Cruises market themselves as floating escapes, a place to forget the real world while someone else handles literally everything else. What they don’t advertise is how those logistics work when someone dies onboard. A brutal wrongful death accusation against Royal Caribbean is now forcing that reality into public view.

According to the suit, 35-year-old California passenger Michael Virgil died after being served an extreme number of alcoholic drinks during a voyage. His family alleges that crew members placed his body in a walk-in refrigerator instead of the ship’s morgue and ignored pleas from his fiancée, Connie Aguilar, to return to port. The case has raised broader questions about how cruise lines handle death at sea and who gets access to the truth.

Maritime experts told the New York

See Full Page