Lost At Sea
With the Costa Concordia disaster dominating the news another problem facing the cruise industry is being forgotten: the disappearance of nearly 200 people from international liners in the last ten years.
"The place to get away with a crime is on a cruise ship", says maritime lawyer Jim Walker. "Out in international waters, you can't summon a policeman". There have been hundreds of recorded incidents on cruise ships in the last decade, but their cases fall overboard into a legal black hole. Ships only have to answer to the authorities in the country where they're registered. Rebecca disappeared on a liner off the coast of Mexico, but when the boat docked in the USA, the investigation fell to a single officer from The Bahamas. "You had a crime scene. Then a few hours later, the ship heads back out to sea with another few thousand family members." With the cruise industry doing little to control such cases, who is responsible for these crimes at sea?
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