A week after a woman fell from a luxury cruise ship and died off Cape Ann, Massachusetts, authorities still have not released her name.
As responders in the Sept. 11 incident, police from Rockport, Massachusetts, confirmed the 59-year-old woman who fell from the 650-foot Seabourn Quest some 10 miles off the coast of Cape Ann was from Palm Desert, California. The woman’s body was first located by Rockport fishermen and recovered from the sea by the town’s harbormasters.
But Officer Mark Rowe on Friday said he was advised not to release the woman’s name as an FBI investigation into the case continued.
The FBI took over the case from the U.S. Coast Guard as the investigative agency handling a death in international waters. Lt. Wade Thompson of Coast Guard Sector Boston said Friday that any release of the woman’s name would have to come from the FBI.
Kristen Setera, speaking for the FBI on Friday, said only that, because of the “ongoing investigation,” she and the agency would continue to have “no comment at this time” including any identification of the passenger.
Felix Browne, a spokesman with the Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety, which includes the Office of the Medical Examiner, said he was not told as of that afternoon whether a planned autopsy on the woman had been completed or not by the medical examiner. He also noted that while the medical examiner’s task is basic — determining a cause of death — it can take longer and prove far more complex in some cases than others.
Meanwhile, local responders who located and recovered the woman’s body said Friday they had not been contacted by the FBI or anyone else in connection with any investigation.
Mike Burbank, fishing aboard his F/V Kaybur Too for bait off Thacher Island with plans to go on a tuna trip the next morning, answered when he heard the “man overboard” call from the Seabourn Quest around 7 p.m.
Tracking about a mile southwest of responding U.S. Coast Guard vessels and the giant ship — in the wake of the cruise ship — he was the first to locate the woman’s body floating in a tide rip at the surface. He then radioed Rockport harbormasters Rosemary Lesch and Scott Story, who also responded, and they recovered the woman’s body, bringing it back to Rockport where they were met by town police and other agencies.
“I’ve heard from nobody — nobody,” Burbank said Friday. “You’d think that someone investigating would want to talk to us if we were right there, but I’ve heard from nobody.” Burbank said the initial call from the Seabourn Quest that night indicated the overboard passenger was in the water for 23 minutes at the time of the first report.
Lesch said Friday the harbormasters had not been called, either. She told the Gloucester Daily Times last weekend the woman’s body had been clad in a “summer outfit” when she was hauled from the water.
“Scott (Story) and I were talking about it,” she said. “You would think that somebody would have gotten back to us, but nobody has.”
Officials from Seabourn Quest, a luxury cruise line that is an affiliate of Holland America under the corporate umbrella of Carnival PLC of London, have not responded to numerous calls or messages for comment.
Seabourn’s U.S. headquarters are in Seattle, but the line operates regular luxury cruises out of Boston. The Seabourn Quest, with 11 decks and a capacity of 458 passengers in 247 suites, sailed out of Boston at the time of the incident, embarking on a 12-day cruise around New England, the Canadian Maritimes and then up the St. Lawrence River.
After the incident off Cape Ann, the Quest continued on to its first stop at Bar Harbor, Maine. The vessel’s online tracker as of late Friday placed the Seabourn Quest — with 450 passengers — off Ville Saguenay, Quebec. The tracker notes the ship had traveled 1,294 nautical miles since leaving Boston.
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