Coast Guard officials had no updates about the missing BAE Systems employee, John R. Johnson, who is thought to have fallen overboard when the guard shack containing two ship workers was knocked into the water while the cruise ship, the Carnival Triumph, was being repaired in Alabama during high hurricane-strength winds on Wednesday.
The 64-year-old man was knocked overboard with a co-worker, who has since been rescued.
The missing man works for BAE Systems in the shipyard, according to Coast Guard Petty Officer 2nd Class, Bill Colclough. Authorities are uncertain of the depth of the water where the men fell. Carnival's website states its ship-repair operation is adjacent to a 42-foot deep channel.
Some crewmembers and workers had remained on the 900-foot ship during the repairs and were visible looking out the ship windows on Wednesday. All 800 of its crewmembers and contractors who were working aboard were safe, a Carnival spokesman said.
The pier the ship was docked at wasn't damaged, but an adjacent dock sustained damage when the ship hit it, said BAE spokesman John Measell.
The cruise ship suffered a breakdown in the Gulf of Mexico, subjecting its 4,200 passengers to nightmare conditions, including raw sewage running in corridors and food shortages. They created tent cities to sleep on deck. It broke loose from the dock on Wednesday, where it was being repaired. It then went downriver and hit a cargo ship.
It drifted for a couple of hours before being secured as of 5 p.m. and moved to the Mobile Cruise Terminal, said Vance Gulliksen, a Carnival spokesman.
The ship then sustained wind gusts that reached near hurricane strength, which pushed the cruise ship, the Carnival Triumph, free from its mooring in downtown Mobile, where the ship was being repaired after the five-day ordeal that found it stranded in the stranded off the gulf coast with thousands of passengers after a fire started on the ship in February.
It was brought to shore when four tugboats used several mooring lines to secure the ship to the cruise terminal.
A gash that was 20-feet long and two to three feet wide was visible about halfway up the hull, which reached partway around the stern. Under the gash, two levels of rail were dangling and broken. Electrical cables were also dangling outside of the ship on the port, or left, side. A Carnival spokesman said the damage was limited.
The incident occurred on the same day that Carnival published a letter by Senior executive John Rockefeller defending the cruise lines safety record, according to USA Today.
"Cruise ships, in large part operating outside the bounds of United States enforcement, have become the Wild West of the travel industry, and it's time to rein them in before anyone else gets hurt," Sen. Charles Schumer said in a statement.
The cruise line's problems triggered the senator to propose a "Cruise Ship Passenger Bill of Rights" to "ensure that passengers aren't forced to live in third world conditions or put their lives at risk when they go on vacation."
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
