The vanishing cruise ship passengers

Crowds line New Brighton beach to watch the cruise liner Queen Mary 2 enter the River Mersey in Liverpool.

Crowds line New Brighton beach to watch the cruise liner Queen Mary 2 enter the River Mersey in Liverpool.

Published Sep 23, 2011

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On the evening of April 6 this year, John Halford packed his suitcase and left it out-side the door of his cabin on the cruise liner Thomson Spirit. It was the last day of a week-long Egyptian cruise and the ship was due to dock at Sharm-el-Sheikh the following morning.

Mr Halford, 63, texted his wife Ruth, who was at home in Britain, to say he would see her at the airport the next day, then went off to dinner. At about 12.30 am, he was seen by other passengers drinking cocktails in an upper-deck bar. He then vanished. Mrs Halford, who has three children, Lucy, 20, Sophie, 18, and Connor, 17, learned of her husband’s disappearance as she was getting ready to drive to the airport to collect him.

The phone rang, it was the Thomson’s desk at the airport in Egypt, she said. “I was told the plane was in the air but my husband was not on it. He’d gone missing from the ship. You could have knocked me over sideways. It made no sense. The children and I were shell-shocked.

“At first I thought he must have somehow gone ashore without anyone realising, but it would have been impossible because there are various checkpoints when you disembark. He’d simply disappeared.”

Today, more than five months on, Mr Halford, a bookseller from Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, remains missing, his fate unknown.

His case is far from unique. Over the past few years, there have been an alarming number of unexplained and unsolved disappearances on board cruise liners. According to the US-based International Cruise Victims Association, 165 people have gone missing at sea since 1995, with at least 13 this year alone - many of them from vessels popular with British holidaymakers.

Cruise ship holidays are enormously popular. According to the Passenger Shipping Association, 1.7 million cruises will be taken in Britain this year (many will be repeat cruises by the same holidaymakers). But what is happening to all these passengers who simply vanish while at sea, never to be seen again?

Are they the victims of a sinister crime wave? Have they had a mishap at sea and fallen overboard, or perhaps chosen to take their own lives?

The sad fact is that, in many cases, no one knows. And for the family and friends they left behind, that only compounds the heartache. Loved ones such as Ruth Halford and her children, who remain in limbo; bereft, baffled and unable to grieve.

“John had been really looking forward to the cruise”, says Mrs Halford. “He’d once worked in Libya and was intrigued by North Africa. He was fascinated by ancient Egyptian culture and wanted to see the pyramids.

“He went alone because we couldn’t afford to go as a family, plus the children had exams coming up. Ships are places where it’s easy to meet people, and John didn’t mind going on his own. The passengers who saw him in the bar say he was not drunk and was in good spirits.

“He d packed his suitcase ready to go but his other belongings - his passport, glasses, mobile phone and rucksack - were found in his cabin. But there was no sign of John.”

But Mr Halford remains missing and countless others.

Most of these people disappeared on black nights, far out at sea. Precisely what happened to them -all are mysteries that look unlikely ever to be solved. - Daily Mail

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