Boy Gravely ill in Hospital – Time for a change in Maritime Law!

Yet another child is found in a cruise ship pool. Just a few short months after 2 boys were air lifted off the Norwegian Cruise Lines Ship Norwegian Breakaway in February of this year. The 4 year old died and the other boy was airlifted to hospital.

This time it is a six-year-old British boy who is said to be  in a “grave” condition in a French hospital after being found unconscious on board the Royal Caribbean Ship Independence of the Seas in one of the ships 4 pools.

A BBC News report said that the child’s heart had stopped when he was found, a port official told the AFP news agency. The ship’s doctor got his heart beating again and he was transferred to hospital in Brest by helicopter. The report went on to say: He was travelling with his parents on the 338-metre Independence of the Seas. Rescue services in France were alerted to the incident shortly before 1300 BST. A navy helicopter was scrambled and arrived at 1340 BST, Yann Bouvard, a spokesman for the maritime prefecture in Brest, north-west France, told AFP: “The child was found in a state of cardio-respiratory arrest at the bottom of the ship’s pool.” He was taken to hospital in Brest, north west France, and arrived around 1500 BST. The Times quoted Mr Bouvard adding: “What is terrible is that children can drown without making any noise at all. “We’ve never had a case of a boy drowning in a pool on a ship before, but we have, unfortunately, a lot of experience of that happening in pool on land and we know that it can happen to anyone, anywhere”.

I have said this before and I will say it again. Cruise Ships should employ lifeguards to watch their pools. I know a lot is said about parents watching their children and it is made clear when you board at the safety briefings that there are no lifeguards on duty at the pools so parents must watch their own children and I fully agree with this but is it just passing the buck for cruise ships to include this in their safety briefings and think their responsibility ends there?

It doesn’t or at least it shouldn’t and it is about time a Maritime law was passed to make this compulsory before yet another child dies.

The independence of the Seas sails under a Bahamas Flag

The problem is that maritime law — the law that applies on the water — is famously convoluted. Cruise ships aren’t even required to report crime statistics to any governing body, and the question of who’s supposed to investigate when a crime does occur is a sticky one.

International maritime law requires that cruise ships take every possible measure to provide safe passage. But when something goes wrong, jurisdiction is difficult to sort out.

Did you know…

• A country’s internal waters — areas like bays and ports — are a part of that country. So when a ship is docked at the Port of Miami, all U.S. (and Florida) laws apply to the ship, its passengers and its crew.
• Almost all of a nation’s laws also apply in its territorial waters which extend up to 12 miles from its coastline (we’ll look at an exception on the next page). A ship departing from a U.S. port cannot open gambling activities until it’s 12 miles out, since gambling is illegal in most parts of the United States.
• A nation has limited jurisdiction in its contiguous zone — the area 12 miles to 24 miles from its coast. A country has certain rights within that zone, such as patrolling its borders. For instance, within 24 miles of the U.S. coast, the US Coast Guard is allowed to board any ship suspected of drug smuggling, regardless of which flag it’s flying under.
• Once a ship is 24 miles from any coastline, it’s on the high seas (or international waters). With the exception of certain rights within the contiguous zone, the law of that ship is the law of the country whose flag it’s flying. So, a Liberia-registered cruise ship that’s 25 miles off the coast of California isn’t subject to U.S. law; it’s subject to Liberian law.

As clear as mud I know.

So the question we should be asking is:

Isn’t it about time Maritime law was updated to protect the people who work on-board ships and travel on them for recreational purposes? What is it going to take for someone to sit up and take notice?  I believe this is where the cruise lines should be taking a leading role and pushing this action forward.

What do you think?