Courtship Computer at Sea

"The Greek Line, in cooperation with Operation Match dating service, is running a singles-only computer dating cruise from New York City to the Bahamas . . . When you buy your ticket your name will be fed into a computer and when you board the Olympia you will be introduced to five or six match mates. Take it from there." The bit of text, from a new, youth-oriented magazine called 25, sounded intriguing; the accompanying photographs of frolicking girls in bikinis were positively tantalizing. TIME Reporter Carey Winfrey, 27 and single, took it from there and set sail on the Olympia. His report:

FIRST stop on the dream assignment: the office of the Greek Line to buy the ticket ($195 double occupancy, $265 single) and fill out the computer questionnaire. Samples of the 110 questions: "Of the following men, I most admire: (1) Winston Churchill (2) Albert Einstein (3) Henry Ford (4) Babe Ruth. My ideal date should be: (1) Very sexually experienced (2) Moderately sexually experienced (3) Somewhat sexually experienced (4) Sexually inexperienced (5) Doesn't matter."

Essentially Lonely. Reality intrudes all too soon at the top of the gangplank at 57th Street and the Hudson River. Visions of beautiful secretaries, lonely models and experience-hungry Vassar girls fade at the sight of manicured matrons, overweight men, blue-grey hair, pancaked wrinkles. The few under-30s seem swallowed up in a sea of over-40s and over-50s.

On board, Steve Milgrim, 45, one of the founding fathers of computer dating and president of Operation Match (230,000 marriages in 4 1/2 years is his claim), confirms the depressing visual evidence and goes into his pitch. "Singles," he recites, "are not just in their 20s, but in their 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s and even 70s. Many of them have no interest in marriage, or in sex either, for that matter. Many are not even essentially lonely. What they are, most of them, is simply trapped in their own whirlpool. They go to work in the morning and come home at night, and they just don't have the opportunity to meet new people." Building to something akin to missionary zeal, Milgrim continues: "The few places that cater to singles--clubs, $3-a-head dances or whatever--can be pretty degrading. The marvelous thing about a cruise like this is the preservation of basic dignity. Here the singles have created their own world--where they have to answer to no one."

Portly Footballer. That world, on the first night aboard, looks like a floating opera buffa of the absurd. In a corridor amidships, a 22-year-old stock clerk has blocked the way of a nurse from Detroit, one of the youngest women aboard. He does not discuss Albert Einstein. "Are you really from Detroit?" he asks. "Yes, Detroit." "Gee, I was there in 1965, Detroit." "It's nice, isn't it?"'"Sure is, buy ya a drink?"

In the Taverna lounge, where a Greek go-go quartet rocks till 2 in the morning, a 26-year-old stock-exchange clerk sets his sights on a life-begins-at-forty redhead, while on the dance floor a New York City detective (41) is cheek to cheek with a schoolteacher (32) from Pennsylvania. A deck below, his inhibitions all but obliterated by bon voyage champagne, a portly ex-footballer from Fordham (class of '56) runs the length of the ship, yelling jovially: "The cruise is canceled! The cruise is canceled!"

Crushed Expectancy. Next afternoon, the crowd gathered in the Zebra Room for the "Operation Match get-together" looks like a sampling from the line outside Radio City Music Hall. Much of the previous evening's frenzy has spent itself. The room is quiet as Milgrim begins his spiel. "A lot of you won't believe this," he says, "but within twelve months' time seven or eight percent of the people in this room will be married to someone they met on this cruise." When the self-conscious laughter subsides, he explains that "because of the small sample, the computer can't really do its proper job," but that the computer matches should serve to break the ice. "There will be a bed check at 1 a.m.," he says with a wink in his voice, "and if you're caught with anyone in your cabin not on your list, you're in big trouble."

Half an hour later, the room where the computerized lists are distributed is jammed with a crush of expectancy. Most of the lists are long, some as many as 40 names, and the recipients gather outside to compare. For the remainder of the cruise, the standard opening gambit, repeated hundreds of times, is, "Are you on my list?"

The next day, more through mingling than computer matching, the artificial society is beginning to stabilize. Several couples hold hands on deck chairs in the warming sun. A dozen small parties erupt spontaneously in a dozen staterooms. A haggard haberdasher from Baltimore stumbles out of his cabin, glass in hand, looking for ice. "Whew," he says. "She needs two 20-year-olds--not one 40-year-old." Milgrim adopts a literary tone: "Liaisons are being formed and torn asunder faster than you can light a cigarette."

Singles veterans are beginning to form judgments: "The thing about the Borscht Belt--Grossinger's, the Concord--that sort of thing," says a Bloomingdale's shoe salesman, "is that all those broads go up there with a chip on their shoulder, ready to check out the first time they get a soft egg. But on a cruise--who's to check out?"

When the fourth morning breaks sunny and warm in the harbor of Nassau, it is a relaxed group that piles into the tender to be taken ashore. Herb, 40, a pudgy and amiable eyeglass distributor from Philadelphia, heads hand in hand with Beverly, 25, an industrial designer from Boston, for a day at Paradise Beach. Hannah, 52, a veteran of three singles weeks in the Catskills, has resignedly fallen in with a group of lady cribbage players from Westchester, and is on her way with them for a day of shopping. Tom, 27, a salesman from Cincinnati, has teamed with two other motorcycling enthusiasts for a day of island exploration.

Floating Hospital. A second day in a second port (the Bahamian Las Vegas, Freeport) imparts a healthy glow to the passengers for the homeward cruise. By now, the romances that are to be are under way, while the unmatched and the uninterested have found other outlets for their energies. A few eccentrics begin to make their presence known. One woman writes a note to the cruise director: "There is a group of men and women aboard ship," she begins, "who are using fictitious names--one is a chief of police, here with his mistress or possibly unknown wife not united in marriage by his church . . . These men I accuse of operating a white slave ring. I want them taken to task. I am my own boss." A wild-eyed Denver merchant corners Milgrim in a hallway and through clenched teeth mutters, "Don't think I don't know what's going on here. The filth, the filth." A legal secretary from Long Island expresses her distaste for Greek cuisine by insisting upon ham sandwiches and malted milks, and one cynic suggests that the ship is really a floating mental hospital, the stewards actually keepers, the passengers patients. They are doomed to sail forever.

A few have become cynical, a few have found alcohol their only compatible matchmate, a few have resigned themselves to no dates. One girl, an attractive Manhattan secretary, even packed her bags in Nassau, preferring to pay the plane fare rather than return on board.

And yet there comes the realization that for most of the 340 women and 312 men who paid their money and took their chances, the trip has satisfied their expectations, if not their wildest hopes. Putting it in practical terms, Milgrim points out that "for most singles, a date with anyone is better than staying at home." More piously, he adds: "You bring some happiness to some people, the whole thing becomes worthwhile." At $10 a head for his computer service ashore, and a percentage of the gross receipts afloat, very worthwhile indeed.

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