cruise ship disappearances

• Disappearances from Cruise Ships
• If You Fall Off a Cruise Ship
• Mysterious Messages In Bottles
• The Bermuda Triangle Is Really NBD
• Movies That Make You Scared to Go in the Water
• People Who Fell Off Cruise Ships
• Cruises Ruined by Brutal Crimes
• Sailors And Ocean Enthusiasts Describe The Cree...
• A Beautiful American Lake May Hide Countless, E...
• The Worst Cruise Ship Disasters
• What It's Like to Be a Rescue & Recovery Diver
• Deep Sea Divers Describe The Creepiest Thing Th...
• The Creepiest Bodies Of Water From Around The W...
• 21 Unnerving Photos That Made Us Want To Avoid ...
• People Who Served On Submarines Share Small Det...
• 20 Horror Stories From Deep Sea Divers That Fil...

People Who Mysteriously Vanished From Cruise Ships

Cruises are supposed to be happy, carefree moments of maritime bliss; what could go wrong on a vacation on the sea? In reality, there has been a shocking number of cruise ship disappearances , and over 165 people have gone missing since 1995. Cruise ships traverse the vast oceans and often maintain entertainment options into the wee hours of the night, and there's certainly no shortage of libations flowing for those on board. Some passengers have fallen overboard , while other guests have disappeared via more mysterious means.

Investigations into such disappearances can often be inconclusive, as missing passengers are frequently never found. And while security footage can sometimes provide clues, some videos have produced more questions than they have answered. For that reason, the families of many cruise ship victims have written about their tragic experiences in an attempt to increase awareness about cruise ship safety. 

A Mysterious Photo Might Point To What Happened To Amy Lynn Bradley

The disappearance of Amy Lynn Bradley is a very bizarre story. Bradley was a 23-year-old woman from Virginia who went missing while on a Royal Caribbean International cruise with her family in March 1998. On the evening she disappeared, Bradley was at a club on the ship. She shared a drink with members of the house band after their set, then went off on her own at about 1 a.m., according to one of the bandmates . Bradley was later spotted by her father at about 5:30 a.m., and he said she was asleep on the balcony of their cabin. But by 6 a.m., Bradley had vanished. At the time of her disappearance, the ship had been headed from Aruba to Curaçao, Antilles. The ship docked as the search for Bradley began. A pair of tourists claimed to have seen Bradley in Curaçao, saying they recognized her tattoos, yet Bradley remained missing. 

In 1999, a Navy man claimed to have encountered her in a brothel. He said she told him her name and asked for help, saying she was being held captive there. In 2005, someone said they saw Bradley in Barbados. On an episode of Dr. Phil , Bradley's parents said they had been sent a photo of a woman that could have been Bradley via an anonymous sender. In the photo, the woman is scantily dressed, which adds fuel to the theory that Bradley was kidnapped and sold into sexual slavery. 

Rebecca Coriam Was A Disney Cruise Employee Who Vanished At Sea

Rebecca Coriam , 24, was an employee on the Disney Wonder cruise ship. She disappeared on May 22, 2011, as the ship was sailing off the coast of Mexico. She was spotted on surveillance video talking on one of the ship’s internal phones and appeared upset. Another passenger approached her and asked her if she was okay, to which she appeared to say yes. She then hung up and walked away. 

The most common theories are that she was swept overboard while at the crew pool or that she jumped or fell from Deck 5. Yet no theory is particularly compelling, and what truly happened remains a mystery. Others say she was in a turbulent relationship and could have been upset, yet her family states that she would have never willingly gone overboard. Even authorities clash over what really happened to Rebecca Coriam, with some stating it was a simple, yet tragic case of someone slipping overboard and others alleging foul play .

George Allen Smith IV Disappeared On His Honeymoon

George Smith disappeared from the MS Brilliance of the Seas in July 2005. He and his new bride, Jennifer, were on a two-week Mediterranean honeymoon cruise and were headed from Greece to Turkey. It is believed that Smith went overboard, but how that happened is a mystery.

The Smiths had dinner before engaging in a long night of drinking. Both were reported to have been very drunk. The Smiths' on-ship neighbor said he later heard loud talking, an argument, and a thud coming from the Smiths' cabin. Blood was later found on the canopy beneath the cabin, indicating that Smith had fallen or had been pushed. Jennifer was not with Smith when he went missing. She had wandered off elsewhere and passed out in a hallway. She was woken up and led back to her cabin by crew members in the morning, where neither she nor the crew members noticed anything amiss. Jennifer slept three hours before heading to a massage appointment.

She claims to not remember much of the night prior, and to this day, no one admits to knowing what happened to Smith. Some believe he was shoved overboard by men he encountered at the casino, while others believe, in his state of intoxication, he became disoriented and fell.

Fariba Amani Disappeared While On A Cruise With Her Boyfriend

Fariba Amani , a 47-year-old Vancouver, Canada, woman, vanished in February 2012. She was on a Bahamas Celebration cruise with her boyfriend of eight months at the time, 46-year-old Ramiz Golshani. 

Golshani said he last saw Amani at the ship's gift shop at about 1 a.m. before heading to the casino alone. When he returned to their cabin, she was not there, and he went to sleep. In the morning, at about 7 a.m., he awoke and looked for her. After an hour, he told the ship's crew that he could not locate his companion. They, too, searched for Amani, but she was never seen again.

Amani’s sister said that her sister's relationship was troubled and that Amani even once considered hiring a private investigator to see if Golshani was cheating on her. However, there is no concrete evidence to suggest foul play was involved in Golshani's disappearance, and what truly happened to her remains a mystery. 

Russel Terence Rebello Died A Hero

Russel Terence Rebello , 33, died a hero. He was a crew member aboard the Costa Concordia , which smashed into a reef and capsized in January of 2012 off Giglio Island, Italy. A total of 32 people were killed in the wreck, and Rebello stayed aboard to help other passengers get off, giving one of them his lifejacket. 

For months, it was not clear what happened to Rebello. The grim conclusion to the mystery came three years later when Rebello's body was found, still on the ship.

Annette Mizener Won A Cruise, Then Disappeared

Annette Mizener , 37, won a Carnival cruise to the Mexican Riviera in December 2004. She took her parents and her teenage daughter along for the trip. 

On the night of her disappearance, she sang karaoke with her daughter, then hit the casino. Her parents quickly became concerned when Mizener did not show up to play Bingo with them as scheduled later that evening. 

Mizener's purse was discovered on one of the ship's lower decks, near a railing, leading many to believe she somehow fell or was pushed overboard. Yet an extensive search conducted by the Coast Guard and the Navy failed to find any trace of Mizener, and the FBI's investigation was inconclusive. The only camera that might have caught what happened was blocked by a map of the ship.

Merrian Carver Disappeared On An Alaskan Cruise

Merrian Carver, 40, disappeared from a Celebrity Cruises ship in August 2004. 

