A death on board a ferry cancelled one round-trip sailing Tuesday.
The M.V. Coastal Renaissance had pulled into B.C. Ferries’ Duke Point Terminal when the ship’s crew discovered a man who was unresponsive onboard.
“When the ship docked at Duke Point the crew did a sweep of the vessel, as they normally do, to make sure all the customers have gotten off the ship and they did come across a gentleman who appeared to be sleeping,” said Deborah Marshall, B.C. Ferries spokeswoman. “When they went to try to wake him, they alerted to the fact that he was unresponsive.”
Marshall said three occupational first aid attendants onboard tried, unsuccessfully, to resuscitate the victim who appeared to be in his 60s or 70s.
The 10:15 a.m. sailing to Tsawwassen and 12:45 p.m. sailing from Tsawwassen to Duke Point were cancelled due to the delay caused by the incident and for a crew debriefing.
“It was a traumatic event for the crew that were involved, so we did a debrief with the crew and we also offered counselling to any crew member who wanted to take us up on that,” Marshall said.
The ship resumed sailings at 3:15 p.m. when the afternoon crew came on shift.
Coroner Barbara McLintock, in an e-mail, said the victim will not be identified because he died of natural causes.