Families of missing cruise passengers form group

M.C. Moewe, Staff Writer

JACKSONVILLE -- When a 15-year-old girl went overboard off a cruise ship near the coast of Mexico early Jan. 5, word traveled fast among members of a newly formed organization.

"I am sure that all of our hearts feel the same ... complete sickness," Iva Bradley e-mailed 11 other members of International Cruise Victims. Bradley's 24-year-old daughter Amy disappeared from a Royal Caribbean ship in 1998.

Families whose loved ones were lost while vacationing on cruise ships founded International Cruise Victims with the intent of changing the lightly regulated, billion-dollar industry. Members, who include victims of crimes such as rape committed on board ships, are gearing up to testify at a congressional hearing tentatively set for early March.

Kendall Carver, a Phoenix insurance executive whose daughter Merrian disappeared during an Alaskan cruise in 2004, said the two-week-old group averages about one new member a day.

"From the beginning this has felt like David against Goliath," Carver said. "David is getting stronger."

The Connecticut family of George Smith, a 26-year-old honeymooner who vanished from a Royal Caribbean ship in the Mediterranean in July amid mysterious circumstances, has galvanized the movement. The congressman from Smith's district, Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Connecticut, convened a Dec. 13 hearing where cruise industry leaders testified that in the past two years 13 passengers have been reported missing from among the 20 million who went on cruises.

One of those passengers, 54-year-old Glenn Sheridan, disappeared from the Jacksonville-based Carnival Celebration. The Coast Guard searched 350 square miles of the Atlantic Ocean and the St. Johns River but did not find him.

After weeks of Smith's relatives telling their stories on various television shows, Royal Caribbean responded. "We just can't sit idly by and allow these kinds of inaccuracies to persist," Richard Fain, chairman and CEO of Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd., said on MSNBC's "Rita Cosby Live & Direct" Jan. 9. "We really felt, as a public company, we had to respond."

Shares of Royal Caribbean (NYSE: RCL) dropped from the 52-week high of $55 a share to $45 with disappearances as the main topic of discussion on Yahoo! Finance's message boards on Jan. 11.

The company also brought out Lanny Davis, a former special counsel to President Bill Clinton, to face the Smith family lawyer on the program.

And on Jan. 5 Royal Caribbean released a lengthy statement offering a chronology of events the day George Smith disappeared and rebuking claims that his widow, Hagel Smith, was mistreated. "Claims that she was abandoned, asked to leave the ship or left alone in Turkey are utterly false," the press release stated.

While the Smith case has the media focused on Royal Caribbean, according to the December hearing testimony, six of the 13 recent disappearances were from ships owned by Carnival Corp. (NYSE: CCL) The Jan. 5 incident happened aboard a Carnival-owned Costa Cruise Lines ship that left Fort Lauderdale on New Year's Day. As with most of these occurrences, details are sparse.

The 15-year-old Irish national was reported around 2 a.m. to have fallen overboard 20 miles off the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula, a company statement reported.

"The family has requested this be treated as a private matter," the statement reads. "Their loss is immeasurable and we share in their grief."

Jean Scavone, whose 22-year-old son disappeared from a Carnival ship in 1999, said International Cruise Victims has already served an important purpose by drawing more attention to the latest overboard case.

"I don't think we would have heard about it," she said of the young girl's tragedy. "How would we know? The government doesn't keep track and the cruise industry has said they're not keeping track."

The group plans to keep a running tally of the number of times a passenger goes overboard from a cruise ship on a Web site it's launching at www.internationalcruisevictims.org.

This is interesting, I received an email from Ms. Scavone asking about our Man Overboard List a few weeks ago.

Since most of the "man overbaord" incidents are either suicide or the result of passengers acting unsafely, I am not sure how big a group this can grow to be. I realize there are legitimate issues with sexual and other forms of assault on cruise ships but again, there are very few incidents.