A 41-year-old holidaymaker has vanished after falling overboard on a Royal Caribbean cruise to the Bahamas.
The passenger, who hasn’t been named, fell from the ‘Vision of the Seas’ ship, sparking a massive search-and-rescue mission.
Despite a large number of law enforcement officers being called in to look for the missing passenger, the Coast Guard said it had stopped the rescue mission on Monday morning, according to WCBD.
The rescue mission saw the cruise stop as a strobe lamp scanned the ocean for around six hours.
Despite the best efforts of the crew, the man has not been seen since he was aboard the Royal Caribbean ship on Sunday, which was named the ‘8 Night Bahamas & Perfect Day Holiday Cruise.’
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Passengers said the cruise left from Baltimore on Friday.
New Jersey film student Jake Utzinger, 21, told the Post and Courier that he was on holiday with his girlfriend’s family when the tragedy struck, with the captain announcing a passenger had fallen overboard at around 7:45 pm.
“I instantly felt sick to my stomach knowing that one of our fellow travellers had been lost at sea,” he said. Utzinger said passengers rushed to the side of the vessel to lend an “extra pair of eyes” to the search.
Colin Schappi, another passenger, said he realised the dire situation when he heard crew members shouting: “Oscar! Oscar! Oscar! Starboard!”
A call used by those at sea to alert others that someone has fallen overboard.
He said: “We also noticed that all the staff kind of made a face at each other. They reacted to that news, but overall no one knew what was going on at first.
“Then they did another announcement explaining what happened a few minutes later.”
After the search was called off, Utzinger said it is “definitely going to be rough continuing this voyage knowing that a family is missing their loved one.”
The cruise is set to continue sailing through the Caribbean for the rest of the week, and is only returning to Baltimore on Saturday after several more stop-offs including the next one at Port Canaveral, Florida.
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