The FBI is leading an investigation into the death of a woman who died Friday night after falling overboard from a 650-foot luxury cruise ship some 10 miles of the coast of Rockport, Massachusetts.
Petty Officer Bobby Cook of U.S. Coast Guard Sector Boston said Saturday morning that the FBI had taken over the probe into how the woman fell into the water from the Seabourn Quest, a cruise ship that is homeported in the Bahamas but was sailing out of Boston. The Coast Guard on Sunday referred all calls about the case to FBI.
The woman appeared to be in her late 50s and was wearing “a summer outfit” at the time, according to Rockport Harbormaster Rosemary Lesch, who recovered the body along with fellow Harbormaster Scott Story.
Lesch said that she and Story, joining in a response call with the U.S Coast Guard, recovered the woman’s body eight miles off shore and brought her in to Rockport, where other agencies were waiting.
Carrie Kimball-Monahan, spokeswoman for the office of Essex District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett, said the DA’s office initially responded but that the Coast Guard assumed initial federal jurisdiction once confirming the incident occurred at sea.
Lesch estimated the woman was in the water for “an hour or two.”
The initial call to the Coast Guard from the Seabourn Quest came at 7 p.m., and reported a woman falling overboard. The woman’s identity had not been released as of Saturday morning.
The Coast Guard reported dispatching a 47-foot Motor Life Boat crew from Station Gloucester, along with the crew of the 270-foot Coast Guard Cutter Campbell, a MH-60 Jayhawk crew from Air Station Cape Cod. The two Rockport harbormasters also responded immediately, according to the Coast Guard statement.
“We searched with multiple assets and with partner agencies by sea and air for the woman,” Petty Officer 3rd Class Stephen Leavitt, a watchstander at Sector Boston’s command center, said late Friday night.
The Seabourn Quest — operated by Seabourn Cruise Lines, a trading name of Carnival PLC, based in London — regularly offers 10-day trips out of Boston through New England and the Maritimes, carrying passengers to Bar Harbor, Maine, around Nova Scotia and then up the St. Lawrence River to Montreal. The Seabourn Quest had left Boston and was passing Cape Ann on its way to Bar Harbor when the Friday night incident occurred.
The Seabourn Quest, built at the T. Mariotti shipyard in Genoa, Italy, was named in Barcelona in 2011. The vessel includes 247 luxury suites measuring at between 295 and to 1,682 square feet apiece.
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.