A passenger on a Carnival Magic ship is missing after he fell overboard off the coast of Jacksonville, Florida, while on his first-ever cruise with his wife, authorities and family said Tuesday.
The 35-year-old passenger, identified by his wife as Ronnie Lee Peale Jr., ended up in the ocean about 185 miles east of Jacksonville early Monday, the US Coast Guard said.
Coast Guard aircraft and ships are being used in the search for the missing man.
Although officials have not formally named the passenger, Peale’s wife, Jennilyn Michelle Blosser, told Virginia news outlet WTKR that the man who went overboard is her husband.
According to the description of a GoFundMe campaign that Blosser launched Tuesday, she and her husband had gone on the cruise to celebrate her birthday.
The ship set out from Norfolk, Virginia, on May 25 and headed toward the Bahamas, bef
“This was Ronnie’s first cruise and thankfully he had a great time and made plenty of friends,” Blosser writes. “He is our social butterfly that was always on the move and loved to make friends with everyone.”
Blosser told WTRK that her husband is “the life of the party,” adding that he loved drinking, gambling and socializing on the ship.
The woman described herself as “devastated to say the least” by the unexpected incident.
Peale was reported missing late Monday afternoon. The Coast Guard statement said security footage on the ship shows that the man “leaned over the railing of his stateroom balcony and dropped into the water” at 4:10 a.m.
Carnival said the Coast Guard released the ship from search efforts and told the captain to return to port in Norfolk, Virginia, where it arrived as planned Tuesday.
Other passengers on the cruise reported hearing Carnival personnel asking for Peale over the intercom multiple times throughout the day Monday, but some said they only learned that he had gone overboard from Blosser’s Facebook post.
The ship can hold nearly 4,000 guests and is about 1,000 feet long.