I don't doubt that it's like that now. However, I don't know if it was like this in 1998. But, even if it was - these accidents still happen. I don't want to post the link since I'm not sure if it's allowed, but I did read this in a 2018 article about cruise ship safety:
- Since 2000, around 300 people on cruise ships have fallen overboard. There were 17 overboard incidents in 2017 alone.
Granted, that's not an incredible # when you consider the
huge amount of people that travel on cruise ships each year. However, I still find it extremely significant - given that this type of accident is far from unheard of. Note that in a lot of these cases, the people that fall overboard survive/are retrieved. However, in AB's case, given that she was last seen late at night by her family - I believe she fell overboard late at night/early in the morning when there weren't a lot of people around/awake to see/hear anything.
Interesting information. So, roughly about 16 people “fall overboard” each year. Surely it varies, but according to the article below, there were 29.7 million individual cruises undertaken by people in the year 2019, which would seem to be fairly typical until the Covid years.
A list of the best, most interesting cruise statistics and weird facts which are relevant to the cruise industry in 2024. Includes expert sources.
www.cruisemummy.co.uk
I’m tired right now, so maybe I’ll do the math later, but by my reckoning that’s an extremely, exceedingly, small percentage of people who end up in the water. Astonishingly small, in my book. I wonder how many of these are never found? All? Most?
Here is an article about people who end up in the water being “rescued”. That sounds like “recovered alive”, but let’s assume it just means recovery of any body, dead or alive. From the article, between 2009 and 2019 there were 212 “overboards” with 48 being “rescued”. That puts our percentage of “overboard with body not being found (even though not in open ocean and fairly close to docking)” even lower.
Interestingly, the article also quotes a Sr. VP at Cruise Lines International Assoc., as saying “It’s almost always the result of an intentional act.”
Cruise ship overboard detection aim to cut down the response time when someone goes overboard. So, why doesn't every ship have them?
www.usatoday.com
So it would seem to me that while kidnapping a woman on a family vacation cruise and smuggling her off of the ship would be an extremely rare occurrence, an “outlier” in the realm of possibilities, a woman falling overboard and never being found (not just a body, but not even a trace of her) in a geographical area that could be pinned down fairly well, considering that they would have known pretty closely what time she fell and the fact that the ship was not in open ocean at the time, would also be an exceptionally rare occurrence.
Add to this the fact that Amy was afraid of the ocean and was a bit reticent about even going on the cruise because of her fear of being on the water (would she be leaning against/over the railing in this case?) and the other oddities, sightings, etc., my money is on nefariousness. Criminality. Yellow. Drugged and taken out in a band equipment box or large laundry carrier or some such thing.
Also: I wonder how many people who have gone missing on a cruise ship, especially where they were thought to have gone overboard, have ended up on the FBI’s Missing pages? I think Neesaki brought this up in an earlier thread and I think it’s a good point. I think the FBI isn’t/can’t rule out an overboard, because they can’t offer proof of anything at this point, but it’s hard for me to see how the FBI is involved in a case of “man overboard”.
