The disappearance of a 47 year-old woman last week from P&O Cruises' Pacific Dawn was one of 213 people overboard from cruise ships in the last decade and one of 7 disappearances in less than 4 months this year alone. The incident raises the fundamental issue whether it is, in fact, possible for someone to fall off a cruise ship. I have written about nearly 200 overboard incidents since I started this blog eight and a-half years ago. The single most common comment which I hear is that it's impossible for someone to fall off of a cruise ship. When I reported on the recent overboard incident on the Pacific Dawn, the first comment was passengers don't just fall off of a cruise ship. But based on some of the eye-witness accounts, that is exactly what might have happened on the Pacific Dawn. The 47-year-old passenger from Brisbane, Australia, was reportedly with her husband on an exterior deck, about 15 feet away from where…
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