A cargo vessel found the woman conscious and holding onto a life preserver just before 3 a.m. on Saturday.... Royal Caribbean did not respond to... why rescue officials were not alerted until three hours after the incident. According to the company’s website, the Odyssey of the Seas is over 1,100 feet long and can hold nearly 4,200 guests.
1,100 feet long... 4,200 guests... I, too, would feel the urge to disembark. But floating — albeit with life preserver — for 20 hours, that's a lot of time to contemplate the solitude you thought you wanted in place of that cruise-ship crowd. I saw a movie once where a man and a woman were floating in a life preserver. What do you do? Wonder if help will arrive before you die of thirst... or sharks attack? Or do you slip out of the life preserver and become a life non-preserver?
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So did she jump or did she fall? The NYT doesn't seem to have decided.
If you lose your mind and feel compelled to jump — like Rose in "Titanic" — should the newspapers say you fell?
Disembark existence, is what she meant.
So she jumped off a little before 7AM in the 44th year of her life? That seems like a strange time to jump off a cruise ship.
A suicide attempt she didn't want to confess to?
It's amazing they found her in the dark.
Maybe her husband was in another woman's cabin.
"A cargo vessel found the woman conscious and holding onto a life preserver"
Did they find her holding on to a life preserver? Or did the reporter just write that because that's what she saw in the video and the life preserver had actually been thrown to her by the rescue boat as they were coming about? Because otherwise the woman would have had to have taken a life preserver with her when she disembarked. Which would be strange if it was a suicide attempt.
Sometimes being in a high place compels one to jump. Most right-minded people resist.
I'm adding that to the long list of ways I don't want to go.
Alcohol may have been involved.
…I’ll reserve judgement unless we learn what kind of medications was she on?
"Open Water" movie IRL.
"1,100 feet long... 4,200 guests... I, too, would feel the urge to disembark."
I'd like to be the first to berate our blog host for daring to express a discomfort for touristing in cramped quarters.
You know it's coming.
Dr. Johnson agrees: "Being on a ship is being in jail with the chance of drowning."
"Should the newspapers say you fell?" The preferred verb is "plummeted."
…I like cruise ships because it means those people won’t be somewhere I want to be…
I don’t understand the life preserver unless she took it with her. The procedure for a person overboard is to throw a preserver to them or at least when they went over, because it is the most likely object rescuers will see. If it was tossed after her, why three hours to report?
[begin virtual italics]Because otherwise the woman would have had to have taken a life preserver with her when she disembarked. Which would be strange if it was a suicide attempt.[end virtual italics]
I wondered about that, too!
[begin virtual italics]I like cruise ships because it means those people won’t be somewhere I want to be.[end virtual italics]
LOL!
I had dinner last night with a buddy who had just returned from a cruise. Ship had 6000 passengers. He loved it and he and his wife are planning another.
I would have left the life preserver behind.
We are all on a giant cruise ship sailing through space. Some just don't want to wait to disembark until the cruise is over.
In defense of cruises
There’s nothing better than sitting on the deck of a cruise ship with a good book. My fantasy is a world cruise: feet propped up on a second chair, reading book after book as the world parades by.
The picture I saw, she was clutching a life ring, in a spotlight from a distance. Maybe that's what she grabbed when she jumped. I've been on two cruise, one a smaller river vessel, nice, but.... I keep feeling like I'm being processed, akin to feeling as if perpetually in line. Not for me.
In Future MuskBeGone car rental in top deck
What's with the "virtual italics"? The passages being highlighted are quotes, so quotation marks are the correct punctuation anyway, not italics. I swear, some people have an obsession with italics, because it's banned I suppose. Always want what you can't have.
That's exactly how I felt on the third day of the only cruise I was ever subjected to.
Story reminded me of the Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode written by Roald Dahl about the man who jumps overboard on an Atlantic crossing to impede the ship's arrival so he can win a bet. What he'd counted on was the splash alerting a fellow passenger, who'd then alert the crew, who'd then stop progress to save him. What he hadn't anticipated was that the passenger who happened to be standing there was...deaf.
She was so close to being a Darwin Award winner. Still, if she fell accidentally she wouldn’t have had a life preserver & if she’d been suicidal she wouldn’t have taken one.
