lady falls off cruise ship

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Woman rescued after falling off Royal Caribbean cruise ship

Unidentified 42-year-old was found in good health and safely recovered by the coast guard.

Woman rescued after falling off a Royal Caribbean cruise ship

A woman was rescued after falling out of the 10th deck of a Royal Caribbean cruise ship near the Dominican Republic. It is unclear whether the woman accidentally fell from the ship or intentionally jumped. (Credit: @matthew_kuhn/LOCAL NEWS X /TMX)

A woman on a cruise vacation had a close call after falling overboard on Sunday, dramatic video footage of the incident showed. 

The unidentified woman, 42, was aboard Royal Caribbean's Mariner of the Seas when she was said to have plummeted into the ocean.  

It is not immediately clear what caused the woman to go over the ship's railing on the 10th deck of the cruise vessel, but the woman was reported to have been in the water up to 45 minutes before being rescued. 

MAN FALLS FROM CRUISE SHIP OFF FLORIDA COAST: 'LIFE OF THE PARTY'

Royal Caribbean's Mariner of the Seas, docked at Port Canaveral, Florida. (Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

The incident took place southeast of the Dominican Republic, according to reports.

Ship staff issued an alert to local authorities, and a search was launched. 

"The ship and crew immediately reported the incident to local authorities and began searching for the guest," Royal Caribbean said in a statement. 

COAST GUARD SUSPENDS SEARCH FOR MAN WHO FELL OVERBOARD FROM CARNIVAL CRUISE SHIP NEAR FLORIDA

The company added, "Thankfully, the guest was successfully recovered and was brought on board. Our care team is now offering assistance and support to them and their traveling party."

The woman was discovered in good health and brought back aboard the Mariner of the Seas by the U.S. Coast Guard.

She received immediate care from the ship's medical team. 

VIRGIN CRUISE PASSENGER FALLS FROM BALCONY AND LATER DIES

People wave as Royal Caribbeans Mariner of the seas cruise ship departs from Port Canaveral. (Photo by Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

"Coast Guard watchstanders at Sector San Juan received a report from the Cruise Ship Mariner of the Seas at approximately 5:44 p.m. Sunday that the ship’s crew had rescued a female passenger, 42, U.S. citizen, who had gone overboard.," the Coast Guard wrote in a press statement. 

The Coast Guard continued, "The cruise ship was transiting approximately 27 nautical miles south of Punta Cana, Dominican Republic when the incident occurred and was en route to Willemstad, Curaçao."

The Mariner of the Seas launched from Port Canaveral in Florida on June 23 and is expected to arrive back on July 1. 

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The trip is set to last eight days and take a route through the southern Caribbean.

While cruise ships have made major advancements in passenger safety, an average of 19 people have fallen overboard per year between 2009 and 2019, according to a report from the Cruise Lines International Association.  

Of those who fall overboard, only a small number are rescued.

Fox News Digital's Adam Sabes contributed to this report.

Timothy Nerozzi is a writer for Fox News Digital. You can follow him on Twitter @timothynerozzi and can email him at [email protected]

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Virgin Voyages passenger dies after falling from cruise ship balcony

A Virgin Voyages passenger died after falling from a balcony on the line's Valiant Lady ship, the cruise line said Monday.

The passenger fell shortly after departure Sunday as the ship went to Roatan, Honduras. 

"This passenger went over their balcony onto a lower deck, and despite receiving immediate medical attention, has passed away," a Virgin spokesperson said in an emailed statement. "We are deeply saddened by this loss of life and our hearts and thoughts are with this person's loved ones."

The vessel "was immediately redirected back to Miami, where the team are working closely with local officials," the spokesperson added. The ship has since resumed its sailing with an adjusted itinerary, including a missed port of call in Roatan.

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Virgin Voyages' Scarlet Lady ship began sailing from the U.S. in October 2021. The ship had been set to debut at PortMiami in April 2020 but was delayed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Valiant Lady entered service in 2022.

Between 2009 and 2019, there were 292 serious injuries to passengers or crew members on cruise ships and 126 minor injuries,  according to statistics compiled for Cruise Lines International Association by consulting firm G.P. Wild (International) Limited.

Nathan Diller is a consumer travel reporter for USA TODAY based in Nashville. You can reach him at [email protected].

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Coast Guard investigating how woman fell off cruise ship in Alaska; search suspended

JUNEAU, Alaska — Members of the Coast Guard are trying to determine how a woman fell off a Seattle-based cruise ship and into frigid waters in Alaska.

It happened in the Inside Passage on Tuesday. The woman still hasn’t been found.

Passengers on the cruise that left from Seattle said they were stunned.

According to the Coast Guard, the incident was the first in at least three years that someone had went overboard on an Alaskan cruise.

The captain of the Celebrity Solstice reported the woman missing at 3 a.m. Tuesday.

“It was early in the morning and the ship came to a complete stop and the Coast Guard was flying around,” passenger Natasha Nelson Stubbs said.

Stubbs was one of the many passengers who were jolted awake when the ship made a sudden stop.

Coast Guard members said they spent the next nine hours searching for the missing passenger, but she was not found. That, coupled with an estimated survival time of 6.19 hours in the water, led the Coast Guard to suspend the search.

“What you’re going to experience in cold water like that is cold water shock, which basically causes a heart attack,” Coast Guard Petty Officer Ally Blackburn said.

According to investigators, the ship’s security cameras caught the moment the victim fell into the water.

“(It’s) very sad and very tragic that something like this would happen when everyone’s having such a good time,” Stubbs said.

It’s not yet known how she fell overboard.

“My family and I all sat around and said, ‘Who did we see? Did we see anyone alone? Who was this?’” Stubbs said.

Investigators said the woman who fell into the water is in her 40s. Her identity and where she is from have not been released.

The Celebrity Solstice ended up continuing its journey.

The ship will dock in Seattle on Friday.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.

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Royal caribbean passenger survives after falling overboard from 10th deck.

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A woman fell overboard from the 10th deck of a Royal Caribbean cruise ship Sunday and survived following a dramatic hour-long rescue in front of concerned passengers.

The unnamed 42-year-old passenger of the Mariner of the Seas plunged into the water roughly 27 nautical miles south of Punta Cana at about 5:44 p.m., the US Coast Guard said in a statement.

Cruise ship crewmembers launched a small rescue boat and were able to locate her in the vast ocean and safely bring her back on board, according to the statement.

The woman, a US resident, was unscathed and required no medical attention, though she was later brought to the hospital for an evaluation.

“The ship and crew immediately reported the incident to local authorities and began searching for the guest,” Royal Caribbean said in a statement to Fox35. “Thankfully, the guest was successfully recovered and was brought on board.”

Many passengers aboard the cruise ship said they had expected the worst as they watched the scene unfold from their balconies, Fox35 reported.

They found her. Can’t believe and she is alive and well. People were out spotting and yelling that they saw her. Crew was on the spot in minutes pic.twitter.com/zRqqTL3rwc — Matt Kuhn (@matthew_kuhn) June 25, 2023

“After we saw the life rafts or the life preservers and the smoke — I was like, someone just died,” Matthew Kuhn told the outlet.

Kuhn was vacationing on the ship with his family when he spotted the commotion and heard the ship captain make an announcement that they had “reports of a person overboard.”

“I think it was amazing to see everyone was on their balcony,” he said. “Everyone was trying to help, and the crew was very receptive to everyone.”

When the woman was plucked from the water by the rescue crew, passengers back on the main ship began cheering, according to the outlet.

“To go from, ‘She’s probably not going to be found’ — and … it’s a body recovery, versus ‘Holy crap, they found her, and she’s alive!'” Kuhn told the station of the emotional roller coaster.

Statistically, Kuhn was not wrong to believe his first thoughts.

Just 28% of cruise ship passengers who fall overboard are safely rescued, according to a Cruise Lines International Association report that tracked operational incidents from 2009 to 2019.

“When they found her, it was like — people were relieved,” Kuhn said. “There was just a sense of, ‘OKAY, cool. No one died on our cruise.’”

The ship continued on its journey following the successful rescue and is set to return to Port Canaveral on July 1.

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‘They found her!’: Witness describes rescue of woman who fell overboard on Royal Caribbean ship

Passenger found alive after going overboard.

A passenger who went overboard while on a cruise ship was safely rescued.It happened on Sunday aboard Royal Caribbean’s Mariner of the Seas, and people on board say the entire rescue took about 45 minutes.

ORLANDO, Fla. - A passenger who went overboard while on a cruise ship was safely rescued.

It happened on Sunday aboard Royal Caribbean’s Mariner of the Seas , and people on board say the entire rescue took about 45 minutes. Numerous cruisers watched from their balcony, and some are shocked the mission was a rescue and not a body recovery.

Passengers were outside on their balconies with binoculars trying to find the person in the water. 

"We did have reports of a person overboard," said the ship’s captain over an announcement in a video sent to FOX 35 News.

The cruise turned into a crisis for passengers enjoying a vacation on the water.

"After we saw the life rafts or the life preservers and the smoke – I was like, someone just died," said Matthew Kuhn who’s on the cruise with his family.

He watched the ordeal unfold from his balcony after checking on his family to make sure his kids were safe.

"I think it was amazing to see everyone was on their balcony. Everyone was trying to help, and the crew was very receptive to everyone," he added.

Boats searched the seas and ended up finding the missing person still alive who the U.S. Coast Guard identified as a 42-year-old U.S. citizen. The Coast Guard shared a statement on the rescue with FOX 35.

"Coast Guard watchstanders at Sector San Juan received a report from the Cruise Ship Mariner of the Seas at approximately 5:44 p.m. Sunday that the ship’s crew had rescued a female passenger, 42, U.S. citizen, who had gone overboard.," the statement read. "The cruise ship was transiting approximately 27 nautical miles south of Punta Cana, Dominican Republic when the incident occurred and was en route to Willemstad, Curaçao."

The passenger was recovered alive and reported to be in good health, after reportedly falling into the water from the tenth deck of the ship, the Coast Guard said. 

A passenger was rescued after falling off Royal Caribbean’s Mariner of the Seas. [Credit: Matthew Kuhn]

"No medical evacuation of the passenger was requested by the cruise ship. The passenger was being kept on the cruise ship’s medical facility and later transferred to the Hospital in Willemstad, Curacao for evaluation. The Coast Guard is investigating the circumstances that led to the passenger going overboard."

