Crew Life at Sea is a Cape Town recruitment agency for cruise ship, yacht and river cruise work, operating at crewlifeatsea.com. It is worth knowing before you start that the company publishes no telephone number at all – everything runs through one mailbox and the online application forms – so anyone phoning you and claiming to be this agency is not calling on a number the company publishes.
Official contact channels
- Email: [email protected] – the only contact address published anywhere on the site, including on its contact page.
- Applications: online only, through the job openings pages at crewlifeatsea.com. You select the cruise line, complete that line’s application form and upload a CV.
- Telephone: none published. There is no switchboard, mobile or WhatsApp number on the site.
Because the agency publishes only an email address, an unsolicited call, WhatsApp message or SMS offering you a placement should be treated as unverified until you have confirmed it by writing to the published mailbox.
What this organisation provides
- Recruitment for positions on cruise liners, private yachts and river cruise vessels, with the different cruise lines gathered onto one application page.
- Guidance material on the recruitment process, including interview preparation, medical examinations, drug testing, packing, flights and joining the ship.
- Information on the C1/D visa, the United States crew and transit visa that seafarers joining ships calling at American ports generally need.
On payment, the agency’s own guidance is unambiguous: if anyone asks you for any sort of payment, it is a scam. It notes that approved agents may charge a fee for their services, but that beyond those you should never pay anyone a cent. This matters in South Africa because the Employment Services Act prohibits a private employment agency from charging a jobseeker a fee for finding them work. A demand for money to secure a cruise ship job, to “reserve” a position or to release a contract is the single most common form of this scam.
Address and operating information
- South African office: 1 Waterford Place, Century City, Cape Town
- No office hours are published, and the site sets no walk-in expectation. Contact is by email and online application.
- The footer carries the name of the website theme the site is built on rather than a trading entity. Do not treat that name as an alternative company name when checking the business.
Support and escalation routes
- If you are asked to pay to be placed, stop and report it. Under the Employment Services Act a private employment agency may not charge a work-seeker a fee, and the Department of Employment and Labour is the body that registers and polices private employment agencies.
- Never send identity documents, banking details or money to an agent you have not verified against the mailbox published on the company’s own site.
- South African seafarer certification, safety training and complaints about conditions at sea fall under the South African Maritime Safety Authority, not a recruitment agency.
- C1/D visa applications are made to the United States Mission to South Africa. No recruiter can issue, guarantee or fast-track a visa, and any offer to do so for a fee is fraudulent.
- If money has already been lost, report it to the South African Police Service, and to your bank immediately if the payment was an electronic transfer.
- Complaints about how your personal information was handled fall under POPIA, with the Information Regulator on 010 023 5200.
Sources
- Crew Life at Sea contact page and FAQ, crewlifeatsea.com, read 4 September 2026 – email address, Cape Town office address, absence of any published telephone number, application process and the agency’s own payment and scam guidance.
- South African Employment Services Act provisions on work-seeker fees; published Information Regulator contact number.