Cruise ships are floating wastewater treatment plants with leaky plumbing. Norovirus is the icing on the cake.
“Or do you slip out of the life preserver and become a life non-preserver?”
Although I have no experience in this area. I believe I would prefer non-preservatives life preservers. The older I get, the more health conscious I become. No multisyllabic life preservatives in my life preserver, thank you very much.
There once was a girl on a ship
Who gave the huge crowds the slip.
Some say she lunged
others she plunged
When high heels on the deck made her slip.
Two sailors tried to "disembark" the USS Abraham Lincoln according to the Secretary of the Navy.
https://www.stripes.com/branches/navy/2026-09-24/suicide-lincoln-middle-east-cao-22949419.html
Eight sailors in total tried to commit suicide during their deployments on the USS Abraham Lincoln.
Donald Trump lied to us and told us the war would only last six weeks.
The amazing thing is that she didn’t die of hypothermia
Maybe she did take the life preserver with her, as part of a misguided plan to swim to shore.
In 6th grade, to avoid a buzzcut mandated by my parents, I took my dog, skipped school, and ran away from home. After walking the train tracks for hours. I stopped and tried to find a way to kill the time. It was incredibly boring, which I never anticipated. I decided to count to 1000 (genius). I didn't get very far before a finally decided to walk back home and take my punishment, which was guaranteed to be a belt across my bare ass and the haircut. Before I made it home, the cops picked me up and said the whole town was looking for me. I escaped the belt - too much publicity, but the buzzcut came the next day, shorter than ever. Nobody ever plans for the boredom of escaping.
"Donald Trump lied to us." When absolutely everything is about Trump, the TDS is in control of you. What a miserable way to go through life.
old country lawyer,
> What a miserable way to go through life
Miserable indeed, but it's the only job DD could find.
I was on a cruise ship once.....a Christmas time cruise and packed with families with unruly small children. The cruise from hell.
Soon after sailing they conducted a practice drill to show us where we were to go/assemble in case there was an emergency. The crew members had to yell at everyone to get their attention and also try to keep the kids in line.
I said that the only thing they were missing to add to the ambiance of the experience was cattle prods.
Never again on a cruise. Everything was regimented. When you could eat....where you had to sit. I'd rather go camping and sleep in a tent.
Just an old country lawyer said...
"Donald Trump lied to us." When absolutely everything is about Trump, the TDS is in control of you. What a miserable way to go through life.
You are far too charitable.
>Dust Bunny Queen said...
I was on a cruise ship once.....a Christmas time cruise and packed with families with unruly small children. The cruise from hell.<
You broke Rule#2 of "cruising": Do not go on a cruise that allows children.
...Oh, Rule#1? Sure: Do not go on a cruise.
People can do incredibly stupid things aboard a cruise ship. One young man on a dare jumped from an upper deck balcony into the water — 90 ft. IIRC. This was while the ship was docked, so it didn’t sail on without him, but he was booted off the ship and barred from ever cruising on that line again. Alcohol may have been involved. Also testosterone.
Another woman, inebriated, wandered into engineering spaces and went through a door — and out the side of the ship. Lucky for her, her foot got caught in a chain but she hung upside down outside the ship until daylight came and she was spotted.
I’ve seen numerous pictures of people standing on balcony railings to take selfies, sometimes while the ship is moving.
A sin the saddest case, an elderly man had a heated argument with his wife, then he walked away from her and was never seen again. He is assumed to have gone overboard.
She wanted to disembark. She disembarked. Problem. Solution.
@ Ice Nine.... I know! The cruise was a gift from my Father and was to celebrate our (his and my) birthdays right around Christmas. Other family members were also gifted the cruise....so for me and my husband we really had to go. I had never been on a cruise and had no idea how constricted and regimented the whole thing would be AND all those people crammed into one place. Never again.
"He is assumed to have gone overboard."
That was all part of the plan.
Wanted to get off for a while. Jumped with a life preserver. Expected alarms, bells, whistles, boat stops, rescue by handsome, burly sailors. No one noticed. Got twenty hours of that solitude she craved. And lived to tell the story - but not yet because she'd get sued by the cruise company.
I imagine it that way because, I admit, I have a weakness for stories about people performing at peak stupid and living through it all, through no virtue of their own. Because I see that as my life at several crucial points?