Since the person had already been recovered by the cruise ship, no Coast Guard assets were utilized. 

"To go from, ‘She’s probably not going to be found,’ – and… it’s a body recovery, versus 'Holy crap, they found her, and she’s alive!," Kuhn added.

Royal Caribbean tells FOX 35 in a statement,  "The ship and crew immediately reported the incident to local authorities and began searching for the guest. Thankfully, the guest was successfully recovered and was brought on board. Our care team is now offering assistance and support to them and their traveling party."

Data from a Cruise Lines International Association report on operational incidents from 2009 to 2019 shows only 28% of people who go overboard are safely rescued, the cruise line added.

The whole mood, even the cruise director, was – you could tell it was very somber for a brief time," he said. "When they found her, it was like – people were relieved. There was just a sense of, ‘OKAY, cool. No one died on our cruise.’"

When the boats lifted her back to safety, passengers on board started cheering, and the cruise continued its journey to its next destination. The ship is set to return to Port Canaveral on July 1.

Watch CBS News

Woman dies after going overboard on cruise ship returning to Florida

By Caitlin O'Kane

December 15, 2022 / 11:51 AM EST / CBS News

A woman died after going overboard on a cruise ship early Thursday morning. The 36-year-old was on the MSC Meraviglia, which was about 18 miles off of Port Canaveral, Florida when she fell into the sea, the Coast Guard told CBS News. 

The cruise ship was scheduled to return to Port Canaveral that morning. 

The Coast Guard launched a rescue crew by boat and helicopter and located the woman's body at around 7:30 a.m. 

"Our deepest sympathies go out to the family during this extremely difficult time and we ask for discretion as we notify the family of this tragedy," a spokesperson for the U.S. Coast Guard Public Affairs Detachment in Jacksonville, Florida, said in a statement.

#BREAKING : A 36-year-old woman's body was recovered from the water approximately 18 miles offshore #PortCanaveral Thursday morning after she went overboard the cruise ship Meraviglia. The cause of the incident is under investigation. — USCGSoutheast (@USCGSoutheast) December 15, 2022

The cause of the incident is under investigation, the spokesperson said. 

The MSC Meraviglia later docked at Port Canaveral, according to CBS Orlando.  CBS News has reached out to the cruise line for information and is awaiting a response.

A photographer for ABC affiliate WFTV was on the ship , which was returning from the Bahamas, and said emergency notifications were made over the ship's loudspeaker. The ship was held in the water and passenger and crew gathered on the deck, the station reports. 

Last month, the Coast Guard rescued a man who went overboard on the Carnival Valor. He treaded water for more than 15 hours and was near death when they rescued him about 20 miles south of Southwest Pass, Louisiana.

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Caitlin O'Kane is a New York City journalist who works on the CBS News social media team as a eenior manager of content and production. She writes about a variety of topics and produces "The Uplift," CBS News' streaming show that focuses on good news.

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Passenger falls overboard on Royal Caribbean cruise hours after a woman dies on ship

Quantum of the seas was on a 15-day trip from australia to hawaii when the passenger fell overboard, article bookmarked.

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A passenger aboard a Royal Caribbean cruise ship travelling from Australia to Hawaii is missing after falling overboard, Royal Caribbean International confirmed to The Independent .

The passenger, a person from Australia, went overboard on Tuesday, 25 April, around 11 pm Hawaii-Aleutian standard time while sailing on the Royal Caribbean’s Quantum of the Seas.

The incident occurred just hours after another passenger allegedly died, according to a report from a local news outlet, 7News.

The ship departed from Brisbane, Australia on 12 April and is expected to arrive in Honolulu, Hawaii, on Friday, 28 April.

But approximately 500 nautical miles south of Kailua Kona, Big Island, the passenger somehow went overboard leading the ship to spend two hours searching for the missing person, according to a press release from the US Coast Guard.

“The ship’s crew immediately launched a search and rescue operation and is working closely with local authorities,” Royal Caribbean International said.

On Facebook, a passenger aboard the ship named Joshua Reynolds, posted a photo of the ship’s crew deploying a lifeboat and said there were three medical emergencies before the passenger fell overboard.

“Three medical emergencies and now a man overboard. We have slowed down and are now turning around. Hope they are found,” Mr Reynolds wrote.

Royal Caribbean did not confirm the details of the other medical emergencies, or the other passenger’s death, but one man claimed the passenger who died was the partner of the person who went overboard according to The Sydney Morning Herald.

Royal Caribbean told The Sydney Morning Herald that was not the case.

The Independent has reached out to Royal Caribbean regarding the alleged death.

According to the US Coast Guard, the crew on Quantum of the Seas contacted the Joint Rescue Coordination Center in Honolulu to assist in the search and rescue.

After two hours of searching, the ship ceased searches and handed it over to the Coast Guard.

Mr Reynolds wrote on Facebook : “It was pitch black. They had tossed half a dozen life vests in the water with the automatic beacons. Nothing. The seas weren’t very pleasant. One of the guys on the 15 ft rescue boat looked like he got sick.”

The Coast Guard said they spent six hours searching for the missing passenger but did not find them. They said their search was to continue at “first light Thursday morning.”

It is unclear how the man fell overboard.

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Woman, 36, Found Dead After Falling from Cruise Ship Off the Florida Coast

The 36-year-old woman was found 18 miles from the shore of Florida's Port Canaveral, the U.S. Coast Guard announced

The body of a 36-year-old woman who fell from a cruise ship was recovered on Thursday morning off the coast of Florida.

According to the U.S. Coast Guard , the woman's body was recovered about 18 miles from the shore of Port Canaveral after she went overboard from the cruise ship MSC Meraviglia.

The ship is owned and operated by MSC Cruises, per NBC News .

The Coast Guard did not disclose the woman's identity or how she fell from the ship. CBS News reported that the Coast Guard recovered the woman's body at around 7:30 a.m.

In a statement to PEOPLE, MSC Cruises said they are working with authorities to investigate the incident.

"Early this morning, MSC Meraviglia's advanced detection systems alerted our crew to a passenger overboard while the ship was sailing to Port Canaveral," the company said. "The crew performed an immediate search and rescue operation, alongside the US Coast Guard who supported search efforts with boats and a helicopter."

"Unfortunately, despite the rapid rescue operation, the passenger sustained fatal injuries," the statement continued. "We are offering our full support to authorities as they investigate this matter. We are deeply saddened by this incident and offer our sincerest condolences to the family and those affected."

At the time of the incident, the ship was returning from the Bahamas, WFTV reported.

Footage published by the news station appeared to show dozens of passengers peering over the ship's edge to look for the woman. The video seemed to have been filmed late at night or early morning.

RELATED VIDEO: Carnival Cruise Ship Catches Fire During Visit to Turks and Caicos Islands

"Our deepest sympathies go out to the family during this extremely difficult time and we ask for discretion as we notify the family of this tragedy," a spokesperson for the U.S. Coast Guard Public Affairs Detachment in Jacksonville, Florida, told CBS News in a statement.

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In November, dad James Michael Grimes fell from a Carnival cruise ship in the Gulf of Mexico. The 28-year-old survived by treading water for nearly 18 hours.

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Woman falls overboard from Carnival cruise ship off Mexico

A woman fell off a Carnival Cruise Line ship balcony and into the Pacific Ocean early Saturday, spurring an international search effort.

The incident, which happened shortly after 3 a.m. aboard a Carnival Miracle ship near Ensenada, Mexico, was captured on security video, the U.S. Coast Guard said. Passengers were notified shortly after, said Josh Zufelt, a passenger.

The ship came to a near-complete stop around 3:30 a.m. as crew members dropped a lifeboat into the water, Zufelt said.

Coast Guard crews are working with members of the Mexican navy to find the woman, who appeared to be in her 20s.

Carnival Cruise Line said the ship was released after having assisted with the search and continued on to Ensenada, about a 90-minute drive from the U.S. border.

"Our thoughts are with the guest and her family, and our Care Team is providing support," Carnival said in a statement.

The ship was to return to Long Beach as scheduled Sunday morning, the cruise line said.

According to the company's website, the Carnival Miracle accommodates more than 2,100 guests and 934 crew members. It sails from Long Beach, San Diego and San Francisco to Alaska, Hawaii and Mexico. Trips are two to more than 10 days.

Alicia Victoria Lozano is a California-based reporter for NBC News focusing on climate change, wildfires and the changing politics of drug laws.

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Search ends for woman who fell from cruise ship in Alaska

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — The U.S. Coast Guard has suspended the search for a 40-year-old woman who fell overboard off a cruise ship in Alaska’s Inside Passage.

The Coast Guard ended the effort Tuesday after searching for the woman for about nine hours, Coast Guard Petty Office Ali Blackburn said. The search was conducted by boat and a helicopter in the waters near Eldred Rock in Lynn Canal, which is about 20 miles (30 kilometers) west of the state capital, Juneau.

The captain of the cruise ship Celebrity Solstice reported the missing woman at 3 a.m. Tuesday, the Coast Guard said. Her name has not been released.

“Because of the searching that we've done, it has yielded negative results," Blackburn said. That, coupled with an estimated survival time of 6.19 hours in the water, led the Coasts Guard to suspend the search, she said.

The survival time was based on factors like water and air temperatures and the person's age. The air temperature in Juneau was 51 degrees Fahrenheit (10.56 degrees Celsius) Tuesday afternoon, and the National Weather Service said the water temperature was 41 degrees Fahrenheit (5 degrees Celsius) .

The Inside Passage is the historic north and south route that cruise ships and Alaska state ferries follow through the waters of southeast Alaska and British Columbia.

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Body of woman who fell overboard from Pacific Explorer cruise ship found off Cape Jaffa

The body of a young   woman who fell overboard from a cruise ship last night has been found off South Australia's south-east coast, authorities say.

Key points:

• A woman fell overboard from a cruise ship off SA's south-east coast
• The alert was raised around 11:30pm on Tuesday
• The 23-year-old's body was found by a rescue helicopter about 7am

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority said a plane and two rescue helicopters conducted the search throughout the night about 45km off the coast of Cape Jaffa.

