“I first saw the ship when I was on holiday in Sorrento,” he said. “I had such a strong feeling that it was sinister and doomed; I suppose it was a premonition.”But the cruise-lit piece par excellence is David Foster Wallace’s essay in A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, when he goes on a week’s cruise in the Caribbean, and chronicles guests eating “like walruses”: “I have now seen sucrose beaches and water a very bright blue I have seen an all-red leisure suit with flared lapels. In Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections, retired Alfred and Enid go on a “Nordic Pleasurelines fall foliage tour” of the Atlantic seacoast. Alfred suffers from Parkinson’s disease, incontinence and dementia, and falls from the sports deck of the ship, past a room where Enid is in a financial-planning seminar called “Surviving the Corrections”.The novelist Patrick Gale has written of a Caribbean cruise with a daily timetable of bridge, bingo, fancy-dress balls and vegetable-sculpture demonstrations; and in Alice, John Bayley features the Achille Lauro as a backdrop. And it’s easier to go to the gym than it is at home.”SEXING UP THE CRUISEThe Royal Caribbean Cruise Line asked a New York PR firm to position the world’s largest cruise line as a holiday for the “sexy, young and hip” The PR firm created a “Sex at Sea” survey. USA Today’s headline was “Makin’ whoopee on the high seas”, reflecting the fact that nearly half of the passengers had sex up to six times on the cruise, compared to once or twice a week at home.CRUISE LITERATUREMostly consists of the intelligentsia sneering at Suburbia-on-Sea.

The convention of meeting the captain is still adhered to, although it is less formal now. But, says Sue Bryant, lots of passengers like this rigmarole. “People seem to want it.” The captain also has the right to throw you off the boat.THE FOODIt’s La Grande Bouffe on a boat. You kick off with an enormous breakfast, have an ice cream at 11am, do a sitdown lunch, afternoon tea, eight-course supper, and a midnight buffet. There is a whole county in Iowa where cattle are raised for one client: Carnival Cruises. By the time you reach the Bahamas, the buttons on your Hawaiian shirt will ping off.There’s more variety now, say the cruise people.

Royal Caribbean’s Voyager of the Seas has a 1950s-type diner; P&O’s Aurora has a 24-hour bistro; and Norwegian Cruise Line is famed for its “chocoholics” midnight buffet However, “things are getting healthier,” says Gibbons “Lots of ships are losing the midnight buffet. So? “Well, if you do, move.” Sue Bryant of Cruise Traveller says: “I’ve never heard anyone say that they were bored after a cruise.”THE DAMAGEAnything from £100 to £1,000 a day per person. As a rule, the smaller the ship, the more expensive the experience. The price usually includes all meals, rooms, entertainment, lectures and activities, and often a return air fare. Extras include dining in “alternative” restaurants; the 15 per cent “service” charge added to drink prices on American ships; possibly even sports facilities; and ”incidentals’ include excursions, booze, tips, beauty spa treatments Tips are a big deal on US ships.

If you encounter this piracy, you’ll be mugged for about £3-£10 a day.MEETING THE CAPTAINAn important part of your cruise. Heed this, youngsters: cruising is now “smart casual”.STUCK ON SEAPeople, says William Gibbons, “often think that they might get stuck with bores from whom they won’t be able to escape”. “The average Brit cruise passenger is just 54 years old.” Cocktails, internet centres and gyms are there to entice you away from the duty of eating till you die. Black-tie formality is optional, and dinner has evolved beyond the rigid second-sitting-at-eight format.