British Pensioner missing from Balmoral.

A colleague of mine on Tuesday alerted me to the fact that there was an unknown person missing from the Fred Olsen Balmoral. I was reading the newspapers and discovered the missing person was indeed a British Pensioner, a 79 year old man who has not yet been officially named is believed to have fallen from a cruise ship in the English Channel.  As part of his 21 day Adriatic cruise, the ship as in French waters – approximately 45miles south of the Lizard in Cornwall when he was reported missing – a full search of the ship by crew and the passenger could not be located at all. To read the full article - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/expatnews/8061207/British-pensioner-missing-in-English-Channel.html

Brixham and French coast guards searched the waters until it was physically to dark to search by torch light! Returning to Dover this morning Balmoral will be a solemn ship to come home. Kent police have issued a statement to say that officers have boarded the ship this morning – presumably to take statements and perhaps perform their own search of the vessel. Has anyone travelled on this ship – Would you consider it easy to have ‘accidently’ fallen from the ship – all of the ships I’ve been on seem to be fairly safe and that you would have had to purposely climbed over barriers and balconies, am I missing something?

Everyone here at cruise.co.uk has fingers crossed for the safe arrival home of this gentleman and send our sympathies to his wife and family.