Carver had gone on the trip alone and disappeared on only the second day of a seven-day Alaskan tour. Though one of the crew members reported that Carver seemed to be missing, the ship failed to respond. When they found Carver's belongings still in her cabin after the cruise had ended, they simply donated them to charity. They never reported her disappearance to police. It was Carver's family who filed a missing persons report after not hearing from her for days. They were not even aware at the time of the filing that Carver had gone on a cruise. 

Royal Caribbean, who owns Celebrity Cruises, ruled the disappearance a suicide, but without a proper investigation, Carver's family will never know. 

Hue Pham And Hue Tran Vanished While Celebrating Their 50th Anniversary

Hue Pham, 70, and Hue Tran, 65, went missing while on a Carnival Cruise ship heading from Barbados to Aruba in May 2005. The couple had gone on the cruise to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. They were traveling with their daughter and granddaughter. 

The couple vanished from the ship, leaving behind only their shoes as a clue, which were found on the ship's deck. Though some have speculated the couple committed suicide, their son , Michael Pham, doesn't buy it. He said they were happy and had been planning a trip to Vietnam to see relatives. 

Micki Kanesaki Was Allegedly Murdered By Her Ex

A convoluted case surrounded the alleged murder of Micki Kanesaki , 52, who disappeared from a Mediterranean cruise in 2006. Kanesaki went on the cruise with her ex-husband, California lawyer Lonnie Kocontes, 48. At about 1 a.m., ship officials say she left her cabin to fetch a cup of tea. Her ex later woke up to find her missing. 

Kanesaki's body was discovered days later on the shores of Calabria. Kocontes indicated that Kanesaki, who had been his second wife, may have been suicidal, though her family refuted those claims. For years, Kanesaki's case went unsolved. Kocontes remarried a third, then a fourth time. 

In 2013, Kocontes was arrested for Kanesaki's murder. Prosecutors alleged that he had strangled her and tossed her overboard. Kocontes's third wife, who had testified on his behalf during initial investigations in 2006, did a 180 in 2013, telling officials that Kocontes had killed Kanesaki. His motive, prosecutors allege, had been to inherit Kanesaki's estate. 

Christopher Caldwell Disappeared While On A Trip With His Betrothed

Christopher Caldwell, 36, disappeared from a Carnival Cruise ship headed from Miami, FL, to Cozumel, Mexico, in July  2004. Caldwell had gone on the cruise with his betrothed.

According to a letter written by Caldwell's family as posted on International Cruise Victims, Caldwell and his fiancée had dinner and drinks before his fiancée decided to turn in, and Caldwell decided to visit the ship casino alone. When Caldwell's fiancée awoke in the morning, she found that Caldwell had never returned. 

Caldwell was last spotted on the ship's deck. The bartender who saw him said he seemed extremely intoxicated. No one knows what happened next, though it is suspected that Caldwell toppled overboard. 

John Halford Vanished On The Last Day Of His Cruise

John Halford , 63, disappeared from the ship Thomson Spirit while on an Egyptian cruise in April 2011. 

He disappeared on the last day of the cruise before the ship would dock. He was slated to see his wife the following day at the airport when he returned home to Milton Keynes, England. He sent her a text message, then ate dinner and went for drinks at a bar on the ship's upper deck. He was last seen at about 12:30 a.m. His bags were packed, and his glasses, phone, and passport were found in his room. 

Though Halford was last spotted drinking, no one who interacted with him thought he was drunk, and his wife said he gave no indication of being suicidal. No one knows what happened to him, whether he fell overboard or something else. 

In the middle of the ocean, no one can hear you scream.

StarsInsider

Mysterious and unsolved disappearances of cruise ship passengers

Posted: August 3, 2023 | Last updated: April 12, 2024

Cruise ships regularly lose passengers, even crew members, and continue on their trip unless ordered to stop by the local coast guard. But often the coast guard won't be notified until hours after the person has been reported missing. Think about it this way: cruise ships are full of thousands of people, many of whom are intoxicated , and no police are anywhere to be found. While security exists, they answer to the cruise ship company, which is focused on maximizing profits. They do search for missing people, but there is only so long before the missing person must be abandoned, presumed dead. 

On Monday, July 31, a 64-year-old woman named Reeta Sahani disappeared from Royal Caribbean's Spectrum of the Seas cruise ship. Sahani had been traveling with her husband who realized she was missing when he woke up on Monday morning and was unable to locate her on the ship. Sahani's son, Apoorv, posted on X stating that staff claimed she had jumped overboard and showed his father footage from the ship's surveillance. “She was on a holiday enjoying herself and then this whole thing happened,” Apoorv, said in an interview with the Times. “It doesn’t make sense.” He revealed that his mother was unable to swim. Apoorv also claimed that his father was subjected to an hours-long interview with police following her death. The incident occurred while the ship was passing through the Singapore Strait, and the Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre of Singapore is reportedly leading a search and rescue mission to recover Sahani's body. 

Have a look at some of the stories behind how people went missing on cruise ships and were never to be found again.

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Jaylen Hill - Carnival Elation

A 30-year-old man named Jaylen Hill reportedly jumped overboard during a Carnival Elation cruise on July 23, 2023, as the ship was on its way back to Jacksonville, Florida, following a four-day trip to the Bahamas. The cruise line learned that Hill was missing late Sunday after his travel companion said he hadn't seen Hill all day. Surveillance footage later revealed that he jumped from the ship. After searching more than 1,300 square miles (3,367 sq km), the search was suspended. 

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Ronnie Lee Peale Jr. - Carnival Magic

A 35-year-old man named Ronnie Lee Peale Jr. went overboard a Carnival Magic cruise ship early May 29. A Carnival spokesperson said that "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 am early Monday morning," according to CBS affiliate WTKR. The ship was reportedly around 186 miles (300 km) east of Jacksonville, Florida, at the time, traveling from Virginia to the Bahamas. "It just hurts too much to even type, let alone talk about it," Peale's fiancée Jennilyn Michelle Blosser told WTKR. "This was his first cruise."

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Warwick Tollemache - Quantum of the Seas

Late on the night of April 25, 2023, the US Coast Guard received a distressing call from the Quantum of the Seas cruise ship. The ship, which was traveling from Australia to Hawaii, reported that an Australian passenger went overboard 500 miles (805 kilometers) south of its destination. The crew halted the boat and immediately started a search and rescue mission, sending out life rings in an effort to save him. After two hours with no sign of the passenger, later identified as 35-year-old Warwick Tollemache, the ship continued on its journey. The Coast Guard arrived with a helicopter to perform an aerial search on Wednesday for six hours, but could not locate the man. The enormous ship is 16 stories high and has the capacity to hold 4,500 passengers and 1,500 crew members. It's marketed as one of the most technologically advanced cruise ships ever made, but no vessel can entirely protect its passengers from the dangers of the sea. 