The body of a 23-year-old woman was found by one of the rescue helicopters on Wednesday morning at around 7am and was taken to the Mount Gambier hospital for identification.

The woman was on the Pacific Explorer cruise ship off the coast of Cape Jaffa, in South Australia's south-east.

Cruise company Carnival Australia had previously said the young woman, who was travelling with a family member, fell overboard around 11:30pm Tuesday night.

The P&O cruise ship left Melbourne on Tuesday and had been heading for Kangaroo Island.

It had remained off the coast of Cape Jaffa to assist with the search.

The Australian Maritime Safety Authority's duty manager Dan Gillis said the body was found within a search area of 55 square nautical miles, about 45 kilometres west of Cape Jaffa.

Mr Gillis said weather conditions overnight were "extremely poor".

"There was about 25 knots of wind, around about 4 metre swells running — it was very poor search conditions," he told ABC Radio Adelaide.

Mr Gillis said the woman's body was being taken back to Adelaide by helicopter.

Distressing time for other passengers

Deb Vucetic, 61, a passenger on board the ship travelling with her sister, said she had "quite a sickening feeling" when she heard late Tuesday night that someone had fallen into the rough sea.

"The boat was literally swaying from side to side," she said.

"It is so rough and all my sister and I could think is 'no way anyone could survive that'."

It was Ms Vucetic's first — and probably last — cruise.

"I won't be going on another cruise ever, maybe," she said.

"My sister hardly slept last night; she was actually out on the deck reading, having a bit of a rest.

"She couldn't sleep just thinking of the girl in the water."

Support for family member on board

In a statement, Carnival Australia thanked "all involved who supported this distressing and challenging search operation".

"This tragic discovery comes after an overnight search and rescue operation," the spokesperson said.

"We continue to provide care and assistance to the family member this guest was travelling with and extend our deepest condolences to their loved ones."

The spokesperson said the remaining guests and crew were "deeply impacted".

"Relevant authorities have been advised and we will continue to work with them and provide any assistance required," the spokesperson said.

SA Police said the ship was now returning to Port Melbourne and Victoria Police would be conducting an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the death.

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Coast Guard Suspends Search for Passenger Who Fell From Cruise Ship

The U.S. Coast Guard said on Sunday that it halted its search for a woman who went overboard from a Carnival cruise ship near Ensenada, Mexico.

By Johnny Diaz

The U.S. Coast Guard suspended a 31-hour search for a passenger who fell off a cruise ship near Mexico, the authorities said on Sunday.

The woman, who was not immediately identified, was aboard a Carnival cruise ship when she fell on Saturday morning “from the balcony of her stateroom,” Carnival Cruise Line said in a statement. The company said the ship had been on a three-day cruise to Ensenada, Mexico, and the Coast Guard said the woman fell near there.

Carnival did not provide further details of how the woman fell overboard.

On Saturday, the Coast Guard said that it had deployed a cutter called the Forrest Rednour as well as a helicopter, and that it was working with Mexico’s Navy to find the woman.

Crews started searching early in the morning on Saturday and into Sunday, the Coast Guard said. It led a search of about 520 square nautical miles, it said.

One passenger told a California news station, KABC-TV , that he heard someone say, “Man overboard, man overboard port side” on the ship’s speakers. He said that when he looked over the balcony of his room, he saw crew members tossing life preservers into the water.

Daniel Miranda, another passenger, told the station that cruise officials said that they had “verified through the cameras” that a woman had fallen into the water. A photo he took, broadcast by the station, also showed that the area of the ship where the woman fell had been cordoned off with blue tape.

After more than 31 hours scouring the area, the Coast Guard said on Sunday that it had suspended its search “pending additional information.”

The cruise company said in its statement that after assisting the Coast Guard, its ship had returned to Long Beach, Calif., as scheduled on Dec. 12. “Our thoughts are with the guest and her family, and our Care Team is providing support,” the company said.

In California, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents went to the ship “with an evidence response team” to assist in the case, a spokeswoman for the bureau said on Monday.

It is increasingly uncommon for passengers to fall from cruise ships, according to Carolyn Spencer Brown, who has covered the cruise industry for about 25 years, currently as chief content officer of Cruise Media LLC.

“It’s becoming much more uncommon than it was 20 years ago,” she said, citing the “increasingly sophisticated design specifications” that have prioritized safety on ships.

“They are designed to keep you safe,” she continued. “You really don’t hear about it very often, and when it happens, typically there are other factors involved.”

In 2010, Congress passed the Cruise Vessel Security and Safety Act , which required ships be equipped with rails no shorter than 42 inches above the deck, and with alarms and other technology to help signal and find passengers who go overboard.

In 2018 and 2019, 26 and 29 people fell overboard from cruise and ferry ships, according to Cruisejunkie.com , which lists cases reported by the news media, including those involving people who jumped. In 2020 and 2021, when far fewer passengers took cruises because of the pandemic, the site recorded three incidents.

Ross A. Klein, who tracks the cases of people who fall overboard on his website, Cruisejunkie.com, wrote in a June 2019 report that information on people who fall overboard is limited “as cases may not be publicly reported.”

Falls overboard could involve intoxication, accidents or deliberate jumps, Mr. Klein’s report said, but he warned there was reason to be cautious with labels because of the lack of information.

“Alcohol intoxication is known in only a small percentage of cases, largely because there is no systematic reporting of persons overboard, and no accounting of behavior prior to a disappearance (such as alcohol consumption),” the report said.

Asked about how many people have fallen overboard from Carnival ships in recent years, a spokeswoman for the company said she did not have any further information other than the statement about this weekend’s search.

The ship traveling to Ensenada this weekend, the Carnival Miracle, debuted in 2004 and can accommodate more than 2,100 guests and 934 crew members, according to the company.

Johnny Diaz is a general assignment reporter covering breaking news. He previously worked for the South Florida Sun Sentinel and The Boston Globe. More about Johnny Diaz

Passenger dies after jumping off world’s largest cruise ship as it sets sail from Florida

A passenger has died after jumping overboard from the world ’s largest cruise ship after it set sail from Florida .

The male passenger, who has not been identified, reportedly jumped, according to the New York Post , from the 20-deck high Icon of the Seas after it left a Florida port on Sunday to embark on a seven-day cruise around the Caribbean , first stopping in Honduras.

The Coast Guard , who said they did not have much involvement in the incident beyond assisting in the search for the man, told the New York Post that “the cruise ship deployed one of their rescue boats, located the man, and brought him back aboard”.

The man has since been “pronounced deceased,” the Coast Guard added.

The world’s largest cruise experience was approximately 300 miles away from PortMiami, and around 30 to 40 miles north of Santa Lucia, Cuba, at the time of the incident, which occurred in the morning, according to Cruise Hive.

The Royal Caribbean, which operates the Icon of the Seas along with other groundbreakingly large cruise ships, told the outlet in a statement that their ship’s crew immediately notified the Coast Guard in the US and “launched a search and rescue operation”.

“Our care team is actively providing support and assistance to the guest’s loved ones during this difficult time,” the cruise company added. “For the privacy of the guest and their family, we have no additional details to share.“

The ship, which holds way over 5,000 guests and only made its maiden voyage in January of this year, had embarked on the cruise on Saturday, but after the incident on Sunday, the cruise halted and stayed put for around two hours while the search continued, the outlet said.

According to CruiseMapper tracking data, the Icon of the Seas is due to reach the port of Costa Maya, Mexico by noon on Tuesday.

The incident comes over a month after a similar tragedy on another Royal Caribbean cruise ship, the Liberty of the Seas when a 20-year-old man identified as Levion Parker is thought to have gone overboard during a trip around the Bahamas.

The cruise line immediately launched a search and rescue mission along with the US Coast Guard, but it was suspended after five days due to not being able to find him.

However, the cruise company has also witnessed some successful rescues in recent months, such as being able to recover a passenger who fell overboard from the Symphony of the Seas back in October.

The cruise, which had just left Barcelona at the time, said the guest was successfully brought back on board after falling shortly after it left the port.

The Independent has contacted Royal Caribbean for comment.

If you are experiencing feelings of distress, or are struggling to cope, you can speak to the Samaritans, in confidence, on 116 123 (UK and ROI), email [email protected], or visit the Samaritans website to find details of your nearest branch. If you are based in the USA, and you or someone you know needs mental health assistance right now, call or text 988, or visit 988lifeline.org to access online chat from the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. This is a free, confidential crisis hotline that is available to everyone 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If you are in another country, you can go to www.befrienders.org to find a helpline near you.

The Independent is the world’s most free-thinking news brand, providing global news, commentary and analysis for the independently-minded. We have grown a huge, global readership of independently minded individuals, who value our trusted voice and commitment to positive change. Our mission, making change happen, has never been as important as it is today.

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Moment woman gets stuck mid-waterslide on cruise is triggering people's claustrophobia

People were horrified by the 'nightmare' slide on a norwegian cruise lines ship.

Do you ever miss the days that your every moment wasn't captured by some camera and then plastered across the internet for everyone to see?

Nah, me neither, it's more fun this way.

Once upon a time a video of a woman appearing to get stuck in a slide would be caught on the family camcorder that your dad wouldn't have let anyone else use and be played maybe once or twice for the amusement of friends and relatives.

These days it can wind up online and be enjoyed by millions around the world, and now you know all about it too.

Back in 2022, TikToker Paige Hodgson posted a video of her mum zooming around a waterslide on a Norwegian Cruise Lines ship named Bliss, which was off the coast of Mexico at the time.

She was doing fine, right up until the point where her momentum gave out and gravity kicked back in.

Her mum was dragged back down to a lower part of the slide which was dangling over the side of the cruise ship before a blast of water pushed her forwards again, though not enough to propel her further up the tube.

"How long do you think she was stuck?" Paige asked her TikTok followers, but many of them seemed more worried about the claustrophobia of being stuck in a plastic tube hanging over the side of a cruise ship.

One person described it as 'my kind of nightmare' and wondered how the woman got out of the waterslide.

Someone else said 'my claustrophobia would get claustrophobic', and a third bemoaned 'the anxiety I'm getting for just watching'.

