Merrian Carver - Cruise Ship Passenger Missing Onboard

Merrian Carver

Once the Cruise line was contacted, it took them 3 days to confirm she had been on the cruise, 26 days after she had disappeared. They then confirmed that she was on the ship and after the second night did not use her room. However, they also indicated that this was not uncommon since she could have stayed with someone else and could have gotten off in Vancouver and they would be not record kept to confirm her departure from the boat. Since we could not really determine what happened we hired Private Investigators plus a Boston Law firm to start a major investigation. By then the trail was cold.

Our goal was to speak to someone on the ship that had seen Merrian. Attempts by the Private Investigator met with only frustrations indicating that there was no reports issued by the Steward and nothing unusual happened during the Cruise that Merrian was on. Finally, on November 4, 2004, an investigator was sent onto the ship. He was then advised that he could not speak to anyone of the ship and they would not provide the name of the Steward that had taken care of Merrian’s room. They also indicated that the videos were erased every two or three weeks and there was no review of the videos concerning our missing daughter.

Merrian Carver, a 40 year old woman, disappeared from a Royal Caribbean cruise to Alaska in August of 2004. Her Steward reported her missing for 5 days to his supervisor and was told to “just do your job and forget it” At the end of the cruise, Cruise line officials simply boxed up her belongings and even disposed of most of her items.

Royal Caribbean Cruise Line made no attempt to contact either the FBI or her family when she turned up missing and had not used her room. Cambridge Police took several weeks to even trace her to the cruise ship delaying the search for almost one month.

Since no progress was being made, subpoenas were first issued on December 2, 2004 for information concerning our daughter. The law firms then tried to arrange for an interview with the Steward and after meeting with no success, it was necessary to obtain a Court Order at the end of December to require that the Steward and the head of the hotel be disposed.

These depositions took place on January 16th and 17th of the year 2005. At that point, we realized that our daughter had been reported missing daily for the last 5 days of the cruise and nothing was done to search for her. Also we learned that the cruise line had disposed most of her items.

Again, another subpoena was issued on January 24, 2005 for additional material. By February 9th only one item had been sent to use as a result of these two subpoenas. That was a poor quality picture of Merrian getting on the boat.

Finally, we made the decision to go directly to the Board of Directors and CEO pleading for their assistance. Each member of the Board received the depositions showing the cover-up. No one from the Board responded to this plea but finally the Head of Rick Management called to indicated that we would received the requested material in our subpoenas plus any other material in their possession concerning Merrian.

We did obtain documents written by Cruise Line employees setting up the cover-up of any information concerning our daughter’s case.

We also determined from their own documents that they had reviewed the video’s concerning our daughter on the 26th day of her disappearance. Also, videos were on a 30-day cycle. This means that there should have been a video of Merrian. The material we had been given over the months was inaccurate about that fact the videos are kept on 2 to 3 weeks and there was no review by them of these videos.

After additional months went by, we still did not have all requested information so started the process to take legal action against the Royal Caribbean Cruise Line.

A very sad, sad story

Music Heard On Merrian Carver Page:

The Butterfly Music (lyrics by Merrian Carver):

For the Service of Remembrance for Merrian, two members of our church took Merrian's writings about the Butterfly and turned it into a song for this service.