Rescue workers have called off the search for a crew member from the cruise ship Celebrity Eclipse who jumped overboard in the English Channel.
The ship was about eight miles north of the French port of Cherbourg and heading for Southampton when the incident happened on Friday night.
A 31-year-old Filipino man was seen on the ship’s CCTV to have climbed over a railing on Deck 3.
The ship, carrying about 3,000 passengers, turned around to search for him, and the French coastguard was alerted. No trace of the man was found after an overnight search.
The cruise line said their Care Team was providing support to the crew member’s family, as well as his friends and colleagues onboard.
Celebrity Eclipse was returning from a 14-night Italian Mediterranean cruise which left Southampton on 7 May 2011. It is now on a two-week voyage to the Baltic.
About the Author: John Honeywell
John Honeywell is a travel writer specialising in cruise ships and cruise travel. Winner of CLIA UK's Contribution to Cruise award 2017.
We understood at the time the crew man went overboard from Deck 5 that the ship was doing a emergency helicopter abstraction of a female passenger.To where we were not advised,although we were informed patient was doing well,even though the helicopter had supposeably only just left the ship.
Yes the above statement is correct i was on the ship. On saturday morning the captain made an announcement to say that he was spotted via cctv jumping from deck 5, the ship turned very quick and searched for well over 4 hours
There are reports that he had jumped from Deck 3 which I found quite strange since (as a crewmember of the company) there are no railings on Deck 3. He was a cook.