Unnamed woman - Carnival Valor

Shocking cell phone footage from the Carnival Valor cruise ship captured the final frantic moments of a 32-year-old woman's life. She was on a five-day cruise from New Orleans to Mexico with her husband when the incident occurred. Reports say the video was captured just after some kind of incident in the hot tub. It shows the woman being restrained by three security guards by the pool area of the ship. She is struggling to break free and is heard shouting the name "Alicia." The guards hold her arms behind her back and handcuff her before leading her up the stairs and away from the pool. According to witnesses, she broke free from the guards a few minutes later and proceeded to jump off the tenth floor of the ship into the ocean. Rescue attempts began immediately but it's believed that the woman hit her head on the way down and immediately disappeared beneath the water's surface. The coast guard searched 2,514 square miles (6,511 square kilometers) for 14 hours before suspending their search.

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Unnamed woman - Carnival Miracle

In the early hours of December 11, passengers of the Carnival Miracle cruise ship, on a three-day voyage from Long Beach Cruise Terminal to Ensenada, were alerted that someone had fallen overboard. After over 31 hours of searching, the Coast Guard halted their efforts to find the woman. According to CBS Los Angeles, many passengers suspect the incident occurred from foul play, after the woman fell from the fifth-floor balcony of her stateroom. “Someone has lost their life, whether it was done by accident or by foul play I don’t know,” said Daniel Miranda, a Northern California firefighter paramedic on board the ship. “There’s some high suspicion of foul play.” He estimated around 1,100 were on board at the time of the incident.

Four people in one month

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Luke Renner

Luke Renner, a 22-year-old autistic passenger aboard the Carnival Fantasy, is believed to have gone overboard on December 16, 2018. The Mexican navy put out a search for him.

Thomas McElhany

Thomas McElhany, 26, went overboard near the Florida Keys on the Carnival Victory ship on December 14, 2018. His body wasn't recovered, and Carnival didn't respond to the Miami Herald's questioning on whether the ship had the overboard detection technology it was legally required to have.

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Dutch woman

A Dutch woman, who wasn't named, went overboard the MSC Preziosa near Martinique on December 8, 2018, and hasn't been found. Crew members didn't know she'd gone overboard until docking.

Crew member

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Since 2000, over 200 people have gone missing from cruise ships according to Dr. Ross Klein, author of 'Cruise Ship Blues: The Underside of the Cruise Ship Industry.'

An epidemic

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Amy Lynn Bradley

Amy Lynn Bradley, her parents, and her brother boarded the Royal Caribbean International cruise ship Rhapsody of the Seas on March 21, 1998. She went missing somewhere between 5:15 am and 6 am, after she was seen sleeping by her father.

Decades gone by

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Christopher Caldwell

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Elizabeth Kay Galeana

Last seen aboard the Voyager of the Seas on July 25, 2006, Elizabeth Kay Galeana went missing while on a cruise in the Mediterranean. Italian police and the FBI searched the ship. The family later released a statement saying that Elizabeth Kay Galeana was dead, though no body had been found, and no foul play was suspected.

Merrian Carver

Merrian Carver disappeared aboard the Celebrity Cruises' Mercury on August 28, 2004. According to family statement account published online, a crew member informed his superior the day she went missing, and was told to go back to work.

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Her father started the International Cruise Victims Association following an unsuccessful investigation that began almost a month after the disappearance. Though Canadian authorities believed they may have found her skeleton, exactly what happened to her is still a mystery.

Annette Mizener

Annette Mizener was with her parents, daughter, and husband on the final day of her nine-day Mexican Riviera trip aboard Carnival Cruise's The Pride when she disappeared on December 4, 2004.

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Her husband alleges in an online post that the Carnival Cruise refused to supply evidence, and that one crew member repeatedly lied to the FBI.

Hue Pham and Hue Tran

The couple were on Carnival Cruise's Destiny ship in between Barbados and Aruba when they disappeared on May 12, 2005.

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Coast guard

According to their children, who bought the cruise for them as a gift, the ship took considerable time to report the incident to the American and Dutch coast guards. They suspect the company is withholding information. There has been no trace of Hue Pham and Hue Tran since their disappearance.

George Allen Smith IV

In July of 2005, George Allen Smith IV was aboard the MS Brilliance of the Seas for his honeymoon. It was a cruise along the Mediterranean and should've meant perfection. Instead, he disappeared the night of July 5 and blood was found in his cabin.

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Russian mafia

CBS News reported that the FBI's Russian mafia unit was investigating the disappearance.

Tammy Grogan

Tammy Grogan, her son, mother, and two friends boarded Carnival Cruise's Imagination from Key West, Florida to Playa Del Carmen, Mexico in September of 2006. She was last seen on the beach at Playa Del Carmen, and was later reported as having gone overboard by the cruise ship. But upon returning home, her son allegedly found their home ransacked and robbed. Grogan's body was never found, and her son was interviewed by police about foul play.

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Rebecca Coriam

Rebecca Coriam was a crew member on the Disney Wonder cruise ship and was last seen on security camera footage having a heated early morning conversation.

A cover-up?

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John Halford

John Halford was wrapping up a six-day trip aboard Thomson Cruise's Spirit when he vanished the night before the vessel's final stop. He was last seen on April 6, 2011.

Another overboard case?

A’riel Brianna Marion

Shortly after departing from Florida on its journey to the Bahamas, the Allure of the Seas crew reported that something had gone overboard, this on September 16, 2012. Unable to find anything, the ship continued for an hour until realizing A’riel Brianna Marion had gone overboard. Her body was never found and though the investigation ruled that she took her own life, her friends dispute that as a possibility.

Fariba Amani

Fariba Amani was last seen aboard the Bahamas Celebration cruise ship between the Bahamas and Florida on February 29, 2012.

Her boyfriend said he last saw her in the gift shop at 1 am. The blog The True Crime Files argues the boyfriend could have been involved in her disappearance.

Luis Felipe Del Rosario Perez

Passenger Luis Felipe Del Rosario Perez was last seen by the captain of the MV Zenith on December 27, 2016. No one knows if he vanished on shore or went overboard. He hasn't been seen or heard from since.

See also: Mysterious places people keep disappearing from

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A doomed dare and a haunting video: What we know about Cameron Robbins’ cruise ship disappearance

Search efforts for cameron robbins went on for approximately three days before being called off, article bookmarked.

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Cameron Robbins, an 18-year-old high school graduate, has been missing since 24 May, when he fell overboard on a sunset cruise ship into waters near the Bahamas .

Mr Robbins was celebrating his graduation from the University Laboratory School in Baton Rouge, Louisiana by taking a trip to the Bahamas with other teenagers when the tragic incident occurred.

The group was aboard Blackbeard’s Revenge, a sunset cruise, on 24 May when Mr Robbins went overboard.

According to reports, Mr Robbins allegedly jumped off the boat on a dare. Video taken of the incident shows Mr Robbins swimming in the waters in almost complete darkness.

