This story was told to me by a dear friend who spent most of his life on cruise ships.

When I was about 9 years old, my father took our family on a cruise ship in the Caribbean (this would be in the late 70's). One highlight of the cruise was the "parade of flaming cherries jubilee" being marched on a waiters head around the dining room.

When I started to work on cruise ships when I was 20, I noticed the "flaming cherries" were no longer being paraded around the dining room on someone’s head.

I'm assuming one of the reasons is because of this story -

Apparently, one time somewhere in the great blue ocean, a spectacle of the cherries jubilee march was parading through the dining room, when one of the waiters dropped his cherries near a female passenger. It appears she had quite some chemicals in her hair that were flammable as her head seemed to join the parade with her now flaming hair.

Luckily the crew is trained to put out fires (although I do not think they were ever trained for this exact situation), and they put her flaming head out quickly and from what I have been told, besides losing a great deal of hair and having the smell of burnt hair with her for some time, she was ok.

This happened back in the days before cruise lines were privately held, and this passenger happened to be a good friend of one of the owners of this particular cruise company.

I've been told she was compensated for the experience, and as you can guess, no more parades of flaming cherries through the dining room. They still have the flaming cherries, but now they sit in a bowl on a nice stable cart built for them.

Story told to: Sean B. Halliday