It started as a story in the newspaper ‘Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten’ with accusations of drunken bashes onboard the navy ship ‘Vædderen’, which recently returned to Denmark after the scientific Galathea 3-expedition.
Subsequently the newspaper ‘Nyhedsavisen’ – having sought access to the supply ledgers of the Danish navy – disclosed that other ships had a similar extensive consumption of alcohol. And this piece of information propelled the case directly into the laps of the politicians at Christiansborg – the Danish parliament.
At least one Danish warship stands out though by having zero tolerance regarding alcohol onboard. And that is the Sea Stallion from Glandalough from the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde. The Sea Stallion – a copy of a Viking ship originally built in Dublin in 1042 – sets sail on the 1st of July, going from Roskilde to Dublin without a drop of alcohol in the cargo hold.
“Alcohol is incompatible with good seamanship. Therefore alcohol has been completely banned onboard the Sea Stallion. That is to say, it is forbidden to drink onboard the ship, while it sails – and forbidden to show up drunk for duty. There is really nothing more to it,” says Preben Rather Sørensen, leader of the secretariat at the Viking Ship Museum, charged with planning the voyage of the Sea Stallion to Dublin.
A question of safety
“The reason we have zero tolerance concerning alcohol on board the Sea Stallion primarily relates to the question of safety. It is already a risk in itself to cross the open sea in an open ship with sixty-five people onboard. We cannot accept an increase of that risk by adding alcohol to the equation – not even in small amounts. Another thing is that the chances of surviving the unlikely ship wreck are reduced drastically for the drunken sailor. The choice has been an easy one for us,” Preben Rather Sørensen explains.
“The Vikings manning the original ship a thousand years ago may very well have had a more liberal policy toward alcohol onboard, than the one we have. But then again they did not have to avoid tankers, oil-rigs and passenger ferries. We do however – and because of that we chose only to having one too many on the shore. When you consent to taking a Viking ship the complete almost 2,000 kilometres from Roskilde to Dublin for six weeks stuffed in there with the other sixty-four, you are already equipped with a certain amount of humour and irony… more than enough to keep spirits high even without drinking”.
