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Originally Posted by ///M///
May be the case in some shady smaller companies but it is technically against the law. That would be classified as a stowaway. I have never seen or heard of that in my 14 years of sailing on tankers.
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It is a niche travel market for sure, but adventurous souls can book onto cargo ships as passengers through specialty brokers...including a Hamburg Sud (Maersk Group member) subsidiary:
https://www.hamburgsued-frachtschiffreisen.de
Upon closer examination, it appears that they are not actually booking transit on their own ships, but rather acting as agents for other smaller cargo ship companies. I'm sure that the Jones Act complicates things for us Americans sailing North America, but anyone who has been on more than a handful of passenger ship cruises here has already seen everything in North America anyway.
I saw an interesting 14-day that included the Kiel Canal and St. Petersburg, Russia that probably isn't possible with today's 4,500+ passenger mega-cruise ships. If someone was adventurous, self-entertaining, and wanted to see odd ports and not the normal tourist traps, it seems like a viable niche option. My doctors would probably never sign off on the paperwork they require, but I'd definitely be up for the experience if I were retired and looking for something to do.....