An individual got thrown overboard from the Icon of the Seas this past weekend after the Royal Caribbean cruise liner was on its way to Roatan, Honduras from Miami at the onset of a 7-day Caribbean voyage. The well-liked cruise enthusiast site, Cruise Hive, relayed that a man was thrown overboard when the Icon of the Seas was roughly 300 miles away from Miami.
There are conflicting perspectives on how the individual departed the cruise ship and found himself in the water. Cruise Hive asserts, in the headline of the piece, that the individual purportedly “leaped” although the content references tweets from passengers who indicated that the individual “leaped/fell” overboard or simply “went overboard.” The New York Post also conveyed that the man “leaped” and cited unnamed “officials” as the basis for the assertion. The Independent newspaper similarly reported that the individual “reportedly leaped” as per the New York Post but again presented no eyewitnesses or closed-circuit cameras as proofs. The U.K.’s Daily Mail also affirmed that the man “leaped,” citing only Cruise Hive as the source of the intel.
The initial tweets from Twitter (X) indicated that the individual was rescued after around two hours. AIS tracking reveals the cruise liner turned back and eventually made its way to its previous position. Yesterday morning, I initially reported that the man went overboard and was successfully rescued. Today, I woke up to the grim news that the individual subsequently passed away, apparently succumbing to his injuries from the plunge from the 20-story ship. The specifics of precisely how and why the individual went overboard remain unknown. It is uncertain whether he sustained severe injuries that directly caused his death or whether the two-hour delay in the rescue also contributed to his demise.
The body of the individual was seemingly draped with a blanket as the rescue skiff deployed in the rescue mission returned to the cruise ship, as indicated in photos published on Threads by renowned cruise photographer Alfredo Zayas Cotto.
The Icon of the Seas is Royal Caribbean’s newest colossal cruise vessel that was unveiled with great fanfare earlier this year. As reported by Exploreist, the massive ship features a 17,000-square-foot water park with six water slides and seven pools — including the 40,000-gallon Royal Bay, the largest pool at sea, and Absolute Zero, the biggest ice skating rink at sea. To our knowledge, the Icon of the Seas doesn’t have an advanced automatic man overboard system which might have expedited a rescue within two hours.
In accordance with cruise specialist Dr. Ross Klein, who maintains the authoritative record of individuals going overboard and has presented testimony before the United States Congress multiple times on the subject of cruise ship overboards, this marks the 410th person to have gone overboard from a cruise ship (or ferry) in the past 24 years.
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Update: May 28, 2024
Refer to The New York Post for details on the description provided by a passenger of the ‘Dystopian’ scene on the World’s Biggest Cruise Ship.
Image Credit: Icon of the Seas – Royal Caribbean via MarineLink; AIS tracking – CruiseMapper; Royal Caribbean rescue craft – Alfredo Zayas Cotto via Daily Mail.