What Happens When Someone Falls Overboard on a Cruise?

[Kenny1113]

Even those cases are rare, and if you're conscious you should be able to put up a hell of a fight.

It's really pretty simple. Don't let yourself get into a situation where someone wants to do you harm (the one case I know of where a woman was attacked was on HAL, and the crew member felt like she had insulted his family (and there was pretty solid evidence he wasn't stable anyway)...so just don't curse - and even then she was able to prevent him from throwing her overboard). It's not like people are roving the ship saying "Hmm...who can I throw overboard?"

LOL

 

[Dug720]

LOL

You're welcome!

Thinking about that actually reminded me of a guy I worked with as a cashier on a "showboat" that did breakfast, lunch and dinner cruises. We all referred to him as Barney Fife because he was DEFINITELY country and he wanted to be a sheriff. He was always finding something to fuss about "endangering" us - his favorite topic was the axes secured to the walls but for use in case of emergency. "Any psycho could grab one of those and attack everyone on here!" Like psychos were taking country-music themed breakfast and lunch cruises or Broadway-style review dressy dinner cruises.

 

[JimGA]

You are guaranteed to get wet for sure.

 

[KLK622]

On the March 1st Wonder cruise Mr. MOB was called at 1:30 am into all the staterooms by the Captain. I couldn't sleep the rest of the night because I was so worried about what had happened (we could also feel the ship stop and turn around and remain idle for a few hours). The next day at noon the Captain came on announced that they had rescued a person from a boat (or that had fallen from a boat-I couldn't really hear).

My comment doesn't really have anything to do with the original question-but I did want to let people know that Mr. MOB can be called for reasons other than somebody jumping or falling overboard in case you ever hear it on the middle of the night on a cruise!

 

[Cambray]

Went on Disney's Wonder earlier this year. There's no way someone is "falling" off one of these ships!

 

[mmouse37]

DCL has Man Overboard detection system on their ships. Should someone go overboard an alarm goes off on the bridge, the camera playback then shows who / what it was.

To add to this, we were speaking with the Chief Engineer onboard last week and we talked about MOB situations. He said they also have heat seeking systems that will alert them when someone or even something goes overboard.

MJ

 

[Figee17]

On the March 1st Wonder cruise Mr. MOB was called at 1:30 am into all the staterooms by the Captain. I couldn't sleep the rest of the night because I was so worried about what had happened (we could also feel the ship stop and turn around and remain idle for a few hours). The next day at noon the Captain came on announced that they had rescued a person from a boat (or that had fallen from a boat-I couldn't really hear).

My comment doesn't really have anything to do with the original question-but I did want to let people know that Mr. MOB can be called for reasons other than somebody jumping or falling overboard in case you ever hear it on the middle of the night on a cruise!

We were on that cruise! It was a Cuban they "rescued." They treated him onboard and then the Coast Guard picked him up (before dawn, I believe). It was definitely difficult to sleep after that!!

 

[Tonka's Skipper]

Disney has had the cameras for years, the big advancement as MM37, pointed out is the heat tracking. The DCL ships can now trace if the object going overboard is a person vs a large object like a deck chair.

AKK

 

[MakiraMarlena]

It has has been noted it is very very difficult to just fall off a modern cruise ship. It's even more rare to have a person thrown overboard by another person(s). In most documented cases it is found either that the person who went overboard jumped over themselves, was engaging in some kind of behavior that caused them to go overboard, or there were no witnesses, no evidence and no indication as to how the person actually went overboard.

the only case I'm aware of where a person at least attempted to throw somone overboard is the HAL case, in which the crew member decided the passenger had insulted his family in an offhand remark, stalked her around the ship for hours intending to assault her in retaliation before he figured there were too many people around, then hid in her stateroom (he was her room steward) and attacked her after she went to bed. He beat her up, raped her and tried to throw her off her balcony. but she resisted and he was not successful in doing so; in fact she managed to escape from him.

He was convicted on US federal charges of attempted murder and aggravated sexual abuse and sentenced to prison for 30 years and 5 months.

There was also the George Smith case where it's often alleged that the group of men he was hanging around with may have thrown him overboard in an attempt to rob his stateroom but nobody was ever charged and no one has confessed or anything like that.