It’s every cruiser’s worst nightmare: Missing the ship and becoming one of those folks who winds up running desperately down the pier, arms flailing. But one British woman took things even farther, apparently plunging into the Atlantic Ocean in an attempt to swim to the ship that had set sail without her!
It appears Susan Brown and her husband, Michael, had decided to cut short their trip aboard the Marco Polo, an 800-passenger ship sailing out of the UK. Still attempting to piece together the story, police reported that during a visit to the port of Madeira, the pair had decided to cut their trip short and fly back to England. At some point, it appears the woman got it into her head that her husband had instead decided to reboard the ship. The Telegraph reported the local maritime police commander, Felix Marques, as saying that the woman “lost contact with her husband at some point while at the airport and jumped in the sea to try to reach the ship after seeing it… as it left port, because she assumed he had changed his mind.”
Brown was rescued by fisherman, but Marques admitted that the 65-year-old woman was “very lucky to survive. She was in the water for more than three hours, and was suffering the effects of hypothermia.” He reported that “all she had on her was the clothes she was wearing and a handbag which she was clinging to.”
Although locals reported that the couple had fought, the police have not as of yet been able to confirm the claims. A spokesperson for Cruise & Maritime Voyages, which operates the Marco Polo, confirmed to The Telegraph that the couple in question had asked them to arrange flights back to Britain, but no explanation was available as to why they had decided to cut short their trip.
Have you ever missed a ship as it was sailing out of port?
featured photo: flickr/Nick