Another said it was 'so triggering' to watch the video as they'd gone through the same thing, but they did explain that the slide has an emergency escape hatch which people can use to get out.

Considering the woman would have had to make a gravity-defying turn to continue along her way it was lucky that plenty of people were saying this waterslide had a way out for people who lost momentum part-way.

At least you'd hope that was the case and they weren't just making it up for internet points.

Some of the commenters said they'd been on this same exact slide and become stuck themselves, with one person admitting they 'got stuck in this exact water slide 5 separate times' and they 'don't know why I kept doing it'.

Among all the people saying they'd have a 'claustrophobic panic attack' there weren't many who said they'd want to go on this slide.

LADbible have contacted Norwegian Cruise Line for comment.

Topics:  Cruise Ship , Travel , TikTok

Joe graduated from the University of Salford with a degree in Journalism and worked for Reach before joining the LADbible Group. When not writing he enjoys the nerdier things in life like painting wargaming miniatures and chatting with other nerds on the internet. He's also spent a few years coaching fencing. Contact him via [email protected]

@ MrJoeHarker

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Crying Myself to Sleep on the Biggest Cruise Ship Ever

Seven agonizing nights aboard the Icon of the Seas

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Updated at 2:44 p.m. ET on April 6, 2024.

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MY FIRST GLIMPSE of Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas, from the window of an approaching Miami cab, brings on a feeling of vertigo, nausea, amazement, and distress. I shut my eyes in defense, as my brain tells my optic nerve to try again.

The ship makes no sense, vertically or horizontally. It makes no sense on sea, or on land, or in outer space. It looks like a hodgepodge of domes and minarets, tubes and canopies, like Istanbul had it been designed by idiots. Vibrant, oversignifying colors are stacked upon other such colors, decks perched over still more decks; the only comfort is a row of lifeboats ringing its perimeter. There is no imposed order, no cogent thought, and, for those who do not harbor a totalitarian sense of gigantomania, no visual mercy. This is the biggest cruise ship ever built, and I have been tasked with witnessing its inaugural voyage.

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“Author embarks on their first cruise-ship voyage” has been a staple of American essay writing for almost three decades, beginning with David Foster Wallace’s “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again,” which was first published in 1996 under the title “Shipping Out.” Since then, many admirable writers have widened and diversified the genre. Usually the essayist commissioned to take to the sea is in their first or second flush of youth and is ready to sharpen their wit against the hull of the offending vessel. I am 51, old and tired, having seen much of the world as a former travel journalist, and mostly what I do in both life and prose is shrug while muttering to my imaginary dachshund, “This too shall pass.” But the Icon of the Seas will not countenance a shrug. The Icon of the Seas is the Linda Loman of cruise ships, exclaiming that attention must be paid. And here I am in late January with my one piece of luggage and useless gray winter jacket and passport, zipping through the Port of Miami en route to the gangway that will separate me from the bulk of North America for more than seven days, ready to pay it in full.

The aforementioned gangway opens up directly onto a thriving mall (I will soon learn it is imperiously called the “Royal Promenade”), presently filled with yapping passengers beneath a ceiling studded with balloons ready to drop. Crew members from every part of the global South, as well as a few Balkans, are shepherding us along while pressing flutes of champagne into our hands. By a humming Starbucks, I drink as many of these as I can and prepare to find my cabin. I show my blue Suite Sky SeaPass Card (more on this later, much more) to a smiling woman from the Philippines, and she tells me to go “aft.” Which is where, now? As someone who has rarely sailed on a vessel grander than the Staten Island Ferry, I am confused. It turns out that the aft is the stern of the ship, or, for those of us who don’t know what a stern or an aft are, its ass. The nose of the ship, responsible for separating the waves before it, is also called a bow, and is marked for passengers as the FWD , or forward. The part of the contemporary sailing vessel where the malls are clustered is called the midship. I trust that you have enjoyed this nautical lesson.

I ascend via elevator to my suite on Deck 11. This is where I encounter my first terrible surprise. My suite windows and balcony do not face the ocean. Instead, they look out onto another shopping mall. This mall is the one that’s called Central Park, perhaps in homage to the Olmsted-designed bit of greenery in the middle of my hometown. Although on land I would be delighted to own a suite with Central Park views, here I am deeply depressed. To sail on a ship and not wake up to a vast blue carpet of ocean? Unthinkable.

Allow me a brief preamble here. The story you are reading was commissioned at a moment when most staterooms on the Icon were sold out. In fact, so enthralled by the prospect of this voyage were hard-core mariners that the ship’s entire inventory of guest rooms (the Icon can accommodate up to 7,600 passengers, but its inaugural journey was reduced to 5,000 or so for a less crowded experience) was almost immediately sold out. Hence, this publication was faced with the shocking prospect of paying nearly $19,000 to procure for this solitary passenger an entire suite—not including drinking expenses—all for the privilege of bringing you this article. But the suite in question doesn’t even have a view of the ocean! I sit down hard on my soft bed. Nineteen thousand dollars for this .

The viewless suite does have its pluses. In addition to all the Malin+Goetz products in my dual bathrooms, I am granted use of a dedicated Suite Deck lounge; access to Coastal Kitchen, a superior restaurant for Suites passengers; complimentary VOOM SM Surf & Stream (“the fastest Internet at Sea”) “for one device per person for the whole cruise duration”; a pair of bathrobes (one of which comes prestained with what looks like a large expectoration by the greenest lizard on Earth); and use of the Grove Suite Sun, an area on Decks 18 and 19 with food and deck chairs reserved exclusively for Suite passengers. I also get reserved seating for a performance of The Wizard of Oz , an ice-skating tribute to the periodic table, and similar provocations. The very color of my Suite Sky SeaPass Card, an oceanic blue as opposed to the cloying royal purple of the standard non-Suite passenger, will soon provoke envy and admiration. But as high as my status may be, there are those on board who have much higher status still, and I will soon learn to bow before them.

In preparation for sailing, I have “priced in,” as they say on Wall Street, the possibility that I may come from a somewhat different monde than many of the other cruisers. Without falling into stereotypes or preconceptions, I prepare myself for a friendly outspokenness on the part of my fellow seafarers that may not comply with modern DEI standards. I believe in meeting people halfway, and so the day before flying down to Miami, I visited what remains of Little Italy to purchase a popular T-shirt that reads DADDY’S LITTLE MEATBALL across the breast in the colors of the Italian flag. My wife recommended that I bring one of my many T-shirts featuring Snoopy and the Peanuts gang, as all Americans love the beagle and his friends. But I naively thought that my meatball T-shirt would be more suitable for conversation-starting. “Oh, and who is your ‘daddy’?” some might ask upon seeing it. “And how long have you been his ‘little meatball’?” And so on.

I put on my meatball T-shirt and head for one of the dining rooms to get a late lunch. In the elevator, I stick out my chest for all to read the funny legend upon it, but soon I realize that despite its burnished tricolor letters, no one takes note. More to the point, no one takes note of me. Despite my attempts at bridge building, the very sight of me (small, ethnic, without a cap bearing the name of a football team) elicits no reaction from other passengers. Most often, they will small-talk over me as if I don’t exist. This brings to mind the travails of David Foster Wallace , who felt so ostracized by his fellow passengers that he retreated to his cabin for much of his voyage. And Wallace was raised primarily in the Midwest and was a much larger, more American-looking meatball than I am. If he couldn’t talk to these people, how will I? What if I leave this ship without making any friends at all, despite my T-shirt? I am a social creature, and the prospect of seven days alone and apart is saddening. Wallace’s stateroom, at least, had a view of the ocean, a kind of cheap eternity.

Worse awaits me in the dining room. This is a large, multichandeliered room where I attended my safety training (I was shown how to put on a flotation vest; it is a very simple procedure). But the maître d’ politely refuses me entry in an English that seems to verge on another language. “I’m sorry, this is only for pendejos ,” he seems to be saying. I push back politely and he repeats himself. Pendejos ? Piranhas? There’s some kind of P-word to which I am not attuned. Meanwhile elderly passengers stream right past, powered by their limbs, walkers, and electric wheelchairs. “It is only pendejo dining today, sir.” “But I have a suite!” I say, already starting to catch on to the ship’s class system. He examines my card again. “But you are not a pendejo ,” he confirms. I am wearing a DADDY’S LITTLE MEATBALL T-shirt, I want to say to him. I am the essence of pendejo .

Eventually, I give up and head to the plebeian buffet on Deck 15, which has an aquatic-styled name I have now forgotten. Before gaining entry to this endless cornucopia of reheated food, one passes a washing station of many sinks and soap dispensers, and perhaps the most intriguing character on the entire ship. He is Mr. Washy Washy—or, according to his name tag, Nielbert of the Philippines—and he is dressed as a taco (on other occasions, I’ll see him dressed as a burger). Mr. Washy Washy performs an eponymous song in spirited, indeed flamboyant English: “Washy, washy, wash your hands, WASHY WASHY!” The dangers of norovirus and COVID on a cruise ship this size (a giant fellow ship was stricken with the former right after my voyage) makes Mr. Washy Washy an essential member of the crew. The problem lies with the food at the end of Washy’s rainbow. The buffet is groaning with what sounds like sophisticated dishes—marinated octopus, boiled egg with anchovy, chorizo, lobster claws—but every animal tastes tragically the same, as if there was only one creature available at the market, a “cruisipus” bred specifically for Royal Caribbean dining. The “vegetables” are no better. I pick up a tomato slice and look right through it. It tastes like cellophane. I sit alone, apart from the couples and parents with gaggles of children, as “We Are Family” echoes across the buffet space.

I may have failed to mention that all this time, the Icon of the Seas has not left port. As the fiery mango of the subtropical setting sun makes Miami’s condo skyline even more apocalyptic, the ship shoves off beneath a perfunctory display of fireworks. After the sun sets, in the far, dark distance, another circus-lit cruise ship ruptures the waves before us. We glance at it with pity, because it is by definition a smaller ship than our own. I am on Deck 15, outside the buffet and overlooking a bunch of pools (the Icon has seven of them), drinking a frilly drink that I got from one of the bars (the Icon has 15 of them), still too shy to speak to anyone, despite Sister Sledge’s assertion that all on the ship are somehow related.

