A passenger was reported missing from a Carnival cruise ship yesterday following a three-day cruise from Miami.
Several local and national news outlets reported that twenty-six year old Kevin McGrath, who was apparently traveling with his family, did not disembark from the Carnival Conquest when it arrived back at the Port of Miami early yesterday morning.
Some local news stations reported that Mr. McGrath was last seen on the cruise ship around 2:00 a.m. when the ship was returning to port in Miami. The Miami Herald reported that “police say McGrath’s brother saw him in cabin No. 1326 around 2 a.m. Monday, six hours before the Conquest’s three-day cruise was scheduled to end at PortMiami.” A Miami-Dade police detective told the Miami Herald that “he was supposed to meet the family for breakfast prior to disembarking from the ship but he never arrived as scheduled/planned.”
But several other outlets reported that Mr. McGrath was last seen by his brother at 7:00 a.m. on the morning of his disappearance. “A spokesperson for Carnival Cruise Line told Fox News Digital that the passenger’s cabin mate last saw the man at 7:00 a.m., which is around the time that debarkation was beginning.”
The ship’s CCTV did not indicate anyone falling overboard during the cruise nor did the shipboard cameras provide an explanation where Mr. McGrath may have gone. Carnival claims that it conducted a complete search of the ship. Like all other Carnival cruise ships, the Carnival Conquest is not equipped with an automatic man overboard (MOB) system which would have instantly reported someone going over the railing, recorded the event, and then tracked the overboard passenger in the water..
The Miami-Dade Police Department made a public request for information about Mr. McGrath’s disappearance. It listed the location of the missing passenger as the Port of Miami.
Yesterday, the U.S. Coast Guard conducted a search by helicopter in the waters around the Port of Miami according to multiple sources.
In this age of affordable and readily available high technology (including state of the art MOB systems), it’s embarrassing that this cruise line is asking for the local police department to issue missing person flyers to try and locate a missing cruise passenger.
This is the 393rd person to go overboard or otherwise disappear from a cruise ship since 1995, according to cruise expert Dr. Ross Klein.
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Carnival Conquest – Norman Einstein CC BY-SA 3.0, commons / wikimedia; Kevin McGrath – Miami-Dade County POlice Department.