The young Australian couple who plunged from the cruise ship Carnival Spirit into the ocean on the high seas last Wednesday night was even by the weekend presumed dead.
Paramedic Paul Rossington, 30, and his girlfriend Kristen Schroder, 26, both of Barraba, 90 kilometres north of Tamworth in New South Wales, were on the cruise with seven family and friends.
Their disappearance overboard happened on the final day of the 10-day cruise. The final day is statistically the most likely day for such events to occur, for reasons that remain unclear.
With the search having been called off at the weekend, their deaths off the NSW coast seem destined to remain forever a mystery, with CCTV footage aboard revealing that they went overboard separately, though close together.
Surveillance video showed them going over the railing about the same time, with a brief pause between them, NSW Police Superintendent Mark Hutchings said.
Police said initially that it was hard to tell who went overboard first, but images were enhanced and the Sydney Morning Herald surmised that Rossington “was believed to have been valiantly trying to save his girlfriend when they both went overboard”.
The paper continued: “Reports say that Ms Schroder fell from the Carnival Spirit at 8.50pm on Wednesday night and that Mr Rossington fell only seconds later while trying to save her.”
The Herald attributed to a “senior police source” a report that CCTV taken in the ship’s casino on Wednesday evening showed the couple having “a short but heated argument”. Friends said the couple were known to argue frequently, but only for about five minutes a time. The newspaper said other CCTV footage later showed Schroder climbing over the railing, falling or jumping (not clear which), hitting a lifeboat on the way down, and Rossington jumping in shortly afterwards, perhaps to try and save her.
The circumstances and motives seem bound to remain forever a matter of conjecture. Note that the Herald report uses the word “fell”. It is standard journalistic practice to use that word, unless there is overwhelming evidence that the event was intentional, rather than misadventure or accident. The word is also used, quite understandably, out of consideration for the victims’ families and friends, who have enough to contend with at so tragic a time.
However the word “fall” could suggest to readers unused to cruising that a passenger could trip on a cruise ship deck and fall overboard. The truth is that anything like that would be profoundly difficult, if not impossible, on a cruise ship. Railings are built above waist height, even for a tall person.
Chief executive of Carnival Australia, Ann Sherry, said the railing over which the couple went was five centimeters higher than industry safety regulations mandate.
“It’s designed really to prevent accidental tripping” overboard, she told reporters.
“We want to make sure that it’s not possible for people to fall overboard or to trip and fall overboard … so I think it would be highly unlikely, but again, in this case, the police are conducting a full investigation,” the US Huffington Post reported.
Carnival Spirit has about 600 surveillance cameras that are constantly monitored. Sherry said at least four crew were monitoring the ship’s surveillance cameras at any time.
“There is also a balance, of course, around privacy. We don’t watch what people are doing in their private spaces.”
That is a very good point. Most passengers enjoy the privacy of their cabins and balconies. They don’t want crew observing what they do there in private – especially when they know there is not the slightest chance they will fall or jump overboard.
It was the last night of a fantastic cruise, Sherry noted. “Virtually everybody else was in the public spaces on the ship, and they’re the areas that we focus on in those times.”
The final night of the cruise is when such things tend to happen.
About 18 months ago, the US-based International Cruise Victims Association estimated that 165 people had gone missing at sea since 1995. In the same period, over 180 million passengers worldwide have taken cruises. Even taking into account repeat passengers, the chances of going overboard still appear to be less than one in a million.
Cruisepage.com, which lists some of those who have gone overboard, makes several observations. Males are much more likely to go overboard than females, the average age of a passenger who goes overboard is 41 years and – crucially – “you are most likely to fall overboard on the last night of your cruise”.
Peter Needham
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