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The ship’s passage away from Ron DeSantis’s Florida provides no frisson, no sense of developing “sea legs,” as the ship is too large to register the presence of waves unless a mighty wind adds significant chop. It is time for me to register the presence of the 5,000 passengers around me, even if they refuse to register mine. My fellow travelers have prepared for this trip with personally decorated T-shirts celebrating the importance of this voyage. The simplest ones say ICON INAUGURAL ’24 on the back and the family name on the front. Others attest to an over-the-top love of cruise ships: WARNING! MAY START TALKING ABOUT CRUISING . Still others are artisanally designed and celebrate lifetimes spent married while cruising (on ships, of course). A couple possibly in their 90s are wearing shirts whose backs feature a drawing of a cruise liner, two flamingos with ostensibly male and female characteristics, and the legend “ HUSBAND AND WIFE Cruising Partners FOR LIFE WE MAY NOT HAVE IT All Together BUT TOGETHER WE HAVE IT ALL .” (The words not in all caps have been written in cursive.) A real journalist or a more intrepid conversationalist would have gone up to the couple and asked them to explain the longevity of their marriage vis-à-vis their love of cruising. But instead I head to my mall suite, take off my meatball T-shirt, and allow the first tears of the cruise to roll down my cheeks slowly enough that I briefly fall asleep amid the moisture and salt.

I WAKE UP with a hangover. Oh God. Right. I cannot believe all of that happened last night. A name floats into my cobwebbed, nauseated brain: “Ayn Rand.” Jesus Christ.

I breakfast alone at the Coastal Kitchen. The coffee tastes fine and the eggs came out of a bird. The ship rolls slightly this morning; I can feel it in my thighs and my schlong, the parts of me that are most receptive to danger.

I had a dangerous conversation last night. After the sun set and we were at least 50 miles from shore (most modern cruise ships sail at about 23 miles an hour), I lay in bed softly hiccupping, my arms stretched out exactly like Jesus on the cross, the sound of the distant waves missing from my mall-facing suite, replaced by the hum of air-conditioning and children shouting in Spanish through the vents of my two bathrooms. I decided this passivity was unacceptable. As an immigrant, I feel duty-bound to complete the tasks I am paid for, which means reaching out and trying to understand my fellow cruisers. So I put on a normal James Perse T-shirt and headed for one of the bars on the Royal Promenade—the Schooner Bar, it was called, if memory serves correctly.

I sat at the bar for a martini and two Negronis. An old man with thick, hairy forearms drank next to me, very silent and Hemingwaylike, while a dreadlocked piano player tinkled out a series of excellent Elton John covers. To my right, a young white couple—he in floral shorts, she in a light, summery miniskirt with a fearsome diamond ring, neither of them in football regalia—chatted with an elderly couple. Do it , I commanded myself. Open your mouth. Speak! Speak without being spoken to. Initiate. A sentence fragment caught my ear from the young woman, “Cherry Hill.” This is a suburb of Philadelphia in New Jersey, and I had once been there for a reading at a synagogue. “Excuse me,” I said gently to her. “Did you just mention Cherry Hill? It’s a lovely place.”

As it turned out, the couple now lived in Fort Lauderdale (the number of Floridians on the cruise surprised me, given that Southern Florida is itself a kind of cruise ship, albeit one slowly sinking), but soon they were talking with me exclusively—the man potbellied, with a chin like a hard-boiled egg; the woman as svelte as if she were one of the many Ukrainian members of the crew—the elderly couple next to them forgotten. This felt as groundbreaking as the first time I dared to address an American in his native tongue, as a child on a bus in Queens (“On my foot you are standing, Mister”).

“I don’t want to talk politics,” the man said. “But they’re going to eighty-six Biden and put Michelle in.”

I considered the contradictions of his opening conversational gambit, but decided to play along. “People like Michelle,” I said, testing the waters. The husband sneered, but the wife charitably put forward that the former first lady was “more personable” than Joe Biden. “They’re gonna eighty-six Biden,” the husband repeated. “He can’t put a sentence together.”

After I mentioned that I was a writer—though I presented myself as a writer of teleplays instead of novels and articles such as this one—the husband told me his favorite writer was Ayn Rand. “Ayn Rand, she came here with nothing,” the husband said. “I work with a lot of Cubans, so …” I wondered if I should mention what I usually do to ingratiate myself with Republicans or libertarians: the fact that my finances improved after pass-through corporations were taxed differently under Donald Trump. Instead, I ordered another drink and the couple did the same, and I told him that Rand and I were born in the same city, St. Petersburg/Leningrad, and that my family also came here with nothing. Now the bonding and drinking began in earnest, and several more rounds appeared. Until it all fell apart.

Read: Gary Shteyngart on watching Russian television for five days straight

My new friend, whom I will refer to as Ayn, called out to a buddy of his across the bar, and suddenly a young couple, both covered in tattoos, appeared next to us. “He fucking punked me,” Ayn’s frat-boy-like friend called out as he put his arm around Ayn, while his sizable partner sizzled up to Mrs. Rand. Both of them had a look I have never seen on land—their eyes projecting absence and enmity in equal measure. In the ’90s, I drank with Russian soldiers fresh from Chechnya and wandered the streets of wartime Zagreb, but I have never seen such undisguised hostility toward both me and perhaps the universe at large. I was briefly introduced to this psychopathic pair, but neither of them wanted to have anything to do with me, and the tattooed woman would not even reveal her Christian name to me (she pretended to have the same first name as Mrs. Rand). To impress his tattooed friends, Ayn made fun of the fact that as a television writer, I’d worked on the series Succession (which, it would turn out, practically nobody on the ship had watched), instead of the far more palatable, in his eyes, zombie drama of last year. And then my new friends drifted away from me into an angry private conversation—“He punked me!”—as I ordered another drink for myself, scared of the dead-eyed arrivals whose gaze never registered in the dim wattage of the Schooner Bar, whose terrifying voices and hollow laughs grated like unoiled gears against the crooning of “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.”

But today is a new day for me and my hangover. After breakfast, I explore the ship’s so-called neighborhoods . There’s the AquaDome, where one can find a food hall and an acrobatic sound-and-light aquatic show. Central Park has a premium steak house, a sushi joint, and a used Rolex that can be bought for $8,000 on land here proudly offered at $17,000. There’s the aforementioned Royal Promenade, where I had drunk with the Rands, and where a pair of dueling pianos duel well into the night. There’s Surfside, a kids’ neighborhood full of sugary garbage, which looks out onto the frothy trail that the behemoth leaves behind itself. Thrill Island refers to the collection of tubes that clutter the ass of the ship and offer passengers six waterslides and a surfing simulation. There’s the Hideaway, an adult zone that plays music from a vomit-slathered, Brit-filled Alicante nightclub circa 1996 and proves a big favorite with groups of young Latin American customers. And, most hurtfully, there’s the Suite Neighborhood.

I say hurtfully because as a Suite passenger I should be here, though my particular suite is far from the others. Whereas I am stuck amid the riffraff of Deck 11, this section is on the highborn Decks 16 and 17, and in passing, I peek into the spacious, tall-ceilinged staterooms from the hallway, dazzled by the glint of the waves and sun. For $75,000, one multifloor suite even comes with its own slide between floors, so that a family may enjoy this particular terror in private. There is a quiet splendor to the Suite Neighborhood. I see fewer stickers and signs and drawings than in my own neighborhood—for example, MIKE AND DIANA PROUDLY SERVED U.S. MARINE CORPS RETIRED . No one here needs to announce their branch of service or rank; they are simply Suites, and this is where they belong. Once again, despite my hard work and perseverance, I have been disallowed from the true American elite. Once again, I am “Not our class, dear.” I am reminded of watching The Love Boat on my grandmother’s Zenith, which either was given to her or we found in the trash (I get our many malfunctioning Zeniths confused) and whose tube got so hot, I would put little chunks of government cheese on a thin tissue atop it to give our welfare treat a pleasant, Reagan-era gooeyness. I could not understand English well enough then to catch the nuances of that seafaring program, but I knew that there were differences in the status of the passengers, and that sometimes those differences made them sad. Still, this ship, this plenty—every few steps, there are complimentary nachos or milkshakes or gyros on offer—was the fatty fuel of my childhood dreams. If only I had remained a child.

I walk around the outdoor decks looking for company. There is a middle-aged African American couple who always seem to be asleep in each other’s arms, probably exhausted from the late capitalism they regularly encounter on land. There is far more diversity on this ship than I expected. Many couples are a testament to Loving v. Virginia , and there is a large group of folks whose T-shirts read MELANIN AT SEA / IT’S THE MELANIN FOR ME . I smile when I see them, but then some young kids from the group makes Mr. Washy Washy do a cruel, caricatured “Burger Dance” (today he is in his burger getup), and I think, Well, so much for intersectionality .

At the infinity pool on Deck 17, I spot some elderly women who could be ethnic and from my part of the world, and so I jump in. I am proved correct! Many of them seem to be originally from Queens (“Corona was still great when it was all Italian”), though they are now spread across the tristate area. We bond over the way “Ron-kon-koma” sounds when announced in Penn Station.

“Everyone is here for a different reason,” one of them tells me. She and her ex-husband last sailed together four years ago to prove to themselves that their marriage was truly over. Her 15-year-old son lost his virginity to “an Irish young lady” while their ship was moored in Ravenna, Italy. The gaggle of old-timers competes to tell me their favorite cruising stories and tips. “A guy proposed in Central Park a couple of years ago”—many Royal Caribbean ships apparently have this ridiculous communal area—“and she ran away screaming!” “If you’re diamond-class, you get four drinks for free.” “A different kind of passenger sails out of Bayonne.” (This, perhaps, is racially coded.) “Sometimes, if you tip the bartender $5, your next drink will be free.”

“Everyone’s here for a different reason,” the woman whose marriage ended on a cruise tells me again. “Some people are here for bad reasons—the drinkers and the gamblers. Some people are here for medical reasons.” I have seen more than a few oxygen tanks and at least one woman clearly undergoing very serious chemo. Some T-shirts celebrate good news about a cancer diagnosis. This might be someone’s last cruise or week on Earth. For these women, who have spent months, if not years, at sea, cruising is a ritual as well as a life cycle: first love, last love, marriage, divorce, death.

