CRUISE SHIP CONTROVERSY

Mystery surrounds most
disappearances on cruise ships

More than 50 people have gone overboard from cruise ships in the last decade, including suicides, unsolved cases and a handful of rescues, an analysis of incidents found.

Most recently, a 15-year-old Irish girl was reported to have fallen overboard from the Costa Magica at about 2 a.m. on Jan. 6 as the ship sailed toward Cozumel, Mexico. And the disappearance last year of honeymooner George Smith IV — apparently pushed from a Royal Caribbean ship in the Mediterranean — has become fodder for cable-television news programs.

"It is unfortunate that these types of incidents happen, but no one wants this George Smith case cleared up more than we do," said Capt. Bill Wright, senior vice president of fleet operations for Royal Caribbean International. There also have been dozens of other, lesser-known incidents, too:

• A Vietnamese-American couple, both seniors, willingly plunged to their deaths from the Carnival Destiny last May in an apparent suicide pact off the coast of Venezuela, witnesses reported.

• A 23-year-old man jumped off the Sovereign of the Seas in 2001 after losing $9,000 in the ship's casino. The captain told passengers a small gambling ship off Nassau, the Bahamas, picked him up. (COVER UP?)

• Annette Mizener, a 37-year-old woman from Waukesha, Wis., disappeared while on a vacation with her family aboard the Carnival Pride off California in December 2004.

Surviving families and plaintiffs' attorneys called last week for stronger safety standards. "We would give anything to see Annette alive again," said Waldemar Knerler, Mizener's father, who searched frantically for his daughter on the last night of their cruise. "They say there's a silver lining to everything, and from this horrible event, I would like to see Congress get involved to make the cruise industry accountable for crimes that happen to the American people."

Ships have experienced 52 cases of people going overboard, most of them during Caribbean and Bahamas cruises, according to a database compiled by Canadian professor and cruise critic Ross Klein. Florida Today, The News-Press' sister paper in Melbourne, obtained a copy of his database, and analyzed it for this report. Statistically, such incidents are rare, given that more than 8 million passengers vacation aboard cruise ships each year, Wright said.

Klein, who has researched the cruise industry for books and a Web site, compiled the database of "overboard" cases based on a global search of media reports and accounts corroborated by at least two witnesses.

At least 53 people — including the Vietnamese-American couple, in one case — have gone overboard from cruise ships in the past decade, 40 of them to their deaths. That's about twice as many cases as mentioned recently by the industry, he said. A Florida Today analysis of the data also found:

• Suicide, suspected suicide or attempted suicide was the leading, known motive for people to jump overboard from cruise ships. That motive accounted for 18 of the cases.

• In 20 cases, (20 cases TOO many) the cause or motive remains unknown. Most of these passengers vanished while their ships were at sea, passengers reported.

• There were just two accidental deaths in 10 years, including a 19-year-old man who slipped and fell into Tampa Bay while climbing on balcony railing.

• There was just one known murder: A former mental patient threw a 69-year-old New Mexico woman overboard during a cruise through Norway's fjords in 2001.