Afterwards, the 18-year-old disappeared.

• Cameron Robbins’ parents break silence after 18-year-old jumps off Bahamas party boat
• Cameron Robbins: Search called off for teen who ‘jumped off cruise ship as a dare’
• Coast Guard searching for man who fell from cruise ship off Florida coast

The US Coast Guard and Royal Bahamas Defence Force spent several days searching for Mr Robbings before suspending their search efforts on Saturday, 27 May.

Here’s everything we know about Mr Robbins’ disappearance .

Who is Cameron Robbins?

Cameron Robbins is an 18-year-old boy who recently graduated from high school at University Laboratory School, which operates as part of Louisiana State University, in Baton Rouge.

Mr Robbins played baseball while attending the school, according to reports.

In celebration of graduation, Mr Robbins and other teenagers were on a trip to the Bahamas and staying at the Atlantis Paradise resort in Nassau, Louisiana State University confirmed to NBC News.

The trip was not a school-sanctioned event.

According to a statement from University Lab School Director Kevin George, obtained by local news outlet WAFB , Mr Robbins attended the school for 13 years.

“The University Lab School Community is praying for the best possible outcome of this situation. I have been in touch with Cameron’s family and at this time, authorities are still searching for him in the Bahamas. In times like these, we must come together and support each other. Words fall short of expressing the worry our entire school community is feeling. Extra counselors will be available on campus to speak with students and faculty who are struggling to process this news. Our thoughts are with the Robbins family, and we ask that you keep them in your thoughts as well,” Mr George wrote.

The Independent has reached out to University Laboratory School for comment.

What happened?

Mr Robbins and others on the trip were aboard a sunset cruise on a ship called Blackbeard’s Revenge on the evening on 24 May when Mr Robbins was allegedly dared to jump off the boat.

In a statement provided to The Independent, Jonathan Chia, a representative for Pirates’ Revenge Ltd, the parent company of Blackbeard’s Revenge, said Mr Robbins went overboard at approximately 9.40pm local time in Montagu Bay off Athol Island in the Bahamas.

Video captured in the moments after Mr Robbins jumped into the water showed the 18-year-old swimming around the vessel as passengers on the sunset cruise yelled at him.

In the video, individuals can be heard urging Mr Robbins to grab onto the buoy that they threw into the water for him.

Mr Chia said: “The crew executed the ‘man overboard’ protocol in line with all approved safety procedures and company policies to ensure the best chance of retrieving an individual who has gone overboard.”

Royal Bahamas Defence Force Commodore Raymond King said in a video posted to Facebook that the area where Mr Robbins allegedly jumped into, “is an area that is really shark-infested”.

Rumours of the waters being “shark-infested” have not been confirmed by the US Coast Guard.

The Independent has reached out to the US Coast Guard for comment.

What were the search efforts?

The Royal Bahamas Defence Force contacted the US Coast Guard, District Seven around 11.30pm local time to report Mr Robbins had fallen overboard, according to a statement from the Coast Guard. 

"US Coast Guard District Seven deployed multiple search and rescue assets in response to an agency assistance request from our partners in the Royal Bahamas Defence Force,” Lt Commander Mathew Spado, Coast Guard liaison officer to the Bahamas said in the statement.

Mr Chia said Pirates Revenge Ltd worked closely with Bahamian authorities and the Us Coast Guard during the incident and will continue to participate with authorities in the investigation.

For several days, the Coast Guard and Royal Bahamas Defence Force searched the location and waters surrounding the location Mr Robbins had disappeared in using aircrews and search patterns.

After Coast Guard crews searched more than 325 square miles, they concluded their efforts with the Royal Bahamas Defence Force on 27 May.

"We were informed by the RBDF this evening that they were suspending the active search efforts pending further developments, and were not requesting further Coast Guard assistance after notifying the Robbins family. We offer our sincerest condolences to Cameron Robbins’ family and friends,” Mr Spado said in the statement.

A GoFundMe has been started to benefit Mr Robbins’ family as they deal with the aftermath of the difficult situation.

Although searches have ended, the US Coast Guard is asking anyone with new information to contact the District Seven watchstanders at 305.415.6800.

In a statement, Mr Chia said that Pirates’ Revenge Ltd: “Reviewed all safety measures and protocols and are confident that the company’s practices were and continue to be in line with the highest industry standards to keep its passengers safe. With approval from the Bahamian authorities, Pirates Revenge Ltd has resumed operations of its cruise vessel. We would like to thank the crew for their continued professionalism and for expertly performing their duties during the incident.”

“Our deepest condolences to the Robbins family as they go through this difficult time,” Mr Chia added.

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Rebecca Coriam: lost at sea

T he Port of Los Angeles, 23 October 2011. At the Goofy Pool on deck 9 of the Disney Wonder , the Adventures Away celebration party has begun. “Goodbye, stress!” the cruise director shouts. “Hello, vacation!” The ship’s horn sounds out When You Wish Upon a Star , to indicate that we’re about to set sail, to Mexico. It’s a nice touch. The ship has just won the 2010 Condé Nast Traveller crew and service award.

I’m standing on deck 10, looking down at the dancing crowds of guests and crew. There are 2,455 passengers this week, and 1,000 employees. You can spot the Youth Activities team in their yellow tops and blue trousers. They look after the children in the Oceaneers’ Club on deck 5.

There’s no talk of it, but many people on board know something terrible occurred on this route – to Puerto Vallarta and Cabo San Lucas – earlier this year. At 5.45am on Tuesday 22 March, a CCTV camera captured a young woman on the phone in the crew quarters. Her name was Rebecca Coriam. She was 24, from Chester, and had recently graduated from a sports science degree at Exeter University. She’d been working in Youth Activities on board for nine months, and apparently loved it. But on the phone she was looking upset.

“You see this young boy walk up to her to ask her if she’s all right,” her father Mike told me a few weeks ago, sitting in the family’s back garden in Chester. “She said, ‘Yeah, fine.’ Then she put the phone down. She turned around. She had her hands in her back pockets, which she always did. Then she put her hands to her head like this, pushing her hair back…” Mike did the movement. It looked normal. “And then she walked off.”

And that’s the last anyone has seen of her. She just vanished .

When she didn’t report for work at 9am, the crew Tannoyed her. They searched the ship and called the Mexican coastguard, who searched the waters, all to no avail. That was seven months ago.

“Now, whenever we call anyone, all they say is, ‘The investigation is ongoing,’” Mike says. “We’ve tried emailing, telling them how we feel, how it’s getting harder...” He pauses. “But nothing. Just, ‘It’s ongoing.’”

Mike and his wife Ann have created a website – Help Us To Find Rebecca (rebecca-coriam.com) – and have organised fundraising events. The day I visited, the house was filled with raffle prizes, chocolates, board games and soft toys, donated by well-wishers. Mike said on some days they were just functioning, but on others they didn’t know if they were coming or going.