Read: The last place on Earth any tourist should go

I have talked with these women for so long, tonight I promise myself that after a sad solitary dinner I will not try to seek out company at the bars in the mall or the adult-themed Hideaway. I have enough material to fulfill my duties to this publication. As I approach my orphaned suite, I run into the aggro young people who stole Mr. and Mrs. Rand away from me the night before. The tattooed apparitions pass me without a glance. She is singing something violent about “Stuttering Stanley” (a character in a popular horror movie, as I discover with my complimentary VOOM SM Surf & Stream Internet at Sea) and he’s loudly shouting about “all the money I’ve lost,” presumably at the casino in the bowels of the ship.

So these bent psychos out of a Cormac McCarthy novel are angrily inhabiting my deck. As I mewl myself to sleep, I envision a limited series for HBO or some other streamer, a kind of low-rent White Lotus , where several aggressive couples conspire to throw a shy intellectual interloper overboard. I type the scenario into my phone. As I fall asleep, I think of what the woman who recently divorced her husband and whose son became a man through the good offices of the Irish Republic told me while I was hoisting myself out of the infinity pool. “I’m here because I’m an explorer. I’m here because I’m trying something new.” What if I allowed myself to believe in her fantasy?

“YOU REALLY STARTED AT THE TOP,” they tell me. I’m at the Coastal Kitchen for my eggs and corned-beef hash, and the maître d’ has slotted me in between two couples. Fueled by coffee or perhaps intrigued by my relative youth, they strike up a conversation with me. As always, people are shocked that this is my first cruise. They contrast the Icon favorably with all the preceding liners in the Royal Caribbean fleet, usually commenting on the efficiency of the elevators that hurl us from deck to deck (as in many large corporate buildings, the elevators ask you to choose a floor and then direct you to one of many lifts). The couple to my right, from Palo Alto—he refers to his “porn mustache” and calls his wife “my cougar” because she is two years older—tell me they are “Pandemic Pinnacles.”

This is the day that my eyes will be opened. Pinnacles , it is explained to me over translucent cantaloupe, have sailed with Royal Caribbean for 700 ungodly nights. Pandemic Pinnacles took advantage of the two-for-one accrual rate of Pinnacle points during the pandemic, when sailing on a cruise ship was even more ill-advised, to catapult themselves into Pinnacle status.

Because of the importance of the inaugural voyage of the world’s largest cruise liner, more than 200 Pinnacles are on this ship, a startling number, it seems. Mrs. Palo Alto takes out a golden badge that I have seen affixed over many a breast, which reads CROWN AND ANCHOR SOCIETY along with her name. This is the coveted badge of the Pinnacle. “You should hear all the whining in Guest Services,” her husband tells me. Apparently, the Pinnacles who are not also Suites like us are all trying to use their status to get into Coastal Kitchen, our elite restaurant. Even a Pinnacle needs to be a Suite to access this level of corned-beef hash.

“We’re just baby Pinnacles,” Mrs. Palo Alto tells me, describing a kind of internal class struggle among the Pinnacle elite for ever higher status.

And now I understand what the maître d’ was saying to me on the first day of my cruise. He wasn’t saying “ pendejo .” He was saying “Pinnacle.” The dining room was for Pinnacles only, all those older people rolling in like the tide on their motorized scooters.

And now I understand something else: This whole thing is a cult. And like most cults, it can’t help but mirror the endless American fight for status. Like Keith Raniere’s NXIVM, where different-colored sashes were given out to connote rank among Raniere’s branded acolytes, this is an endless competition among Pinnacles, Suites, Diamond-Plusers, and facing-the-mall, no-balcony purple SeaPass Card peasants, not to mention the many distinctions within each category. The more you cruise, the higher your status. No wonder a section of the Royal Promenade is devoted to getting passengers to book their next cruise during the one they should be enjoying now. No wonder desperate Royal Caribbean offers (“FINAL HOURS”) crowded my email account weeks before I set sail. No wonder the ship’s jewelry store, the Royal Bling, is selling a $100,000 golden chalice that will entitle its owner to drink free on Royal Caribbean cruises for life. (One passenger was already gaming out whether her 28-year-old son was young enough to “just about earn out” on the chalice or if that ship had sailed.) No wonder this ship was sold out months before departure , and we had to pay $19,000 for a horrid suite away from the Suite Neighborhood. No wonder the most mythical hero of Royal Caribbean lore is someone named Super Mario, who has cruised so often, he now has his own working desk on many ships. This whole experience is part cult, part nautical pyramid scheme.

From the June 2014 issue: Ship of wonks

“The toilets are amazing,” the Palo Altos are telling me. “One flush and you’re done.” “They don’t understand how energy-efficient these ships are,” the husband of the other couple is telling me. “They got the LNG”—liquefied natural gas, which is supposed to make the Icon a boon to the environment (a concept widely disputed and sometimes ridiculed by environmentalists).

But I’m thinking along a different line of attack as I spear my last pallid slice of melon. For my streaming limited series, a Pinnacle would have to get killed by either an outright peasant or a Suite without an ocean view. I tell my breakfast companions my idea.

“Oh, for sure a Pinnacle would have to be killed,” Mr. Palo Alto, the Pandemic Pinnacle, says, touching his porn mustache thoughtfully as his wife nods.

“THAT’S RIGHT, IT’S your time, buddy!” Hubert, my fun-loving Panamanian cabin attendant, shouts as I step out of my suite in a robe. “Take it easy, buddy!”

I have come up with a new dressing strategy. Instead of trying to impress with my choice of T-shirts, I have decided to start wearing a robe, as one does at a resort property on land, with a proper spa and hammam. The response among my fellow cruisers has been ecstatic. “Look at you in the robe!” Mr. Rand cries out as we pass each other by the Thrill Island aqua park. “You’re living the cruise life! You know, you really drank me under the table that night.” I laugh as we part ways, but my soul cries out, Please spend more time with me, Mr. and Mrs. Rand; I so need the company .

In my white robe, I am a stately presence, a refugee from a better limited series, a one-man crossover episode. (Only Suites are granted these robes to begin with.) Today, I will try many of the activities these ships have on offer to provide their clientele with a sense of never-ceasing motion. Because I am already at Thrill Island, I decide to climb the staircase to what looks like a mast on an old-fashioned ship (terrified, because I am afraid of heights) to try a ride called “Storm Chasers,” which is part of the “Category 6” water park, named in honor of one of the storms that may someday do away with the Port of Miami entirely. Storm Chasers consists of falling from the “mast” down a long, twisting neon tube filled with water, like being the camera inside your own colonoscopy, as you hold on to the handles of a mat, hoping not to die. The tube then flops you down headfirst into a trough of water, a Royal Caribbean baptism. It both knocks my breath out and makes me sad.

In keeping with the aquatic theme, I attend a show at the AquaDome. To the sound of “Live and Let Die,” a man in a harness gyrates to and fro in the sultry air. I saw something very similar in the back rooms of the famed Berghain club in early-aughts Berlin. Soon another harnessed man is gyrating next to the first. Ja , I think to myself, I know how this ends. Now will come the fisting , natürlich . But the show soon devolves into the usual Marvel-film-grade nonsense, with too much light and sound signifying nichts . If any fisting is happening, it is probably in the Suite Neighborhood, inside a cabin marked with an upside-down pineapple, which I understand means a couple are ready to swing, and I will see none of it.

I go to the ice show, which is a kind of homage—if that’s possible—to the periodic table, done with the style and pomp and masterful precision that would please the likes of Kim Jong Un, if only he could afford Royal Caribbean talent. At one point, the dancers skate to the theme song of Succession . “See that!” I want to say to my fellow Suites—at “cultural” events, we have a special section reserved for us away from the commoners—“ Succession ! It’s even better than the zombie show! Open your minds!”

Finally, I visit a comedy revue in an enormous and too brightly lit version of an “intimate,” per Royal Caribbean literature, “Manhattan comedy club.” Many of the jokes are about the cruising life. “I’ve lived on ships for 20 years,” one of the middle-aged comedians says. “I can only see so many Filipino homosexuals dressed as a taco.” He pauses while the audience laughs. “I am so fired tonight,” he says. He segues into a Trump impression and then Biden falling asleep at the microphone, which gets the most laughs. “Anyone here from Fort Leonard Wood?” another comedian asks. Half the crowd seems to cheer. As I fall asleep that night, I realize another connection I have failed to make, and one that may explain some of the diversity on this vessel—many of its passengers have served in the military.

As a coddled passenger with a suite, I feel like I am starting to understand what it means to have a rank and be constantly reminded of it. There are many espresso makers , I think as I look across the expanse of my officer-grade quarters before closing my eyes, but this one is mine .

A shocking sight greets me beyond the pools of Deck 17 as I saunter over to the Coastal Kitchen for my morning intake of slightly sour Americanos. A tiny city beneath a series of perfectly pressed green mountains. Land! We have docked for a brief respite in Basseterre, the capital of St. Kitts and Nevis. I wolf down my egg scramble to be one of the first passengers off the ship. Once past the gangway, I barely refrain from kissing the ground. I rush into the sights and sounds of this scruffy island city, sampling incredible conch curry and buckets of non-Starbucks coffee. How wonderful it is to be where God intended humans to be: on land. After all, I am neither a fish nor a mall rat. This is my natural environment. Basseterre may not be Havana, but there are signs of human ingenuity and desire everywhere you look. The Black Table Grill Has been Relocated to Soho Village, Market Street, Directly Behind of, Gary’s Fruits and Flower Shop. Signed. THE PORK MAN reads a sign stuck to a wall. Now, that is how you write a sign. A real sign, not the come-ons for overpriced Rolexes that blink across the screens of the Royal Promenade.

“Hey, tie your shoestring!” a pair of laughing ladies shout to me across the street.

“Thank you!” I shout back. Shoestring! “Thank you very much.”

A man in Independence Square Park comes by and asks if I want to play with his monkey. I haven’t heard that pickup line since the Penn Station of the 1980s. But then he pulls a real monkey out of a bag. The monkey is wearing a diaper and looks insane. Wonderful , I think, just wonderful! There is so much life here. I email my editor asking if I can remain on St. Kitts and allow the Icon to sail off into the horizon without me. I have even priced a flight home at less than $300, and I have enough material from the first four days on the cruise to write the entire story. “It would be funny …” my editor replies. “Now get on the boat.”

