Eclipse passenger lost overboard in English Channel

Further...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13482453

Sympathies go to his family & friends....

Crew member, not pax - not that it makes it any better.

Further...

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13482453

 

 

Sympathies go to his family & friends....

It's fairly hard to fall off one of these ships unless you commit suicide, are thrown overboard by your shipmates, or you accidently fall because you failed to follow appropriate safety measures while performing routine maintenance.

They have enough cameras on board, so I'm sure they will get to the bottom of this.

http://news.travel.aol.com/2011/05/21/celebrity-cruise-worker-jumps-into-english-channel-presumed-dea/

It says the crew member jumped off the ship. Sad news.

As a passenger who was on this cruise and just disembarked today, I can say this was a terribly sad experience for all. Many of the guests waiting to disembark this morning were clearly upset and shocked by what happened.

It was indeed a crew member who jumped off the 5th floor promenade deck and jumped the railings. The Captain confirmed to all guests this morning that he has been seen jumping off the railing on the ships CCTV.

Unfortuntely, it was a dramatic night for all as a helicopter had just landed on the ship to take a medical evacuation and as the focus was on the safe departure of the helicopter, a futher announcement was made giving the "Oscar, Oscar, Oscar" message which we all knew was an even graver incident.

Although the ship circled for quite some time, we had flood lights and many crew looking out for the person overboard, and also the marine rescue helicopter deployed, the search was called off.

Indeed a sad incident and my thoughts go out to this gentleman's family.

As a passenger who was on this cruise and just disembarked today, I can say this was a terribly sad experience for all. Many of the guests waiting to disembark this morning were clearly upset and shocked by what happened.

 

It was indeed a crew member who jumped off the 5th floor promenade deck and jumped the railings. The Captain confirmed to all guests this morning that he has been seen jumping off the railing on the ships CCTV.

 

Unfortuntely, it was a dramatic night for all as a helicopter had just landed on the ship to take a medical evacuation and as the focus was on the safe departure of the helicopter, a futher announcement was made giving the "Oscar, Oscar, Oscar" message which we all knew was an even graver incident.

 

Although the ship circled for quite some time, we had flood lights and many crew looking out for the person overboard, and also the marine rescue helicopter deployed, the search was called off.

 

Indeed a sad incident and my thoughts go out to this gentleman's family.

I've just returned from that cruise and yes it was terribly sad. Apparently the crewmember was due to return home today so that maybe had something to do with his state of mind. He jumped from deck 3, not deck 5 though, not that it makes any difference !

where abouts on deck 3 did he jump from as that is where guest relations is and the only place i can think he would be able to get out is from the helicopter pad as there is no promenade on this deck? i know this is a bit of an iffy coment but i'm curious....

where abouts on deck 3 did he jump from as that is where guest relations is and the only place i can think he would be able to get out is from the helicopter pad as there is no promenade on this deck? i know this is a bit of an iffy coment but i'm curious....

He went overboard at the same time as the helicopter evacuation of the sick passenger and as there was a lot of sudden activity in that area I'm guessing he could have been part of the evacuation team. It was very confusing at the time and there were lots of rumours going around, but it wasn't until breakfast on Saturday morning that the captain confirmed what had happened.

None of us really know for sure where the man jumped from the ship other than starboard. I've seen several locations mentioned and I've also seen an article that says he worked in the galley, however, the media notoriously gets things wrong, so I don't know if ANYof that is true or not. The helipad is level with deck 7 and we were in 7107 (portside) which overlooks the helipad. We could open the curtains on the front windows of our stateroom (with lights off inside our cabin) and watch the heli-evacuation taking place. The "Oscar, Oscar, Oscar, starboard" was called as we walked back from the MDR after dinner about 10:15pm. The cruise director had made an announcement earlier during dinner and told us that there was to be a medical heli evacuation and asked that no one take flash pictures of the evacuation and that we stay inside during this activity. I come from a Navy family and I'm very aware of how incredibly dangerous it is to land aircraft and take off from a ship. We stayed in the dining room a while longer and then left as it began to clear out. We were in the 7th floor port side corridor nearly to our stateroom when the "Oscar, starboard" was first called. My initial thought on hearing the "Oscar" was that some crew member involved in the heli-evacuation had been blown overboard or fallen overboard as a result of the heli evacuation - accidents during aircraft landing and departure from ships can happen easily - but that is NOT the case. The news reports indiicate that this crew member willingly climbed over the rail and jumped and that there is CCTV video of this incident.