"I would have left the life preserver behind."
And you, a boatbuilder!
Someone on Twitter went to the trouble of looking up the average rate of suicide attempts for civilians matching the demographics of an aircraft carrier (skewed young and heavily male). He concluded that 8 suicide attempts was (as I recall) one-quarter of the expected rate. If so, it looks like Trump may have saved lives by sending them to the Gulf. It's certainly true that people with an important mission to fulfill tend to be less depressed than those with no aim in life. I believe the same guy mentioned a rash of successful suicides in an aircraft carrier crew a few years ago - when it was in dry dock for a refit and they had nothing to do.
Which brings us to the usual question with D. D. Driver: ignorant, dishonest, or a bit of each? Admittedly not a very interesting question.
"…I like cruise ships because it means those people won’t be somewhere I want to be…"
Except that cruise ships stop and let all those people off at places you might want to be.
cassandralite said...
"Story reminded me of the Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode written by Roald Dahl..."
Good one. That reminds me of the short stories of Frederic Brown, who wrote many little pulp fiction short stories, 2, 3, 5 pages long with unpredictable twists at the end. Very clever and interesting writer. Also wrote some science fiction, such as The Last Martian.
https://tangentonline.com/oldtimeradio/x-minus-one-qthe-last-martianq-by-fredric-brown/
Link goes to a breakdown of the story and includes the excellent X-1 radio program dramatization of The Last Martian.
The Last Martian was printed in the inaugural publication of the Science Fiction magazine Galaxy, an issue which also presented stories by Clifford D Simak, Isaac Asimov, Theodore Sturgeon, Catherine MacLean, Richard Matheson, and Fritz Leiber- an absolute Murderer's Row of classic Science fiction authors.
"1,100 feet long... 4,200 guests... I, too, would feel the urge to disembark. But floating — albeit with life preserver..."
Jumping that way from a perfectly good ship is not the same as jumping from a perfectly good aircraft with a parachute. I haven't been on many cruises but no one in his/her right mind would do that, despite whatever urges it might evoke. And even if you're thinking of a more conventional disembarkation I'm hard pressed to understand why. Some of the buffet offerings weren't exactly to my taste but they weren't horrible either.
Wild horses. As in, you don't have enough of them to drag me onto a cruise ship.
*What a miserable way to go through life.*
The good news is he deserves it.
Seeking sandy beaches on the Isle of Lesbos, where boys and girls frolic together.
A bit of high density diversity to overwhelm our sense of proportionality is enough to make an introverted character go mental.
OK, second chance
There once was a girl on vacation
The subject of much speculation
She deliberately lunged
or inadvertently plunged
but for shizzle she shorted mentation.
OK, third chance
There once was a girl on vacation
The subject of much speculation
She deliberately lunged
or inadvertently plunged
but for shizzle she skipped due mentation.
"D.D. Driver said...
Two sailors tried to "disembark" the USS Abraham Lincoln according to the Secretary of the Navy.
Eight sailors in total tried to commit suicide during their deployments on the USS Abraham Lincoln.
10/17/26, 10:04 AM"
A person who was neither incurious nor possessed of a desire to demonize Donald Trump could have readily learned that given the number of people aboard the USS Lincoln, that was about 15% of the rate of suicide attempts made by the populace at large.
"A person who was neither incurious nor possessed of a desire to demonize Donald Trump could have readily learned that given the number of people aboard the USS Lincoln, that was about 15% of the rate of suicide attempts made by the populace at large."
And where did you get your statistics? From the monkeys flying out of your butt? Can you point me to a reference on the number of suicide attempts (not successful attempts), because I can't find it. The suicide rate in the U.S. is about 14.1 per 100000. Assuming that all the attempted suicides on the Lincoln were reported (which is a very bad assumption), the rate is about 160 per 100,000. If one person succeeded in their suicide attempt, that would put the rate aboard the ship at approximately 20 per 100,000 (5000 crew over a year).
And how do I know that it is a bad assumption that the military wouldn't fudge the numbers? Because I know for a fact (I was told by the person who was responsible for sending every single death at the height of the Iraq war back to the states) that if someone died from a discharge of their personal weapon while they were in the latrine, the death was listed as "accidental".
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