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Having spent a lifetime in the shipping industry, stories of folk going missing at sea always attract my attention.
This was the case with the report that a British pensioner has gone missing from Fred. Olsen Cruise Lines’ Balmoral. It seems that the man’s 80-year-old wife woke early on Monday morning and discovered him missing. After the ship was thoroughly searched, French and English emergency services began searching the area in the English Channel but unfortunately without result.
In the past, so-called missing passengers were often to have been found wandering around the previous ports of call, but in these days of high security they and crew are clocked on and off ships at all times so that those in charge always know who is on board and who is ashore.
If the gentleman concerned was lost overboard, then one’s mind turns to how this could have been possible. All decks are surrounded by chest-high safety railings and passengers have no access to openings in the hull temporarily used by crew which, in any event, are these days strictly supervised. So the reason for this man’s disappearance is a mystery as well as a tragedy.
There will be an Inquiry and some answers may follow from that. But the personal tragedy of the situation will remain.
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Having spent a lifetime in the shipping industry, stories of folk going missing at sea always attract my attention.
This was the case with the report that a British pensioner has gone missing from Fred. Olsen Cruise Lines’ Balmoral. It seems that the man’s 80-year-old wife woke early on Monday morning and discovered him missing. After the ship was thoroughly searched, French and English emergency services began searching the area in the English Channel but unfortunately without result.
In the past, so-called missing passengers were often to have been found wandering around the previous ports of call, but in these days of high security they and crew are clocked on and off ships at all times so that those in charge always know who is on board and who is ashore.
If the gentleman concerned was lost overboard, then one’s mind turns to how this could have been possible. All decks are surrounded by chest-high safety railings and passengers have no access to openings in the hull temporarily used by crew which, in any event, are these days strictly supervised. So the reason for this man’s disappearance is a mystery as well as a tragedy.
There will be an Inquiry and some answers may follow from that. But the personal tragedy of the situation will remain.
.
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