The desperate search for a Briton who fell 30 metres from the deck of a cruise ship in the Adriatic Sea has been called off after four days.
Croatian authorities say an unnamed Briton, believed to be a man, aboard Royal Caribbean’s Explorer of the Seas ship went missing in the early hours of Friday morning after falling from the cruise ship.
According to Croatian news outlet 24Sata, it crashed near Jabuka, an island off the coast of Croatia, on the way to Zadar.
Emergency services had been searching the entire Vis archipelago area before the search was suspended.
Several ships were involved in the search after the alarm was raised on the luxury vessel, which can carry 3,286 passengers.
The ship (file photo) was reportedly on a seven-day voyage between Greece and Croatia that departed on Saturday, August 3.
The search was carried out around the Vis archipelago (archive image)
Cruise ship passenger Nicole Bullock described how she woke up to an emergency message playing throughout the ship.
She wrote online: ‘I woke up on the cruise ship around 3:40am to the emergency message ‘Oscar Oscar Oscar on the port side. Man overboard.’
Speaking to MailOnline, Kelvin Cabrera from New York City, who was on the cruise while enjoying a family holiday, said that after receiving an emergency notification, he saw “tenders and lifeboats from our ship and Croatian coast guard boats surrounding us all looking for the man who fell over.”
The cruise ship was travelling from the Greek island of Santorini to Zadar. Kelvin told MailOnline that the port call at Zadar was cancelled due to the search.
Rescuers, who used planes and boats to search for the missing Briton, had hoped he might have survived longer thanks to warmer waters during the summer months.
But now that several days have passed, hope of finding him has diminished.
Search and rescue operations seen after a passenger on board a cruise ship, believed to be a British man, fell overboard
The president of the Croatian Ship Captains’ Association said: “As the man has been at sea for more than 40 hours, we are already losing hope. We would all like to see him found, but 40 hours is a long time and we are losing hope that this search will be successful.”
This comes as the search for British hiker Tom Doherty, who went missing while walking in the Pyrenees last week, was also suspended on Monday.
Doherty, 67, lost contact with his family on Tuesday, August 6, while hiking on the Col d’Escots in Ustou, near the Guzet ski resort, the prosecutor’s office in the nearby town of Foix said.
According to his family, the retired doctor from St Albans was on the final leg of a solo hiking and camping expedition when he sent a series of panicked WhatsApp messages, the last of which at 7.07pm read: “Help, I’ve fallen and can’t move.”
Doherty’s wife, Anne Lyons, and daughter, Rachel, tried desperately to contact him, responding with several text messages and calls of their own, but were unable to get through.
“After five days, we have not managed to find him,” said a representative of the Foix prosecutor’s office, adding that the investigation into the man’s disappearance will continue.
Police had been searching the Col d’Escots and surrounding mountains with the help of sniffer dogs and a helicopter between Wednesday and Sunday.
But their search was hampered by a thick blanket of fog that descended on the region last week.
Doherty’s car was located in a car park not far from Guzet on Wednesday last week, the day after she disappeared.
Examination of the hiker’s phone’s geolocation data was of no use as he had ventured into rugged terrain where phone reception is unreliable.
But photographs of Doherty sent to the family’s WhatsApp chat have helped provide some clues to her whereabouts.
A photo taken early Tuesday showed Chalet de Beauregard, an important rest stop on the Col d’Escots.
A woman who works at the chalet said Doherty was probably about an hour’s walk from the chalet when he took the photo, judging by the distance and the visible landscape.
Mr Doherty later sent a photo from the mountainside showing how a thick cloud had covered his view, along with a one-word caption reading “damn”.
This suggests he may have been trying to navigate difficult weather conditions when he fell, before sending his final message and plea for help shortly after 7pm on Tuesday night.
It is unclear how far he walked from the chalet before his accident.
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