When we heard the "Oscar" we were very startled and we rushed to our cabin and watched the heli-evacuation take place from our darkened stateroom and I was surprised to see that all appeared normal in that area - not like someone went overboard from the helipad - there was no one looking over the starboard side. Crew members were all doing their jobs and working together properly, looking vigilant, focused and controlled, but not stressed. So, I realized that the Oscar was a completely separate incident and had nothing to do with the heli evacuation. The helicopter was already on the landing pad and as we watched the patient was loaded quickly and they took off moments later. We decided to go find out what was going on on the starboard side and left our stateroom. I was a bit alarmed to see a ship's officer in the forward corridor on 7 near the starboard side. Of course, I have no idea what the officer was doing - it may have been completely unrelated to the "Oscar" but it was the ONLY time during the cruise I saw a ship's officer in that area - the ship was not sold out - the officer may have been observing the med-evac from an unoccupied stateroom overlooking the helipad for all I know. We went up to 14 starboard where we heard conflicting reports from other passengers that either a passenger or crew member was trying to look at the helicopter and went overboard. The ships officers were literally everywhere on the ship - looking over the starboard side. We saw a helicoptor shine a light down in the water alongside the starboard side of the ship looking for the person who went overboard. The ship immediately began circling and aimed searchlights at the water from both sides and I later heard from passengers who had cabins on the starboard side that the ship deployed boats on the starboard side as well. We could not see these on the port side. Meanwhile the cruise director asked all passengers to make sure that all members of their party were accounted for and to notify them of anyone missing immediately. Three men's names were paged throughout the ship. The first 2 men paged must have called in quickly as they were only paged once and not paged again, but a third name was paged 3 times and the cruise director, sounded very somber and upset as he repeatedly paged this third man. I don't know if this third name was the man who went overboard or not, but in hearing the tone of the cruise director's voice, I felt like he knew the third man. No one else was paged after that. From what was happening, I'm not sure that the senior officers knew if it was a passenger or a crew member who had gone overboard initially. Since only men were paged, I believe they knew it was a man.

In the meantime the ship had already begun circling and searching. It was cold outside that night and very dark and I knew that the water temperature would be very cold and worried about the man's chance of surviving long in the cold water if he had even survived the fall from the ship. There was a mist or light fog over the water making the search all the more unreal and we could see light from onshore in the distance as we circled. The searching and circling went on for hours. I went to bed about 1:30am and woke up some time later - perhaps two hours and the search was still going on. By 4:30am I woke up again and we were proceeding forward, so I knew the search was over. We got into Southampton at least 1 hour late. The schedule on the ship seemed a little off kilter - the buffet was open earlier than posted in the daily schedule. The crew seemed sad and distressed. I heard from those who went to the dining room that the waitstaff was in a somber mood. Getting baggage off the ship was disorganized and we were delayed waiting for our bags for almost an hour. Apparently the bags are normally taken off much earlier in the morning before passengers disembark, but with our late arrival, the bags were coming off at the same time the first passengers were getting off the ship. None of that really matters. The man's life was more important.

In my opinion, the captain and crew did everything in their power to try to save this man. It was a very tragic situation. My sympathy goes out to the man, the entire crew of the Eclipse, his family and friends.

thanks for that SuiteTraveler i have travelled on eclipse twice and have seen all the security cameras and thought it was deck 5 and then some one said deck 3 which didn't make sense. the only time you see crew around that area is when their coming into port i asumed it was restricted but if there was something going on then the restictions wouldn't be as bad because a lot would be hapening. thank you again i hope it wasn't to upsetting...