Royal Caribbean Cruise Rescues a Dozen People Stranded on Makeshift Raft

A Royal Caribbean Cruise ship reportedly rescued a group of people who had been floating at sea on a makeshift raft. 

According to Come Cruise with Me, Royal Caribbean’s Enchantment of the Seas was in the right place at the right time after diverting its scheduled course to avoid a storm on Sunday, Sept. 28 evening.

The impromptu change in plans put the ship in the Caribbean Sea. As the vessel dodged Hurricane Humberto and Tropical Storm Imelda, it found a makeshift raft of approximately 12 people while traveling from Tampa, Fla., to Costa Maya, Mexico.

Footage shared online by a passenger on Facebook and Cruise News Today showed what the outlet claimed to be a passenger aboard the Enchantment of the Seas, recording as the ship pulled up just as the raft “was starting to fall apart” off the coast of Mexico. 

A rescue craft was sent to the group in distress. Once the individuals were rescued from the raft and brought onto the ship, they were provided with drinking water. 

PEOPLE did not immediately receive a response for comment from Royal Caribbean Cruises. 

Cruise lines typically hand off the rescued to the appropriate authorities once they arrive closer to shore, per Come Cruise With Me.

Sunday’s raft rescue wasn’t the first time a Royal Caribbean Cruise ship has been in the right place at the right time. 

In February, the cruise company’s Brilliance of the Seas had recently left New Orleans  for a seven-night cruise when it rescued 11 people floating on a small boat in the Gulf of Mexico between Cuba and Mexico, CNN reported at the time.

“The captain calls me immediately as the charterer of the ship to let me know that they are going to turn around and investigate, and that’s exactly what they did,” Randle Roper, a passenger and the CEO of the LGBT+ vacation company VACAYA, told CNN of the experience. “They sent a pilot boat with Brilliance of the Seas crew members out to the stranded vessel.”

Roper added, “I can only imagine the fear that they must have been feeling to be out in the open Gulf with no other vessels around.”

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The passenger recalled seeing the refugees “waving that white flag of distress” when the Royal Caribbean Cruise ship got closer, and that other passengers aboard the boat went to the decks to see the rescue for themselves.

“They had determined from a distance that there were 10 or more people … on the boat. They could also see that they were clearly in distress,” Roper said. “The refugees on the boat were literally bailing out the water out of the boat, so their boat had clearly become stricken, and they were just adrift [at] sea and taking on water.”

Roper described the rescued refugees as “pretty malnourished and exhausted,” but “in great spirits” after making it onto the ship.