Alaska State Police identified the woman who went to sea last week from celebrity coup. ABC 13 in Houston reported that authorities in Alaska are conducting a death investigation after a Houston woman went overboard while on a cruise. Alaska State Soldiers identified the woman as 40-year-old Selena Bowie-Bryce.”
Last week we reported that the passenger went overboard from celebrity coup During a cruise through Alaska. The woman disappeared from the Celebrity cruise ship Tuesday, May 17 at about 3:00 a.m. in the Upper Lynn Channel about 20 miles northwest of Juneau, according to the U.S. Coast Guard.
The cruise line did not respond to requests by ABC-13 or KHOU-11, both of which are local stations in Houston, for an explanation of how the guest would go to sea. Celebrity Cruises has not issued a statement regarding the missing passenger and the cruise line has not responded to numerous inquiries from other media.
Alaska State Soldiers, conduct a death investigation after a guest went overboard in the process Tweet embed #Sea trip Earlier last week, the passenger identified as a 41-year-old woman from Houston https://t.co/288E5JwGY4 Celebrity Cruises has not issued or responded to a statement Tweet embed
James (Jim) Walker (CruiseLaw) May 21 2022
According to KHOU11, the captain of the Navy ship told the Coast Guard that the passenger fell off the ship near Eldred Rock in the inner lane. (The Inland Pass is the historic route that Alaska cruise ships and ferries take through the waters of southeastern Alaska and British Columbia.)
KHOU indicated that guest Ms. Pau Pres overtook the ship from the upper deck, based on other passengers’ accounts.
It is our experience that most cruise lines, whenever possible, are quick to blame passengers who go to sea and accuse them of jumping ship. Here, Celebrity Cruises did not do so but refused to respond to any inquiries from the press.
It’s important that Celebrity keeps all of this guest’s videos, which not only showed her cruising at sea but filming her whereabouts on the ship for hours before her tragic disappearance. The cruise line must maintain all relevant surveillance tapes as well as evidence of guest purchases on board to document the ship’s sale of alcohol that you may have consumed.
It is well known under maritime law that a cruise line faces potential liability when it serves its guests alcohol past the point of intoxication.
A few years ago, a 22-year-old guest went overboard on a Royal Caribbean cruise ship (independence of the seas) after the cruise line offered him thirty (30) hours of alcohol. After the young man went to sea, the captain of the ship reported by intercom that he had deliberately jumped. And cruises repeatedly repeated the incomplete information for many news outlets, without indicating that the guest was drunk. You can read about the case here—The lawsuit: Royal Caribbean serves travelers at least 30 ounces of alcohol, unreasonably delays research, and claims the guest deliberately went overboard.
As we reported last week, this cruise line and its parent company, Royal Caribbean, are two cruise lines that refuse to install automatic systems on board as required under the Cruise Ship Safety and Security Act of 2010. These systems use advanced motion detection technology And infrared and radar to instantly send a signal directly to the bridge when a person crosses the rails and then track the person in the water even at night.
Without such systems, cruise ships first perform a manual search of the ship and then review video of cameras along the side of the ship (which are not actively turned on) to see if they show someone sailing at sea. (In fact, Celebrity’s parent company, Royal Caribbean Cruises, requires Royal Caribbean-owned vessels to first contact the Royal Caribbean Global Security Office in Miami before tipping the ship to begin seawater searches.)
When a cruise line announces that its surveillance cameras have shown a passenger at sea (as happened in this case), it’s almost always only after an hour or two of searching on board has been wasted.
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Image credits: Top – Celebrity Solstice – ABC13 Houston.
