A luxury cruise ship diverted course for seven hours to rescue an injured sailor stranded in the Pacific Ocean after his vessel lost all power and communications. The rescue took place on May 26 aboard the Silver Whisper, a ship operated by Silversea Cruises, a luxury line owned by Royal Caribbean Group. The ship had been completing a 24-night one-way sailing from Papeete, Tahiti, to Vancouver when it received an alert about the stranded sailor.
According to Fox News, the location was too far from Hawaii and the continental United States for an air rescue, so the Silver Whisper changed course. Passengers aboard the ship posted accounts of the incident on Facebook.
One passenger described the sailor as someone "whose vessel lost all power and communications in high winds and rough seas." The same passenger noted the difficulty of the search: "We were the closest ship to him — it took 7 hours to reach him, with no exact coordinates." The sailor was eventually found alive with a broken shoulder.
A Mayday call had been received by the Coast Guard, which then directed the Silver Whisper to perform the rescue. One Facebook user described the alert as "a twist in our journey to Vancouver" and noted that "the mast is gone and too far out in [the] ocean for [a] helicopter."
Passengers described increasingly rough conditions during the rescue operation. One person wrote that they were sent to their cabins because "stabilizers had to be collapsed on rough seas." The same passenger called it "quite an experience."
The rescue came at a cost to some passengers. One person noted that "many of us might miss flights due to our delay, but we saved people and one crew member is injured." It was not immediately clear whether that crew injury occurred during the rescue maneuver or at another point during the operation.
The Silver Whisper is described on the Silversea website as "one of the most technically up-to-the-minute ships at sea." Fox News Digital reached out to Royal Caribbean for additional comment but had not received a response at the time of the report.