They said only one police officer has ever been assigned to investigate Rebecca’s disappearance. He flew in from Nassau in the Bahamas , 1,500 miles from the ship – just one man charged with conducting a forensic investigation and interviewing 3,000 passengers and crew. He took charge because the ship is registered in the Bahamas, for tax reasons. It wasn’t deemed relevant that it’s based in Los Angeles, the company’s head office is in the UK, Rebecca was British, and she went missing in international waters between the US and Mexico. (For European passengers, this holds true for all cruise liners, but a law passed last year means if a US citizen disappears on a cruise ship, the FBI now has jurisdiction.)

Mike and Ann have met the Bahamas officer only once. They flew to Los Angeles on 25 March to meet the ship as it arrived back. The Disney people showed them the CCTV footage and introduced them to the policeman.

“I asked him, ‘Are you going back on the ship now?’” Mike said. “He said, ‘No, I’m going back to the Bahamas.’ I thought, ‘Hang on, you only got to the ship on Friday.’ He had just Saturday there and that was it. The passengers weren’t questioned.”

“Not at all?” I asked.

“No. Not many of the crew, either,” Ann said.

I told Mike and Ann that I would book myself on to the cruise, ask a few questions, just see what I could find out. They said they’d be pleased for whatever help they could get.

I n the atrium on deck 3, passengers queue for Mickey Mouse’s autograph. I overhear an adult passenger ask a crew member, “Exactly how many Mickey Mouse symbols are there on board?” He looks taken aback. There are about 20 within our immediate vicinity – art deco mouse ears on the frosted glass doorways, swirly mouse ears on the carpet. “I don’t know,” he replies. The passenger looks annoyed that his question can’t be answered. “I can point out some hidden Mickeys,” the crew member adds, conciliatorily. It’s a Disney tradition to embed tiny mouse symbols into the architecture. Fans love to spot them.

I wander into one of the bars and get talking to a waiter. “What’s it like working here?” I ask.

“It’s all about the show,” he replies. “When you’re out among the guests, you’re always on show. Even if you’re a waiter, or a cleaner, or a deck hand.”

“How long have you been on board?” I ask.

“Seven months. I’ll be going home in 40 days – 44 to be exact.” He laughs. “Seven months is long enough. Being away from your family is hard.”

“Were you on board when Rebecca Coriam vanished?” I ask.

He narrows his eyes. “I don’t know anything about it,” he says. There’s a long silence. “It didn’t happen,” he says. He looks at me. “You know that’s the answer I have to give.”

I t’s a beautiful, clear night outside on deck 4. Ahead of us are the lights of another cruise ship. A few days later – when we reach Puerto Vallarta – I spot it again. It’s called the Carnival Spirit. Forty-three people have vanished from Carnival cruises since 2000. Theirs is the worst record of all cruise companies. There have been 171 disappearances in total, across all cruise lines, since 2000. Rebecca is Disney’s first. A few days ago, Rebecca’s father emailed me: “Would like to inform you the number of people missing this year has just gone up to 17. A guy has gone missing in the Gulf of Mexico. The Carnival Conquest.” By the time I get off this ship, the figure will have gone up to 19.

When someone vanishes from a cruise ship, one of the first things that happens to their family members is they receive a call from an Arizona man named Kendall Carver. “When you become a victim, you think you’re the only person in the world,” Carver told me on the phone. “Well, the Coriams found out they aren’t alone. Almost every two weeks someone goes overboard.”

Carver says the numbers have reached epidemic proportions and nobody realises it because it’s in the industry’s power to hush it up. He lost his own daughter, Merrian, back in August 2004, from the Celebrity Mercury. Even though the cabin steward reported her missing on day two, Carver said, no alarm was ever raised. “He reported her missing daily and they told him to forget it.”

So the chocolates piled up on her pillow. When the Mercury docked in Vancouver – as Carver later testified at a US Senate subcommittee hearing – nobody from the ship said anything, not to the police, the FBI, nobody. They just quietly placed Merrian’s belongings in storage, then gave them to charity. “If we hadn’t eventually traced her to that ship, she would have vanished,” he said.

At the time, Celebrity Cruise Line issued a statement saying, “Regrettably, there is very little a cruise line, a resort or a hotel can do to prevent someone from committing suicide.” But as Carver points out, the case is still open. Later, the company added, “There is probably nothing we or any company could do that would make the parents feel the company had acted sensitively enough.”

Now Carver leads a lobby group called International Cruise Victims . Over the phone, he told me theories of murder, negligence and cover-ups. Sometimes he sounded angry and xenophobic; at other times he was incredibly compelling.

“Think of where those cruise workers are from,” he said. “They’re low paid, from third-world countries, on those ships for nine months at a time. The sexual crime rate is 50% higher than in the average American city.”

It’s true that passengers on just one ship – the Carnival Valor – reported nine sexual assaults to the FBI in less than one year. “You’re on a ship,” Carver said. “There’s no police. Once you leave the port, you’re in international waters. Who do you think is attracted to working on those ships?”

“Do you think your daughter was murdered?”

“The answer’s yes,” he said. “That’s the story among the crew.” He paused. “Put murder to one side. Just think about the drinking. Royal Caribbean has just started a policy of unlimited drinks for one price. Celebrity is doing it.”

I don’t think drunkenness is an issue on the Disney Wonder. You’d have to drink a frozen piña colada the size of a glacier to get drunk, such are the measly measures they serve here.

“There’s a man in Ireland had a 15-year-old daughter,” Carver said. “One cruise served her eight drinks in an hour. She went to the balcony and threw up and went overboard. She was gone.”

The case he’s talking about is that of Lynsey O’Brien, who went missing on 5 January 2006 while on a cruise with her family off the Mexican coast. The cruise line, Costa Magica, conducted its own investigation into her disappearance and decided there was “no evidence of an accidental fall”, that Lynsey had shown the bartender ID stating that she was 23 years old and that her death was caused by “underage drinking”. While they “continued to extend their deepest sympathy” to the family, they claimed their report cleared them of any wrongdoing.

“In other corporations, police get involved,” Carver said. “On cruise ships they have, quote, security officers , but they work for the cruise lines. They aren’t going to do anything when the lines get sued. We came to the conclusion cover-up is the standard operating procedure.” He paused. “And the Coriam girl. Where is the CCTV footage?”

According to articles published at the time of Rebecca’s disappearance, in the Los Angeles Times and Cruise Law News, Disney claims to have no footage of Rebecca going overboard. They refuse to “disclose the number of CCTV cameras or their locations for security reasons”.

“If there’s a video that shows your daughter going overboard,” Carver said, “that’s the end of the story. There’s no way someone can go off a ship and it not be recorded.”

At 7am on the Tuesday, I stand on deck 4 as we pass the stretch of ocean where Rebecca went missing. A school of dolphins leap into the air, doing back-flips. Passengers around me gasp. A young crew member from Ireland passes and I ask her about life in the crew cabins. “It’s like being inside Harry Potter’s closet,” she replies.

