard decks covered up by Jacuzzis and wet bars? Well, while it's true that shuffleboard is no longer the cruise ship pastime it once was, it still has its place and probably always will. Sure, the all-night discos and rock climbing walls have a tendency to overshadow this humble game, but it's still there. Most, if not all, of the cruise lines still pay homage to this time-honored cruising tradition on their cruise ships, and have set some space aside for this game of kings, peasants, and cruisers.
