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On July 1, 2009, more than two dozen passengers from Royal Caribbean’s Freedom of the Seas were taken to the hospital after the amphibious tour bus in which they were traveling crashed in St. Thomas.

Royal Caribbean said in a statement that the passengers were on a “Pirate Duck Adventure” tour organized by the line at the time of the accident. The tour bus, which has a boat-like hull for traveling in water and wheels to move on land, veered off the road at a low rate of speed, the statement says.

Royal Caribbean says forty-nine (49) passengers were on the tour bus at the time of accident, and twenty-nine (29) were taken to the hospital. Of those, nine sustained non-life threatening injuries, and a spokeswoman tells USA TODAY all but one were able to return to the ship before it set sail later in the day.

Royal Caribbean spokeswoman Cynthia Martinez says the Freedom’s captain held the ship’s departure last night so the injured passengers could make it back on board.

“Our thoughts are with our guests that were involved in this unfortunate accident,” Royal Caribbean CEO Adam Goldstein says in the statement. “The safety and well-being of our guests is our highest priority, and we will continue to do our very best to assist them.”

The passengers were traveling on The Duckaneer, a popular tour option for cruisers visiting St. Thomas that is hard to miss when it motors down the roads of St. Thomas’ port, Charlotte Amalie.

The Freedom of the Seas is on a seven-night cruise of the Eastern Caribbean out of Port Canaveral, Florida that also includes stops in CocoCay, Bahamas; and Philipsburg, St. Maarten.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 at 3:40 pm and is filed under Legal News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.