As I slink back to the ship after my brief jailbreak, the locals stand under umbrellas to gaze at and photograph the boat that towers over their small capital city. The limousines of the prime minister and his lackeys are parked beside the gangway. St. Kitts, I’ve been told, is one of the few islands that would allow a ship of this size to dock.

“We hear about all the waterslides,” a sweet young server in one of the cafés told me. “We wish we could go on the ship, but we have to work.”

“I want to stay on your island,” I replied. “I love it here.”

But she didn’t understand how I could possibly mean that.

“WASHY, WASHY, so you don’t get stinky, stinky!” kids are singing outside the AquaDome, while their adult minders look on in disapproval, perhaps worried that Mr. Washy Washy is grooming them into a life of gayness. I heard a southern couple skip the buffet entirely out of fear of Mr. Washy Washy.

Meanwhile, I have found a new watering hole for myself, the Swim & Tonic, the biggest swim-up bar on any cruise ship in the world. Drinking next to full-size, nearly naked Americans takes away one’s own self-consciousness. The men have curvaceous mom bodies. The women are equally un-shy about their sprawling physiques.

Today I’ve befriended a bald man with many children who tells me that all of the little trinkets that Royal Caribbean has left us in our staterooms and suites are worth a fortune on eBay. “Eighty dollars for the water bottle, 60 for the lanyard,” the man says. “This is a cult.”

“Tell me about it,” I say. There is, however, a clientele for whom this cruise makes perfect sense. For a large middle-class family (he works in “supply chains”), seven days in a lower-tier cabin—which starts at $1,800 a person—allow the parents to drop off their children in Surfside, where I imagine many young Filipina crew members will take care of them, while the parents are free to get drunk at a swim-up bar and maybe even get intimate in their cabin. Cruise ships have become, for a certain kind of hardworking family, a form of subsidized child care.

There is another man I would like to befriend at the Swim & Tonic, a tall, bald fellow who is perpetually inebriated and who wears a necklace studded with little rubber duckies in sunglasses, which, I am told, is a sort of secret handshake for cruise aficionados. Tomorrow, I will spend more time with him, but first the ship docks at St. Thomas, in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Charlotte Amalie, the capital, is more charming in name than in presence, but I still all but jump off the ship to score a juicy oxtail and plantains at the well-known Petite Pump Room, overlooking the harbor. From one of the highest points in the small city, the Icon of the Seas appears bigger than the surrounding hills.

I usually tan very evenly, but something about the discombobulation of life at sea makes me forget the regular application of sunscreen. As I walk down the streets of Charlotte Amalie in my fluorescent Icon of the Seas cap, an old Rastafarian stares me down. “Redneck,” he hisses.

“No,” I want to tell him, as I bring a hand up to my red neck, “that’s not who I am at all. On my island, Mannahatta, as Whitman would have it, I am an interesting person living within an engaging artistic milieu. I do not wish to use the Caribbean as a dumping ground for the cruise-ship industry. I love the work of Derek Walcott. You don’t understand. I am not a redneck. And if I am, they did this to me.” They meaning Royal Caribbean? Its passengers? The Rands?

“They did this to me!”

Back on the Icon, some older matrons are muttering about a run-in with passengers from the Celebrity cruise ship docked next to us, the Celebrity Apex. Although Celebrity Cruises is also owned by Royal Caribbean, I am made to understand that there is a deep fratricidal beef between passengers of the two lines. “We met a woman from the Apex,” one matron says, “and she says it was a small ship and there was nothing to do. Her face was as tight as a 19-year-old’s, she had so much surgery.” With those words, and beneath a cloudy sky, humidity shrouding our weathered faces and red necks, we set sail once again, hopefully in the direction of home.

THERE ARE BARELY 48 HOURS LEFT to the cruise, and the Icon of the Seas’ passengers are salty. They know how to work the elevators. They know the Washy Washy song by heart. They understand that the chicken gyro at “Feta Mediterranean,” in the AquaDome Market, is the least problematic form of chicken on the ship.

The passengers have shed their INAUGURAL CRUISE T-shirts and are now starting to evince political opinions. There are caps pledging to make America great again and T-shirts that celebrate words sometimes attributed to Patrick Henry: “The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people; it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government.” With their preponderance of FAMILY FLAG FAITH FRIENDS FIREARMS T-shirts, the tables by the crepe station sometimes resemble the Capitol Rotunda on January 6. The Real Anthony Fauci , by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., appears to be a popular form of literature, especially among young men with very complicated versions of the American flag on their T-shirts. Other opinions blend the personal and the political. “Someone needs to kill Washy guy, right?” a well-dressed man in the elevator tells me, his gray eyes radiating nothing. “Just beat him to death. Am I right?” I overhear the male member of a young couple whisper, “There goes that freak” as I saunter by in my white spa robe, and I decide to retire it for the rest of the cruise.

I visit the Royal Bling to see up close the $100,000 golden chalice that entitles you to free drinks on Royal Caribbean forever. The pleasant Serbian saleslady explains that the chalice is actually gold-plated and covered in white zirconia instead of diamonds, as it would otherwise cost $1 million. “If you already have everything,” she explains, “this is one more thing you can get.”

I believe that anyone who works for Royal Caribbean should be entitled to immediate American citizenship. They already speak English better than most of the passengers and, per the Serbian lady’s sales pitch above, better understand what America is as well. Crew members like my Panamanian cabin attendant seem to work 24 hours a day. A waiter from New Delhi tells me that his contract is six months and three weeks long. After a cruise ends, he says, “in a few hours, we start again for the next cruise.” At the end of the half a year at sea, he is allowed a two-to-three-month stay at home with his family. As of 2019, the median income for crew members was somewhere in the vicinity of $20,000, according to a major business publication. Royal Caribbean would not share the current median salary for its crew members, but I am certain that it amounts to a fraction of the cost of a Royal Bling gold-plated, zirconia-studded chalice.

And because most of the Icon’s hyper-sanitized spaces are just a frittata away from being a Delta lounge, one forgets that there are actual sailors on this ship, charged with the herculean task of docking it in port. “Having driven 100,000-ton aircraft carriers throughout my career,” retired Admiral James G. Stavridis, the former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe, writes to me, “I’m not sure I would even know where to begin with trying to control a sea monster like this one nearly three times the size.” (I first met Stavridis while touring Army bases in Germany more than a decade ago.)

Today, I decide to head to the hot tub near Swim & Tonic, where some of the ship’s drunkest reprobates seem to gather (the other tubs are filled with families and couples). The talk here, like everywhere else on the ship, concerns football, a sport about which I know nothing. It is apparent that four teams have recently competed in some kind of finals for the year, and that two of them will now face off in the championship. Often when people on the Icon speak, I will try to repeat the last thing they said with a laugh or a nod of disbelief. “Yes, 20-yard line! Ha!” “Oh my God, of course, scrimmage.”

Soon we are joined in the hot tub by the late-middle-age drunk guy with the duck necklace. He is wearing a bucket hat with the legend HAWKEYES , which, I soon gather, is yet another football team. “All right, who turned me in?” Duck Necklace says as he plops into the tub beside us. “I get a call in the morning,” he says. “It’s security. Can you come down to the dining room by 10 a.m.? You need to stay away from the members of this religious family.” Apparently, the gregarious Duck Necklace had photobombed the wrong people. There are several families who present as evangelical Christians or practicing Muslims on the ship. One man, evidently, was not happy that Duck Necklace had made contact with his relatives. “It’s because of religious stuff; he was offended. I put my arm around 20 people a day.”

Everyone laughs. “They asked me three times if I needed medication,” he says of the security people who apparently interrogated him in full view of others having breakfast.

Another hot-tub denizen suggests that he should have asked for fentanyl. After a few more drinks, Duck Necklace begins to muse about what it would be like to fall off the ship. “I’m 62 and I’m ready to go,” he says. “I just don’t want a shark to eat me. I’m a huge God guy. I’m a Bible guy. There’s some Mayan theory squaring science stuff with religion. There is so much more to life on Earth.” We all nod into our Red Stripes.

“I never get off the ship when we dock,” he says. He tells us he lost $6,000 in the casino the other day. Later, I look him up, and it appears that on land, he’s a financial adviser in a crisp gray suit, probably a pillar of his North Chicago community.

THE OCEAN IS TEEMING with fascinating life, but on the surface it has little to teach us. The waves come and go. The horizon remains ever far away.

I am constantly told by my fellow passengers that “everybody here has a story.” Yes, I want to reply, but everybody everywhere has a story. You, the reader of this essay, have a story, and yet you’re not inclined to jump on a cruise ship and, like Duck Necklace, tell your story to others at great pitch and volume. Maybe what they’re saying is that everybody on this ship wants to have a bigger, more coherent, more interesting story than the one they’ve been given. Maybe that’s why there’s so much signage on the doors around me attesting to marriages spent on the sea. Maybe that’s why the Royal Caribbean newsletter slipped under my door tells me that “this isn’t a vacation day spent—it’s bragging rights earned.” Maybe that’s why I’m so lonely.

Today is a big day for Icon passengers. Today the ship docks at Royal Caribbean’s own Bahamian island, the Perfect Day at CocoCay. (This appears to be the actual name of the island.) A comedian at the nightclub opined on what his perfect day at CocoCay would look like—receiving oral sex while learning that his ex-wife had been killed in a car crash (big laughter). But the reality of the island is far less humorous than that.

One of the ethnic tristate ladies in the infinity pool told me that she loved CocoCay because it had exactly the same things that could be found on the ship itself. This proves to be correct. It is like the Icon, but with sand. The same tired burgers, the same colorful tubes conveying children and water from Point A to B. The same swim-up bar at its Hideaway ($140 for admittance, no children allowed; Royal Caribbean must be printing money off its clientele). “There was almost a fight at The Wizard of Oz ,” I overhear an elderly woman tell her companion on a chaise lounge. Apparently one of the passengers began recording Royal Caribbean’s intellectual property and “three guys came after him.”

