In truth, though your median cabin may not necessarily be luxurious, it is ingenious. And given that you will enjoy a sea-going tenancy within it for a week or more, extraordinary attention has been paid to every aspect of its comfort and convenience. All boast their own bathroom, tucked into one of the inboard corners, small, perhaps, but perfectly adequate. Its modest dimensions make sound spatial sense, for the tradeoff of a larger bathroom would be a smaller cabin. Unless you have invested heavily in the most splendid cabin high atop the ship, your bathroom will be equipped with a shower rather than a tub.

     All cabin bathrooms on board were made in a factory, pre-assembled as huge boxes for delivery to the shipyard and installation within the hull. Everything save a damp passenger was included inside those sanitary blocks, as naval architects call them — soap dish, towel rail, toilet paper holder, shelves, cupboards and a slot for a box of Kleenex. Be warned that aboard every modern cruise ship, the flushing mechanism of the toilet works by a vacuum system which, when activated, produces a startlingly loud noise. Shipboard's vacuum toilet is a relatively recent innovation, perfected as part of a totally fresh water sewage system. As a result, corrosive salt water is no longer piped within cabin bathrooms. The only downside of shipboard's fresh water regime is that a beguiling sea water phosphorescence no longer enlivens nocturnal flushes.

     At the time your vessel was under construction, an original cabin prototype was assembled and temporarily erected in a warehouse at the shipyard. Once in place and ready for inspection, it was visited extensively by teams of executives and hotel operations personnel from the prospective owner, intent on torture-testing every design feature. No shred of decor or detail escaped their scrutiny. Like unruly delinquents, they bounced on beds, opened and closed curtains to distraction, tugged at the shower curtain and wrenched every knob and pull in sight. They evaluated how comfortable the mattress, checked clearance for suitcase entry through the door as well as storage beneath the bed, made sure that every drawer and closet door worked without balking, debated the placement of shelves and hooks, tried out light levels in both bathroom and cabin and even ascertained that the dressing table finish stood up to spilled cologne or perfume. They ensured that the curtains kept daylight at bay and that neither ceiling nor reading light glared into the eyes of a passenger watching television from the bed. They shouted from outside the mockup walls to monitor noise levels that might filter from corridor or adjacent cabin and agonized over color choices for carpet, bedspread and curtain. Nothing escaped the scrutiny of those test passengers and final selection of your cabin's fittings, fabrics, fixtures and furnishings emerged only after hours of abusive study.

     Incidentally, a sizeable accumulation of paper will be delivered to your cabin throughout the cruise — the daily program, shopping promotions, invitations, notes from fellow passengers, newspapers, luggage tags, customs declarations, port announcements and photographs. Traditionally, they always used to appear beneath the door; indeed, cabin sills have always served as efficient shipboard mailboxes. But recently, in an attempt to reduce noise and also as a fire precaution, the bottom of the latest cabin doors are lined with a rubber gasket that makes it impossible to slip anything underneath it. So cabin deliveries are either left curled within the door handle or dropped in a special mail rack beside each door. The original practice was far superior because the faint rustle of an envelope or newspaper being slipped into the cabin insured swift acknowledgement. Sometimes, notes or deliveries linger unheeded for hours in those exterior racks.

     Within an hour of your arrival on board, your cabin steward will tap at the door and make himself or herself known to you. He or she will serve as your dedicated company servant; he will clean and make up your cabin, bring you trays or drinks, replenish your ice supply, deliver and retrieve laundry or dry cleaning, turn down your bed at night — in sum, go to diligent lengths to render your sea and port days as seamlessly pleasant as possible.

     Most of today's stewards are recruited from third-world countries, young men and women who know the meaning of extremely demanding work. It would be fair to say that it is the stewards' unremitting toil, whether in cabin, dining room or public room, that is responsible for the glowing patina of cleanliness and well-being that distinguishes shipboard. In addition to taking care of you and your cabin, stewards look after about a dozen others as well; their telltale trolleys, stacked with fresh linen and towels, are a harbinger of concerned service on every passenger corridor.

     Cabin and dining room stewards make up the largest single manpower block of every passenger vessel and are responsible for cleaning every cabin on board, those belonging to both passengers and crew. You will find that the two-way symbiosis between passenger and steward is unique to shipboard; no hotel maid, airline hostess or even bartender is privy to the same wealth of intimate detail involving your household persona. And just as you will refer automatically to "your steward," so he or she will dub you "my passenger." The captain's steward on many lines is still called the captain's tiger because, in the days when tea clippers sailed to and from the orient, he was traditionally kitted out in the most exotic and dazzling silk finery obtainable.

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