She means it’s magical, but tiny and dark. Their cabins are windowless, below sea level, like steel boxes. Crew members are contracted to work seven days a week for four-, six- or eight-month stretches (according to how high up the ladder they are) before being allowed a few months off. At 10pm one night, I see some women from Rebecca’s department – Youth Activities – playing with kids on the stairs. It seems they’re on duty as long as there are kids who need entertaining. A former member of staff, Kim Button, has written a blog about life on the Wonder : “I don’t think it’s possible to imagine how tiny a crew room is without actually seeing it! Seriously, your mind can’t even fathom such things. We had staff meetings at 2am, the only time when one of us wasn’t working, so even if your work day ended at 10pm, you couldn’t get much sleep because you had to be in a meeting at 2am… The crew pool is literally one of the few places where crew members can just hang out and be themselves, without fear of acting improperly in front of guests.”

Even though life on board is, for a guest, assiduously magical, with total professionalism and constant Broadway-style high-budget shows, bingo, origami and acupuncture classes, films under the stars and shore excursions to snorkel with tropical fish and ride horses through Mexican rainforests, from time to time I detect tiny flashes of cabin fever. I watch a children’s entertainer try out a move in which he throws a stuffed pelican to his assistant. It accidentally hits her in the face. “You’re supposed to catch the pelican!” he snaps.

“My boss,” she mutters, looking embarrassed.

In a shore excursion, a Mexican crew member asks some passengers to stand in a straight line, two by two, while we wait for the bus. Every passenger feels the need to say something facetiously passive-aggressive in response.

“Oh, a straight line!” one says.

“Can it not be a little crooked?” says another.

And so on, practically all the way down the line. The crew member looks upset and embarrassed.

I ’ve decided the only place Rebecca could have fallen from is the deck 4 jogging track. The railings everywhere else are just too high. She was a keep-fit fanatic. My theory is that after the 5.45am phone call, she went for a jog and slipped. So I’m surprised to spot four CCTV cameras on deck 4 – two on the port side, two on the starboard, evidently capturing every inch of the deck. They’re hard to see at first as they’re shaped like long tubes and look like some kind of nautical equipment.

A man in yellow overalls is varnishing a railing. I glance anxiously inside the atrium. There’s a big Cinderella party going on. Someone is singing a song about how we have to have “faith, trust and pixie dust”. There’s a crew party going on somewhere, too – I hear massive screeching and laughter from behind a steel door. It sounds very different from the guest parties, like a pressure cooker letting off steam.

I sidle up to the man doing the varnishing. “That girl who went missing back in March,” I say. “She must have fallen from this deck?”

He looks surprised: “No, she went from deck 5.”

“But there’s no outside space on deck 5,” I say.

“Go to deck 10, walk to the front of the ship and look down,” he says. “You’ll see the crew swimming pool. That’s where she went from. The starboard side.”

“How do you know this?” I ask him.

“I was on the ship that day. Everyone knows.”

“How?” I ask.

“They found her slipper,” he says.

I walk up to deck 10 and look down. And I see it. The crew swimming pool looks nice – bigger than some of the guest pools. But it’s the swimming pool equivalent of an inside cabin. There is no view of the ocean because behind the railings is a high steel wall. It reaches well above head height. There is no way someone could accidentally fall from there.

Back on deck 4, the man is still varnishing.

“I saw it,” I say.

“God bless her,” he says.

“It must be a very intense life, working on the Disney Wonder,” I say. “You’ve got those tiny, claustrophobic cabins. The passengers are very demanding. You work every day for six months. You have to be a Disney-type person the whole time, even when you’re varnishing railings…”

He looks at me as if I’m nuts. “We don’t spend any time in our cabins,” he says. “We just sleep and shower there. We spend our free time in the mess hall or by the crew pool.”

A group of his fellow deck workers join us. “Disney aren’t slave masters,” one says. “We get to go on shore. We get breaks. Everything you’ve got up here, we’ve got down there.” He points to the bowels of the ship. “We’ve got a library, a gym, a games room, a swimming pool. I don’t have a flatscreen TV or a gym at home. I have them here. The only thing I miss is my family.”

“But all that having to be on show for the guests all the time…” I say.

“All the big smiles and happiness,” someone replies, “it’s all real. You couldn’t act that.”

“Disney wouldn’t hire you if you weren’t that sort of person,” someone else says.

“But what about Rebecca Coriam?” I say. “Did you know her?”

A few of them nod. “She was a lovely girl,” one says. “Not emotional. Just like everyone here. Nice and friendly and happy.”

“Then why…?” I say.

“I don’t know,” he shrugs. “But there’s nothing dark or sinister going on. This is Disney.”

Over the next few days I ask more people, and every time I get the exact same response: she jumped from the front of deck 5, at the crew pool.

“Disney knows exactly what happened,” one crew member tells me. “That phone call she had? It was taped. Everything here is taped. There’s CCTV everywhere. Disney have the tape.”

“What’s in the tape?” I ask her.

“I don’t know, but I know someone who knew her well. Would you like me to introduce you?”

And so, after everyone has gone to bed, I have a brief conversation with one of Rebecca’s closer friends from the ship.

“Do you know what was in the tape?” I ask him.

He shakes his head. “Not exactly. I know she was having a fight with her partner.” He pauses. “What’s it ever about? It’s about love, relationships. There’s no mystery. She was just a lovely girl with underlying sadness.”

The next morning, as we sail back into the Port of Los Angeles, a crew member beckons me over. He says he’s heard I’ve been asking questions about Rebecca Coriam and he wants me to know that suicide is not the only possibility. Maybe, he says, after the phone call she took a walk to clear her head and the wind lifted her away.

“But the steel wall is so high down there,” I say.

“I was on the ship that day,” he says. “It was a rocky day. One time a friend of mine was called early in the morning. The deck by the crew pool was really windy and slippy, and someone was walking there, and my friend was called to get them inside. Disney took it really seriously. The guy got sent home.”

“So she could have fallen?” I ask.

“She could have fallen,” he says.

We pull into the port. This is where Mike and Ann came on 25 March after receiving a call from Disney executive Jim Orie to say Rebecca was missing. They were here in time to see the passengers disembark.

“We were hoping we could have spoken to some of them, but we never got the opportunity,” Mike told me back in Chester. Ann added: “They kept us in a car with the windows all blacked out.”

“Did you get the feeling they were deliberately keeping you away from the passengers?”

Mike: “Well…”

Ann: “Probably.”

“But Disney were being polite and helpful and sympathetic?” I asked.

“Oh yeah,” said Mike.

After the passengers had disembarked, Mike and Ann were taken on board. They were put in a room that quickly filled with Disney executives and the girl Rebecca had spoken to on the phone at 5.45am.

