A person has tragically died after falling overboard from the MSC Virtuosa cruise ship off the Channel Islands in the early hours of Saturday morning.
The French coastguard received a distress call shortly after midnight, prompting a large-scale rescue operation involving a French navy helicopter, an RNLI lifeboat, and a Channel Islands air search plane.
The MSC Virtuosa, owned by MSC Cruises, had been en route to Southampton, where it berthed at 8:04 a.m. after departing from Cartagena Port in Spain. The cruise ship company issued a statement following the incident: “A guest on board MSC Virtuosa went overboard on 12 October while the ship was sailing to Southampton.
