{"id":115746,"date":"2025-11-01T09:52:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-01T09:52:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/115746\/"},"modified":"2025-11-01T09:52:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-01T09:52:09","slug":"luxury-cruise-cancelled-after-death-of-80-year-old-woman-left-behind-on-island-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/115746\/","title":{"rendered":"Luxury cruise cancelled after death of 80-year-old woman left behind on island \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The luxury Coral Adventurer cruise has been cancelled in the wake of the death of passenger Suzanne Rees, who was left on the Great Barrier Reef\u2019s Lizard Island and wasn\u2019t found until the next day.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">It will now return to Cairns, as investigations into Ms Rees\u2019 death continue.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The chief executive officer of Coral Expeditions, Mark Fifield, said the company prided itself on \u201cdelivering high quality experiences to our guests\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cIt was increasingly apparent given the circumstances of the last week that we could not deliver on this promise,\u201d he said in a statement on Saturday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">On October 25th, the luxury cruise ship arrived on Lizard Island as part of a 60-day circumnavigation of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/australia\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/australia\/\">Australia<\/a>. Ms Rees (80) had to pull out of a planned hike to the island\u2019s summit.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Her daughter, Katherine Rees, said that her mother had felt ill and was asked to head down, unescorted.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">She never made it back to the ship.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The ship left Lizard Island at 3.40pm. It was five hours before authorities were alerted that she was missing, and a search and rescue operation was launched on land and sea.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Ms Rees was found dead the next day.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Katherine Rees said the family was \u201cshocked and saddened\u201d that the ship had left the island after the organised excursion without her mother.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) said on Saturday it had issued a notice to the master of the ship banning any new passengers, and that it understood the ship would return to Cairns, where AMSA staff will meet it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">AMSA is investigating why Ms Rees may not have been accounted for during boarding.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Fifield said passengers and crew were notified on Wednesday that \u201cfollowing the tragic passing of Suzanne Rees and previous mechanical issues, the decision had been made to cancel the remainder of the voyage\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cPassengers were told they would receive a full refund,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cSince that time, our team has worked to co-ordinate the return journeys of the passengers via chartered flights, as well as the crew and the vessel.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">AMSA and Fifield have offered their condolences to Ms Rees\u2019 family and loved ones. &#8211; Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The luxury Coral Adventurer cruise has been cancelled in the wake of the death of passenger Suzanne Rees,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":115747,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[986,42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-115746","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-australia","9":"tag-headlines","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-top-news","12":"tag-top-stories","13":"tag-topnews","14":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115746"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115746\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}