“Did you ask her what they’d talked about?” I asked. “Why Rebecca had been upset?”

They shook their heads. “We would have liked to have asked more, but by the time we’d flown over we were jet-lagged,” Ann said. “We hadn’t slept since the Tuesday. We flew out on the Friday. We hadn’t eaten…”

“With hindsight, it might have been better if we’d gone out a little later,” Mike said.

“When you were more able to ask questions?”

He nodded. “But your daughter’s missing, so you don’t think like that, do you? Also, we wanted to be quick to meet some of the passengers.”

Mike remembers thinking, as he sat in that room on the ship, that their uselessness at getting information wouldn’t be a problem because there would be plenty of other opportunities to ask questions. They had no idea they would never have another chance.

The next day, 1 November, Rebecca is discussed in the House of Commons . Her MP, Stephen Mosley, says Disney was “more interested in getting the ship back to sea than in the case of a missing crew member” and “it’s appalling” that only one policeman from the Bahamas – “an authority internationally recognised as almost toothless” – was called to investigate. He said “flag of convenience” countries such as the Bahamas – as they’re called in the shipping world – shouldn’t be left to conduct these kinds of investigations.

I call Disney. Their spokesperson tells me, “If you talked to crew members, you’ll know Rebecca’s disappearance has been difficult and heartbreaking for everyone.” And beyond that they can say nothing much else except, “The police in the Bahamas are also telling us the investigation is still ongoing. They have not shared a timeline with us, either.”

“Is it true the telephone call Rebecca made shortly before vanishing was taped?” I ask.

“That pertains to specific details about the investigation and so it’s not appropriate for us to share that kind of information,” she replies.

“Is there anything you can tell me?” I ask.

“I can tell you we wish we knew what happened as much as anyone,” she says.

The officer in the Bahamas, Paul Rolle, doesn’t return my calls.

I call Mike and Ann. I tell them about my week on the ship. When I get to the part about the waiter saying, “It didn’t happen”, Mike sighs and says, “Oh. Yeah.”

I tell them about all the CCTV cameras and Mike says, “They could have had them fitted since.” (It’s a measure of him that he’ll not descend to conspiracy theories about Disney.) I tell them about the high steel wall on deck 5, about how that sadly points to suicide, although not definitely. I ask if I’m telling them things they didn’t know.

“No, we’ve been through all this,” Mike says.

“Was there any underlying sadness?” I ask.

“No, no, no,” Mike says. “There isn’t.”

“A crew member told me Disney have a tape of the telephone conversation,” I say.

There’s a silence. “Did they say...” Mike pauses. “Was there any idea…?

“No,” I say. “No idea.”

I say I regret never talking to one of her really good friends on board. And then – later that night – a woman telephones. I’ll call her Melissa. She says she’d never have talked to me had Mike and Ann not asked her to.

“When did you last see Rebecca?” I ask her.

“It was at 11pm, the night before she went missing. We’d both just finished work, and she was trying to pull my false eyelashes off.” She laughs. “She had her head on my knee and we were chatting and messing about.”

“Where was this?” I ask.

“In the secret corridor,” she says. “There’s a whole different world underneath the ship deck. We have parties down there, private showings of films. It’s absolutely brilliant. Bex said, ‘Are you going to the bar?’ I said, ‘Yeah’ but I didn’t for some reason. And that was the last time I saw her.” She pauses. “She was the most amazing little burst of energy. You were completely drawn to her. She loved life. Bouncing around all the time. She was one of my best friends, but it could get a bit much.” She laughs again. “You come in from a heavy night and she’d be zapping around everywhere. Playing tricks on you. She’s very mischievous.”

“Someone told me she’d had a fight with her partner,” I say.

“That ship absolutely seethes with rumours,” Melissa says. “Yes. She was in a relationship, and there were problems, and it was upsetting her. It was a very, very intense relationship. It was great and then it was awful. They were both fiery, passionate personalities.”

“Do you think that’s what the call was about?”

“I can’t think of any other reason why she’d have been upset and wandering around by herself at 6am,” Melissa says. “From what I’ve heard, she was on the phone to a mutual friend. Not the girl she’d been having the relationship with.”

And then Melissa starts telling me some odd little things. She says after Rebecca went missing, Disney had a little ceremony. They put flowers at the wall next to the crew pool, “where they think she might have jumped from. But they didn’t say. They put these flowers down but refused to answer any questions as to why. It was left unsaid. It really stirred things up. Why are they putting them there? Nothing was clear.”

“I thought they knew she went from there because they found her slipper,” I say.

“Those weren’t her flip-flops,” says Melissa. “Mike and Ann showed them to me. They were too big. They weren’t her style. They were pink and flowery and Hawaiian. I’d never seen her wear them. Why didn’t Disney come to me or her girlfriend and say, ‘Can you identify these as Bex’s?’ Instead they put them in her room for when her parents got on board. Who does that?” She pauses. “Disney swear they’ve told us everything they know, which is that they don’t know anything, but most of us think, bullshit. Someone must know something. Someone’s covering something up.”

Melissa has her own theory. “Bex was a bit of a risk taker. She was always pouring soap over people. Classic Bex. I was welcoming a family on board one time and she came over and rugby tackled me to the ground!”

Melissa thinks she went to the crew pool at 6am to be alone, with no intention of harming herself. “She loved deck 5. It’s where we always used to go. I bet she climbed on to the wall and sat on the ledge in a ‘I need to feel like I’m off the ship for a second’ way. She wouldn’t have thought, ‘It’s very high. I might fall.’ She’d have just sat on it and thought, ‘Oh crap. What have I done?’ And fell.” She pauses. “Security on that ship is ultra-tight. You can’t get on or off without your ID card. Down by the crew pool there’s HR offices, the crew gym, the crew office that deals with passports, money, documentation. And they’re saying there’s no CCTV cameras?”

“But why would they suppress that?” I ask.

“To try to protect the brand. If it was 6am and they were doing their job and watching the front, someone must have seen her go over. Or if they didn’t, they’re covering up why they didn’t.” She falls silent. Then she says, “Bex made hundreds of people happy. The passengers loved her. They all loved her. You’d think Disney would give something back. They owe it to her to find out what happened.” rebecca-coriam.com

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Watch CBS News

FBI closes probe of vanished cruise ship honeymooner

By Stephanie Slifer

January 7, 2015 / 5:24 PM EST / CBS News

The FBI in Connecticut has closed its investigation into the disappearance of George Smith IV, a Greenwich man who vanished from his honeymoon cruise in July 2005 and whose family believes he was intentionally sent overboard.

WATCH: 48 Hours: "Murder at Sea?"

"We were told by the Connecticut FBI that there was not enough evidence to prove George had been murdered and that his death may have been the result of an accident," the Smith family wrote in a Facebook post on Wednesday.

The family says they are "outraged and disgusted" at the FBI's decision to close the investigation. They say they plan to fight for the case to be moved to another jurisdiction, such as New York.