I walk down a pathway to the center of the island, where a sign reads DO NOT ENTER: YOU HAVE REACHED THE BOUNDARY OF ADVENTURE . I hear an animal scampering in the bushes. A Royal Caribbean worker in an enormous golf cart soon chases me down and takes me back to the Hideaway, where I run into Mrs. Rand in a bikini. She becomes livid telling me about an altercation she had the other day with a woman over a towel and a deck chair. We Suites have special towel privileges; we do not have to hand over our SeaPass Card to score a towel. But the Rands are not Suites. “People are so entitled here,” Mrs. Rand says. “It’s like the airport with all its classes.” “You see,” I want to say, “this is where your husband’s love of Ayn Rand runs into the cruelties and arbitrary indignities of unbridled capitalism.” Instead we make plans to meet for a final drink in the Schooner Bar tonight (the Rands will stand me up).

Back on the ship, I try to do laps, but the pool (the largest on any cruise ship, naturally) is fully trashed with the detritus of American life: candy wrappers, a slowly dissolving tortilla chip, napkins. I take an extra-long shower in my suite, then walk around the perimeter of the ship on a kind of exercise track, past all the alluring lifeboats in their yellow-and-white livery. Maybe there is a dystopian angle to the HBO series that I will surely end up pitching, one with shades of WALL-E or Snowpiercer . In a collapsed world, a Royal Caribbean–like cruise liner sails from port to port, collecting new shipmates and supplies in exchange for the precious energy it has on board. (The actual Icon features a new technology that converts passengers’ poop into enough energy to power the waterslides . In the series, this shitty technology would be greatly expanded.) A very young woman (18? 19?), smart and lonely, who has only known life on the ship, walks along the same track as I do now, contemplating jumping off into the surf left by its wake. I picture reusing Duck Necklace’s words in the opening shot of the pilot. The girl is walking around the track, her eyes on the horizon; maybe she’s highborn—a Suite—and we hear the voice-over: “I’m 19 and I’m ready to go. I just don’t want a shark to eat me.”

Before the cruise is finished, I talk to Mr. Washy Washy, or Nielbert of the Philippines. He is a sweet, gentle man, and I thank him for the earworm of a song he has given me and for keeping us safe from the dreaded norovirus. “This is very important to me, getting people to wash their hands,” he tells me in his burger getup. He has dreams, as an artist and a performer, but they are limited in scope. One day he wants to dress up as a piece of bacon for the morning shift.

THE MAIDEN VOYAGE OF THE TITANIC (the Icon of the Seas is five times as large as that doomed vessel) at least offered its passengers an exciting ending to their cruise, but when I wake up on the eighth day, all I see are the gray ghosts that populate Miami’s condo skyline. Throughout my voyage, my writer friends wrote in to commiserate with me. Sloane Crosley, who once covered a three-day spa mini-cruise for Vogue , tells me she felt “so very alone … I found it very untethering.” Gideon Lewis-Kraus writes in an Instagram comment: “When Gary is done I think it’s time this genre was taken out back and shot.” And he is right. To badly paraphrase Adorno: After this, no more cruise stories. It is unfair to put a thinking person on a cruise ship. Writers typically have difficult childhoods, and it is cruel to remind them of the inherent loneliness that drove them to writing in the first place. It is also unseemly to write about the kind of people who go on cruises. Our country does not provide the education and upbringing that allow its citizens an interior life. For the creative class to point fingers at the large, breasty gentlemen adrift in tortilla-chip-laden pools of water is to gather a sour harvest of low-hanging fruit.

A day or two before I got off the ship, I decided to make use of my balcony, which I had avoided because I thought the view would only depress me further. What I found shocked me. My suite did not look out on Central Park after all. This entire time, I had been living in the ship’s Disneyland, Surfside, the neighborhood full of screaming toddlers consuming milkshakes and candy. And as I leaned out over my balcony, I beheld a slight vista of the sea and surf that I thought I had been missing. It had been there all along. The sea was frothy and infinite and blue-green beneath the span of a seagull’s wing. And though it had been trod hard by the world’s largest cruise ship, it remained.

This article appears in the May 2024 print edition with the headline “A Meatball at Sea.” When you buy a book using a link on this page, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.

Search suspended for man who fell overboard from Carnival cruise ship near Florida

Ronnie Peale Jr., 35, fell over his balcony railing on Monday, Carnival said.

The U.S. Coast Guard has suspended its search for a Virginia man who fell from a cruise ship balcony earlier this week.

Ronnie Peale Jr., 35, went overboard from a Carnival Magic cruise ship traveling off the coast of Florida on Monday, the Coast Guard said.

After searching more than 5,171 square miles over the course of 60 hours, the Coast Guard said Wednesday night that it has suspended search efforts for Peale.

MORE: Search suspended for 4 people missing after Alaskan charter boat sinks: Coast Guard

"The decision to suspend the active search efforts pending further development is never one we take lightly," Coast Guard District Seven search and rescue mission coordinator Lt. Cmdr. Christopher Hooper said in a statement . "We offer our most sincere condolences to Mr. Peale's family and friends."

Carnival Cruise Lines personnel contacted Coast Guard watchstanders at 6:36 p.m. on Monday to report that a passenger had fallen off the ship, which was 186 miles east of Jacksonville, the Coast Guard said.

Peale's companion reported him missing late Monday afternoon and "an initial review of closed circuit security footage confirms that he leaned over the railing of his stateroom balcony and dropped into the water at approximately 4:10 a.m. Monday," Carnival Cruise Line said in a statement to ABC News.

His partner, Jennilyn Blosser, told Richmond ABC affiliate WRIC that the footage showed him leaning over the railing and that it looks like he accidentally fell.

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"It's not like he was like jumping, like you know, it wasn't like that at all," Blosser told the station.

MORE: US teen missing after going overboard on sunset cruise in the Bahamas

Blosser said she woke up at 11:30 a.m. that morning and spent hours trying to find Peale. His mother, Linda Peale, told WRIC she knew something was wrong when her son didn't call that day to check in on his dogs.

Peale, from New Hope, Virginia, was on his first cruise and was celebrating Blosser's birthday with her family, Linda Peale said.

She described her son as "full of life" and someone who loved old cars, gardening and cooking.

"My son was a wonderful man," Linda Peale told WRIC.

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U.S. Coast Guard: Man Dies After Jumping Off World’s Largest Cruise Ship

Authorities said a passenger died after allegedly leaping from the world’s largest cruise ship on Sunday during a journey from Florida to Honduras.

The vessel the man went overboard from was identified as the Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas, the U.S. Coast Guard told the New York Post , the outlet reported Tuesday.

“The cruise ship deployed one of their rescue boats, located the man and brought him back aboard. He was pronounced deceased. Beyond assisting in the search, the US Coast Guard did not have much involvement in this incident,” the Coast Guard said.

Photos show the massive ship sitting at a port:

Passenger dead after jumping off the world’s largest cruise ship https://t.co/v5UyUwBqFl pic.twitter.com/k6O9uEbScJ — New York Post (@nypost) May 28, 2024

The vessel was reportedly about 300 miles away from Miami when the man apparently jumped into the sea, and it stopped for a few hours while crews joined the Coast Guard to perform the search and rescue.

Video footage appears to show one of the yellow and blue rescue boats, with crew members wearing neon colored vests, making its way through the water:

❗⚓🇺🇸 – A tragic incident occurred aboard the world's largest cruise ship, the Icon of the Seas, as a passenger lost their life after jumping overboard. The unidentified man was discovered by a rescue boat dispatched from the ship. Despite being retrieved and brought back on… pic.twitter.com/gIvaown879 — 🔥🗞The Informant (@theinformant_x) May 28, 2024

The same X (Twitter) account reports, “The circumstances leading to this unfortunate event remain under investigation.”

Although the person who purportedly jumped was carried back onboard in critical condition, he eventually died of his injuries.

In December 2021, a 15-year-old fell to his death from the balcony of a cruise ship that was on its way back to Miami, according to Breitbart News.

When the incident occurred, officials sounded the “Man Overboard” alarm. But a source reportedly said the young teenager fell from a balcony on Deck 16 before landing on the promenade of Deck 8 below.

In 2022, a man and his sister were enjoying drinks aboard the Carnival Valor cruise ship that was traveling from New Orleans to Cozumel, Mexico, when he left to use the restroom. However, he did not return and his sister reported him missing the following day, which prompted a long search, according to Breitbart News.

“Then at around 8:25 p.m., crew members on the bulk carrier CRINIS spotted the overboard passenger about 20 miles south of the Southwest Pass of Louisiana, and the MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter from New Orleans was deployed to retrieve the man,” the outlet said.

When crews pulled him from the water, he was responsive but suffering from symptoms of hypothermia, dehydration, and shock.

“The man reportedly did not say how he fell overboard or what time he did,” the report added.

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The Carnival cruise passenger who went overboard and remains missing was on his first cruise and it became his 'happy place,' his fiancée said

• The man who went overboard on a Carnival cruise ship was on his first-ever cruise, his partner said.
• "He loved the cruise life," Jennilyn Michelle Blosser told WTKR of her fiancé, Ronnie Lee Peale Jr.
• Peale Jr. fell off the Carnival Magic ship early Monday and remains missing. 

The man who remains missing after falling overboard on a Carnival cruise sail returning from the Bahamas was in a "happy place" on his first-ever cruise before tragedy struck, his partner said.

"He loved the cruise life," Jennilyn Michelle Blosser told WTKR of her fiancé, Ronnie Lee Peale Jr. "Being able to drink, gamble, and socialize put him in his happy place."

Blosser said that 35-year-old Peale Jr. was the "life of the party," and told CNN that the pair went on the voyage to celebrate her birthday.

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Peale Jr., a Virginia resident, fell into the water early Monday after he leaned over a balcony railing on the Carnival Magic ship about 186 miles east of Jacksonville, Florida, officials said.

The cruise ship's operator, Carnival Cruise Line, told Insider in a statement that a review of closed-circuit security footage "confirms that he leaned over the railing of his stateroom balcony and dropped into the water at approximately 4:10 am early Monday morning."

He was reported missing late Monday afternoon, the cruise line said.

The United States Coast Guard said crews had already spent 19 hours searching for Peale Jr. across 4,044 square miles.

Crews were continuing their search for Peale Jr. on Wednesday morning, the Coast Guard said .

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