Ferry passenger dies ‘ copying Kate in Titanic’
Woman who fell overboard had been drinking and liked to ‘lark about’
A WOMAN who fell to her death from a ferry may have been imitating Kate Winslet’s pose in Titanic, an inquest heard. Emma Blackwell, 31, was last seen heading towards a railing on the ninth deck of a Brittany Ferry after drinking heavily on board.
Her family said she liked to ‘ lark about’ and could have been copying the famous Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio scene when she fell into the sea 80 miles off the French coast.
Yesterday, a coroner warned tourists of the dangers of drinking on holiday ferries as he recorded an open verdict on her death.
Miss Blackwell, from Plymouth, was on her way home from a motor- cycling trip to Spain with an exboyfriend when the accident happened on the ferry Val de Loire 12 hours out of Santander in May 2003. A five- hour air and sea search failed to locate her and it was not until January the following year that her lower limbs washed up on a beach in Brittany.
French authorities buried the remains because they could not identify them, but Interpol checks later linked their DNA to Miss Blackwell and they were returned to
Britain and reburied.
After the inquest in Plymouth,
Miss Blackwell’s sister, Joanne
Trevan, 39, said: ‘ I know what
Emma was like and she was
probably leaning over the rail
and trying to do a Kate Winslet.
She would not have chosen to
jump.
‘I have been on ferries with her
in the past and she likes to have
a good time and have a few
drinks and flirt with the men.
She was naughty and she liked
to lark about.’
The inquest heard that Miss
Blackwell had had sex with a
man she met in the bar of the
ferry not long before she died.
Mini- cruise passenger Derek
Wilson, 51, said they drank
together for about four hours
before going to his cabin.
They returned to the bar and
carried on drinking and dancing
until it closed at 1am, he said.
He told the hearing that he
thought she had gone to the
toilet and was shocked when the
alarm was raised about five minutes later.
Another passenger Peter
Carey, 27, said he met Miss
Blackwell for the first time in the
bar and was also drinking with
her shortly before she fell.
‘ I was drinking iced tea
cocktails and she said to me
“I’m feeling really horny”, which
I took to mean that she wanted
sex,’ he said.
‘She said she had no cabin and
I told her she had come to the right place. She said she was going outside and I followed her four of five paces behind and then she turned right through a door on to the deck and I saw what I thought was her falling.’
Miss Blackwell’s former boyfriend Matthew Ford, 36, told the inquest she had drunk heavily and taken cannabis during their week-long trip and on one occasion had sex with a Spanish man in their hotel in Barcelona.
He said he had not planned to have sex with Miss Blackwell but they had done so after a night’s drinking at a campsite. He added that she gave no indication she may have wanted to harm herself but had told him she was not looking forward to coming back to Plymouth.
‘ When she was excited she would sometimes do dangerous things,’ said Mr Ford. ‘She once jumped off the back of my bike when I was riding it and she also jumped out of a tree.
‘She would do silly things when she was under the influence of drink or drugs.’
Plymouth coroner Nigel Meadows said: ‘To describe Emma as quite a character would be to do her a disservice.
‘ She had drunk a great deal on that night and may have been skylarking around.
‘This shows if you are drinking to excess on a foreign ferry you have to be very careful what you do because of the danger of falling down or falling overboard.
‘ These incidents happen very infrequently but they can happen and people should not over-indulge to such an extent they lose the ability to control themselves.’