Cases involving injuries to cruise ship passengers may include injuries, deaths, missing passengers who apparently fell in the ocean, passengers being hit by falling objects, food poisoning, being thrown by rough seas due to the neglect of the captain and nearly every other conceivable type of injury possible on land can exist on cruise ships. Injuries also occur when passengers leave the ship to visit ports of call. Cruise ships arrange and promote tours, trips, scuba, fishing and other activities and sometimes they do not check out or monitor the safety of these companies that provide the services the cruise ship sells to the passengers.
Whittier was a small town, founded in 1881 by Clark Whittier when he purchased 60,000 acres (240 km²) of land in the area, and is now an unincorporated community in western North Carolina. It was incorporated as a town from 1887 to 1933, when the Great Depression took the lumber industry boom (which began in the 1900s) down with it. The town was located on the railroad and the Tuckasegee River, between Bryson City downstream to the west, and Dillsboro upstream to the southeast. It straddles the county line between Jackson County to its east and Swain County to the west.