A 41-year-old passenger is missing after falling into the Atlantic Ocean from a Royal Caribbean cruise to the Bahamas.
The Coast Guard says that the incident took place on 23 December about 100 miles off the coast of Charleston, South Carolina.
The agency dispatched a rescue plane to carry out an aerial search for the unnamed passenger. The search was suspended after rescuers searched more than 1,625 square miles for eight hours.
A spokesperson for Royal Caribbean Group confirmed that a guest on its Vision of the Seas cruise ship had been lost overboard.
“The ship and crew immediately reported the incident to local authorities and launched a search and rescue mission,” the spokesperson told The Post and Courier newspaper.
#FinalUpdate: The @USCG has suspended the search efforts for the missing cruise ship passenger 127 mi east of #Charleston.
— USCGSoutheast (@USCGSoutheast) December 25, 2023
Coast Guard crews searched more than 1,625 square miles and 8 hours.
Anyone with new information is asked to call @USCG Sector Charleston: 843-740-7050
“Out of privacy for the guest and their family, we have no additional details to share.”
The company’s “8 Night Bahamas & Perfect Day Holiday Cruise” departed from Baltimore, Maryland, on 21 December.
Fellow passenger Jake Utzinger, a 21-year-old from New Jersey, told the newspaper he was in his cabin at around 7.45pm when the captain announced that someone had fallen overboard.
“I instantly felt sick to my stomach knowing that one of our fellow travellers had been lost at sea,” he told the newspaper.
He said that passengers rushed to the pool deck to help try to spot the missing man and that the liner stopped for six hours as they desperately and unsuccessfully searched.
The liner is due to stop in Port Canaveral, Florida, before continuing to the Bahamas and returning to Baltimore on 30 December.
It has a total capacity of 2,000 passengers and 700 crew members, according to Royal Caribbean.
