A 72-year-old British woman went overboard from Marella Cruises’ Marella Voyager while the ship was sailing from Malaga, Spain, to the Caribbean. The exact time the woman went overboard has not been publicly disclosed. The woman was last seen on November 9 at approximately 4:46 p.m. UTC.
Crew aboard the ship were not aware that the woman went overboard until the following evening on November 10, when a crew member noticed the woman’s bed was not slept in, suggesting she went overboard the night before. A passenger announcement calling for the woman was made at 7:30 p.m.
The U.S. Coast Guard was subsequently alerted about the overboard after the woman could not be found on the ship.
The Coast Guard instructed the Marella Voyager to continue sailing rather than reverse course to search for the woman. Tracking footage shows the Marella Voyager continued on its scheduled voyage to St. John’s, Antigua.
The Coast Guard issued a maritime alert for vessels in the area to look for the woman. No public reports indicate the Coast Guard launched a rescue operation for the woman.
The chances of a successful search and rescue operation given the circumstances were low. The woman likely went overboard somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and could have been missing for over 24 hours before she was reported missing. The Marella Voyager was reportedly 477 nautical miles from the location where the woman was last seen aboard the ship. Still, it is atypical for no search to be conducted by the cruise ship or Coast Guard.
No reports indicate the Marella Voyager is equipped with an automatic man overboard (MOB) system. MOB systems save lives by automatically alerting a ship’s bridge when a person goes overboard.
In the summer of 2025, a father and daughter were rescued in just 20 minutes after going overboard from the Disney Dream, which is equipped with a MOB system. Compare this to the Marella Voyager, where crew were not even aware the woman was missing until a day later.
Successful search and rescue operations on cruise ships without MOB systems are rare but do happen. Last week on November 6, a crew member from Royal Caribbean’s Ovation of the Seas was rescued by fishermen after spending 9 hours in the water. On October 9, a passenger from the Royal Caribbean’s Odyssey of the Seas was found by a cargo ship after spending 20 hours in the water, one of the longest successful search and rescue missions ever from a cruise ship.
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