Last week, Kristy Manzanares was found dead on a cruise ship off Alaska. She had been killed, allegedly by her husband Kenneth.
The 39-year-old was allegedly killed because she was “laughing at him too much” court papers revealed. This case has thrust cruise ships and their safety back into the spotlight.
In 2017 alone, eight people have allegedly been murdered on a cruise ship, report says, who keep a record of people who have died or gone missing on cruises. Six people have died after falling overboard, three have passed away due to an accident and a further six have died from natural causes.
In 2002, a 42-year-old Australian woman, Dianne Brimble, made international headline when she was found dead on board a cruise ship after a drug overdose.
Her body was found on the floor of a cabin that belonged to four men and her death was treated as suspicious. While the men were trialled for the death, none were sentenced.
While most causes of death on a cruise are illness or natural causes – murders and disappearances are surprisingly common.
One of the most recent disappearances was British woman Rebecca Coriam who disappeared from the cruise ship she was working on off the coast of Mexico on March 22, 2011.
She was last seen in the crew lounge talking on the phone and has not been seen since, despite an extensive search.
Passenger Amy Lynn Bradley disappeared nearly two decades ago when she was on a cruise with her parents and brother.
Amy’s father saw her in their cabin at 5:30am the morning she went missing but when he awoke again at 6am she had disappeared. Since then there have been a few potential sightings of Amy but she remains a missing person.
Then there’s James Scavone, a 22-year-old man who went missing in 1999 after making a visit to the bathroom at 1am never to be seen again.
While disappearances are rare a recent Reddit thread asked cruise workers about their jobs and one of the users said there are at least three deaths on board each cruise ship per month.
User Pixielix said: “There are morgues below deck and a jail cell. We get at least three deaths onboard a month.”
They explained that most of the deaths are from older passengers and are not treated as suspicious.
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Source: Daily Star
Seems like irresponsible journalism to me. Highlights a few numbers with no context to evaluate whether the premise of the article is accurate. The article highlights that 23 passengers (and crew presumably since the 2011 incident mentioned was a crew member) have unfortunately passes away this year on board the ships. However, that it out of how many passengers (and crew?) carried to date. If you base on the industry estimate of close to 25 million passengers expected for the year, this number is quite small. For example, Miami-Dade county in South Florida has a population of 2.7 million in 2016. Through July 30 there have been 53 homicides. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions. Yes, even one suspicious or accidental death is too many but lets discuss it properly. We should expect better of our journalists.
No discussion of safety, no “scary reason” given to justify the clickbaity title. Just an anonymous Reddit quote as sole cited source. Is this buzzfeed?