Modern Living: Courtship Computer at Sea

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"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 4½ 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?"