The 26-year-old Smith and his bride, Jennifer, were on their honeymoon in waters between Greece and Turkey on the Royal Caribbean ship "Brilliance of the Seas," when the new groom went overboard, in what the ship's captain said was likely an accident.

The 26-year-old's parents, however, are convinced he was murdered.

"I have no doubt in my mind whatsoever that my son was murdered on that cruise ship," Maureen Smith, George's mother, told CBS News' 48 Hours.

The Smith family has offered a $100,000 reward for information leading directly to an arrest and conviction in the case.

Smith's disappearance was preceded by a night of heaving drinking and gambling in the ship's casino. A passenger in a neighboring room said he heard men arguing on the Smiths' balcony that night. Another passenger claimed to hear furniture being moved. Smith's bride was later found passed out in a hallway. The next morning passengers photographed a bloodstain on a lifeboat canopy beneath the couple's balcony.

48 Hours reported last year that Michael Jones, the Smith family attorney, said a video involving three of four men who were the last to see Smith alive could be key in cracking the case.

"They pass a video camera around filming themselves commenting about George's death in a very callous way," Jones told 48 Hours. "But the really incriminating statement is one of them stands up at the end of the tape and sort of hunches his shoulders and flashes gang signs and says, 'Told ya I was gangsta' and in the context of the discussion about George's death, almost as if he's bragging about having done something to George."

None of the men in the video have been charged and all say they had nothing to do with George Smith's death.

In the Smith family's Facebook post Wednesday, they expressed anger that their son's belongings from the boat, which they say may hold forensic value, are now going to be returned to Jennifer, their former daughter-in-law who has since remarried.

"The evidence will be given to a woman whose whereabouts are unknown when George was thrown overboard... and who has done everything in her power to stop us from finding out what happened to George on July 5, 2005," the post reads.

Stephanie Slifer covers crime and justice for CBSNews.com.

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Cruise Ship Law Blog

Canadian Authorities Discover Remains Of Suspected Cruise Ship Disappearance Victim

Written by LM&W Lipcon, Margulies & Winkleman, P.A. is made up of attorneys who are nationally recognized industry leaders in the field of maritime and admiralty law. Our team of cruise lawyers has well over two centuries of combined experience, has successfully handled over 3,000 cases, and has recovered over 300 million dollars in damages for our clients. Several of our attorneys have even been selected to “Best Lawyers” ® by US News & World Report every year as far back as 2016.

Cruise ship disappearances happen more often than anyone can imagine and much more often than are reported. Between the over-serving of alcohol , assault incidents on the high seas and various other accidents that can take place onboard cruise ships, statistics show that over 30 passengers have mysteriously disappeared from vessels in the past four years alone and federal authorities are finally starting to get the message that something must be done to improve the safety of all whom are onboard cruise ships.

Attention was recently given to the subject of cruise disappearances after the remains of a woman who had vanished from a vessel several years ago were uncovered.

Police suspect the bones of a deceased victim that were recently found on Merry Island in Canada were those of Merrian Carver. Age 40 at the time of her disappearance, Carver vanished from the Celebrity Cruise ship Mercury while it was on an Alaska itinerary in August 2004.

Police have already contacted the alleged victim’s father, Kendall Carver, in Phoenix, Arizona hoping that DNA tests will be able to give them answers as to whether in fact those are the remains of Merrian Carver and what could have possibly happened to her.

Merrian, the mother of one child, left on the cruise ship without notifying any of her family members. The second day of the itinerary, the cabin attendant noticed that no one had used the bed, and reported the matter to her boss, who promised to look into the incident, but told the attendant to “just forget it, and do your job.”

Doing as she was told, the attendant continued to do her job, placing the customary chocolates on the pillow of the untouched bed night after night. However, Merrian was never seen again.

After the vessel docked in Vancouver, Merrian’s possessions were packed away and no one even notified the police or her family that she was missing. It wasn’t until Merrian’s father reported her missing that police learned of her cruise ship disappearance.

To this day, Kendall Carver has spent tens of thousands of dollars trying to investigate what happened to his daughter on the ship. He has even gotten the U.S. Congress to investigate the cruise industry after his daughter disappeared without a trace.

Carver, appalled by the delay in reporting the disappearance of his daughter, had this to say:

“It took the cruise ship company three days to conclude that Merrian had been on the cruise. By then 26 days had passed since her disappearance. They confirmed that she hadn’t slept in her cabin after the first night, but hinted that this was not unusual. She could have spent the night in another cabin and gone ashore in Vancouver without having to document it, they said.”

The cruise company claimed that films from the surveillance cameras were erased after 12 days, which was a flat out lie – the videos were erased after 30 days. Unfortunately, before that was known, the videos were deleted and it was too late to review them. Merrian’s case is a prime example of the disturbing reality surrounding cruise ship vacations: there is no police onboard and it is highly unlikely that a disappearance case will be resolved quickly.

Our attorneys here at Lipcon have represented the loved ones of many cruise passengers that have gone missing over the years and unfortunately, we can attest to the fact that cruise operators don’t act as quickly as they should after a passenger is reported missing. Since many of these types of disappearances involve passengers going overboard, vessel operators must act fast once the news of the missing person is reported and must return to the area where the victim was last seen. If this does not happen, or if for some reason the cruise line is found partially responsible for the incident, the victim’s loved ones may be entitled to file a lawsuit and claim compensation for their pain and suffering at the hands of a negligent cruise company.

Knowing this already after experiencing first-hand the disappearance of his own daughter, Kendall Carver formed the group International Cruise Victims, together with others who have lost loved ones on the high seas.

Between 2003 and 2006, 24 cruise passengers disappeared – and this doesn’t even include suicides and accidents caused by intoxication. Since then, ten more passengers and two crew members have been reported missing. This has led the U.S. Congress to investigate cruise ship security and find out if the industry is in fact guilty of suppressing or under-reporting disappearances.

“A cruise ship is a small town,” explained Congressman Christopher Shays. “Traveling on a cruise can be the way to commit the perfect crime.”

The loved ones of missing cruise passengers and crewmembers often do not obtain the answers they deserve from the Cruise Line absent hiring an experienced maritime lawyer . However, those that usually do at least get answers to their questions and some form of justice for the matter usually in the form of monetary compensation for the life lost. If someone you love went missing on the high seas, contact our cruise accident lawyers today. Our attorneys have represented hundreds of victims since 1971 and will gladly discuss your options with you.

We also have released a free app for Smartphones titled “ Cruise Ship Lawyer ,” which allows victims of any form of accident onboard to document the incident as soon as it happens and contact us for assistance. The app is available to download right now for both iPhone and Android users and having it might help you or a loved one on your next cruise.

Photo Credits:

Merrian Carver – internationalcruisevictims.org Carver family – bizjournals.com Kendall Carver – usatoday.com

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Published on February 6, 2013

Categories: Cruise Disappearances

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