In this undergraduate thesis we will address passengers legal rights aboard cruise ship in case of death and personal injury, more precisely we will define conditions under which and to what extent the carrier is liable. With the development of the cruise ship industry, the need to establish a regime of liability for damage suffered by passangers carried on a seagoing vessel emerged, which is now regulated by the Athens convention of 1974. and its latest protocol of 2002. Other conventions and regulations that preceded the Athens Convention partially covered that aspect of legal protection, but none directly. In the very beginnings of this industry, transport conditions were of a much lower standard than today, and less attention was paid to the needs of passengers, both in physical and legal sense. The entry into force of 4 SOLAS, initiated a further series of legal efforts to achieve the standard, which was accomplished by adoption of various legal sources, with Athens Convention as culmination point. This paper will analyze the progress made by application of this convention in comperison with the previously used legal frameworks, will study its most imortant provisions, and also comment on its global placement. We will address four practical problems that arise due to application, starting with the situation where its provisions apply through the contract, but without legal force of the convention, all the way to the issue of ambiguity and potentially uneven court application. We will also adress advantages and disadvantages from the point of view of a particular country, precisely Australia. The main goal is to draw certain conclusions about the achieved legal effect of this convention by an individual state, but also by two contracting parties, carrier and passenger.