‘Man Overboard’: A Look at Cruise Ship Disappearances

Carl Hiaasen’s novel Skinny Dip opens with this line: “At the stroke of eleven on a cool April night, a woman named Joey Perrone went overboard from a luxury deck of the cruise liner M.V. Sun Duchess.” Perrone was tossed overboard by her husband. She survived the impact and clung to a “bale of grass,” then, with the help of a sympathetic ex-investigator, embarked on 300-plus pages of detective work and glorious revenge. When I read the book, it felt fresh. I hadn’t heard much about cruise ship crime drama or disappearances. My, how that has changed.

According to a story by Jane Archer in the Telegraph, more than 30 people have disappeared from cruise ships in the past four years. More have gone overboard and been accounted for. Some jumped. Some fell. Some were allegedly pushed. Some became television news staples. For a look at who has gone overboard and why, check out Cruise Junkie’s comprehensive chart and list. It tracks all reported cases of passengers going overboard since 1995.

“Not surprisingly, cruise lines don’t want to talk about losing people overboard,” Archer writes, “but the Passenger Shipping Association maintains incidents like this are rare and that cruising is one of the safest holidays you can take.”

Perhaps, but according to Archer, some cruisers are getting sick of the delays and missed excursions that often occur when passengers go overboard. One possible outcome, according to Archer: more safety precautions aboard ships.

“How long will it be before they feel the need to patrol the decks or ‘box in’ balconies to stop drunken idiots from going over the side?” Archer writes. “While I agree it is very sad that people get so high (or low) that they feel the need to jump, that would be the real tragedy.”

 

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