Chef Favio Ordenes, 26, of Chile did not report to work at midnight but before concluding he’d gone overboard an extensive search was conducted on the ship. Then, along with the Canadian Coast Guard, the Queen Mary 2 went back to the area they were in when he first went missing.
From there they retraced their travel. The search was hampered by foggy conditions — preventing an aerial search — but the Queen Mary 2 had passengers up on deck straining their eyes to see if they could spot Ordenes. There are over 2,600 passengers onboard.
“Every pair of eyes helps,” the captain announced. The Chronicle-Herald spoke to passenger Allan Bonner via email, who described the efforts to find the missing man.
“As the ship appeared to be approaching the Grand Banks, Captain Kevin Oprey made a dignified announcement saying we’re going back to the spot that Mr. Ordenes was first thought to be missing,” Bonner wrote.
“About five-six hours later, we were searching the ocean. Right now there’s not a spot on the railing to look over — so many passengers are trying to assist by peering into dense fog.”
However, by late Saturday evening Cunard, the company that owns and operates the Queen Mary 2, and the coast guard, said efforts to find Ordenes were being scaled back due to the extreme unlikelihood he could have survived in the Atlantic for such a length of time.
The passenger ship, out of the Southampton in the U.K. and travelling to New York, has now returned to its regular route. They did not speculate on how Ordenes might have gone overboard.
