Family Devastated as Search Called Off for Cruise Passenger Who Fell Overboard Near Hawaii

The US Coast Guard has called off a search for an Australian man who fell overboard off a cruise ship near Hawaii on Thursday, two days after the incident happened.

Warwick Tollemache, 35, was a passenger on Royal Caribbean’s Quantum of the Seas trip from Brisbane to Honolulu. He went overboard at about 11 p.m. local time on Tuesday when the ship was about 500 miles south of Kailua Kona, Big Island.

Warwick Tollemache

“While on its trans-Pacific sailing, a guest onboard Quantum of the Seas went overboard,” a spokesperson for Royal Caribbean said. “The ship’s crew immediately launched a search and rescue operation and is working closely with local authorities.”

Coast Guard aircrews searched the waters five times in six hours the next morning, to no avail.

They eventually spoke to Tollemache’s family and called off the search.

“After reviewing all relevant information of the case and discussing it with the next of kin, the Coast Guard has made the difficult decision to suspend the active search for the passenger aboard the Quantum of the Seas,” said Kevin Cooper, a search and rescue mission coordinator for the Joint Rescue Coordination Center Honolulu. 

Tollemache’s family left several tributes on social media.

“Our family is heartbroken at the loss of our beloved Warwick. He was a kind, beautiful, and gentle soul who was adored by everyone who knew him,” Mandy Tollemache said in a statement from the family. “He will be deeply missed.”

His girlfriend, Celine La Roche, added she is “just devastated” by the incident.

“They should have kept looking — I don’t understand why they stopped the search,” she told the Courier Mail.

“We were talking in the morning (before the tragedy), we were making plans for another trip. We were cruising in the South Pacific last month and I was going to move in with him.

“He told me we were going to go to France to meet my family and cruise on the Mediterranean.

“I was still hoping until I heard they’d stopped the search and now … he could still be alive in the middle of nowhere.”

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