The Los Angeles Times has an interesting although very sad article about the mystery of a missing crewmember from the Disney Wonder cruise ship.  Written by Corina Knoll, the LA Times article is entitled "Bereft Parents’ Loss is as Deep as the Ocean."

Rebecca Coriam, a 24 year old from Chester, England, joined Disney Cruise Line to work with kids as a youth counselor.  On March 22nd of this year, she failed to show up for work.  As the article explains, she was last seen speaking on the telephone early in the morning and was apparently crying.  A closed circuit television camera (CCTV) recorded these images, yet Disney claims that Rebecca Coriam - Missing Disney Crewmemberthere are somehow no CCTV images of her going overboard.

Rebecca’s parents, Mike and Ann Coriam, traveled to California to meet the cruise ship when it returned to port.  They met with the police officer who flew from the Bahamas which is responsible for conducting an investigation because Disney chose to register its cruise ship in that country to avoid U.S. taxes and safety regulations.

It is hard to imagine what the Coriam family was feeling when the Disney Wonder quickly unloaded several thousands of passengers and just as quickly reloaded the ship and set sail from the port in San Pedro.

What type of investigation could a single police man conduct in such a short period of time?  When I was retained by the widow of missing passenger George Smith to search for answers about what happened to him during their honeymoon cruise, we hired world renown forensic scientist Dr. Henry Lee and we boarded the Royal Caribbean cruise ship with a team of ten forensic experts, photographers, videographers, and detectives.  How on earth could one cop from the Bahamas think he could accomplish anything in such short order?

The real irony here is that the Disney Cruise Line is actually incorporated as the Magical Cruise Company in England.  So we have the disappearance of a young English woman hired by a English corporation to sail on a cruise ship out of a U.S. port and yet not a single English or American police or forensics team were permitted on the cruise ship.  I was quoted in the LA Times article criticizing the token investigations by the cruise friendly flag states, saying that "the families are caught in no-man’s-land between the cruise line and the foreign authorities."

There will be no answers from the one policeman in Nassau.  He will not write anything  embarrassing about a cruise line which flies the flag of the Bahamas. 

But someone working on this cruise ship knows more than they are saying.  How can a popular crew employee charged with the responsibility of the cruise guests’ children on a Disney cruise ship just "disappear" with no explanation?

The LA Times article lists the Coriam family’s website which was created to bring awareness to this cause.  If you know something about Rebecca’s disappearance, please contact the family using the information below:

Website:    Rebecca-Coriam.com
Email:         help@rebecca-coriam.com
Coriam Family:         011 44 7747359968
Media Spokesman:     011 44 7932815970

Rebecca Coriam - Disappearance - Disney Cruise Lines

Photo credit:  Coriam family via Los Angeles Times.