A Florida woman is mourning the death of her husband who is suspected to have drowned while on a trip to Blue Hole in St Ann last week.

Yolissa Blakes and her husband, 33-year-old Damian Benjamin, were passengers on the Carnival Sunrise cruise ship that docked in Ocho Rios.

She told Florida-based WESH 2 News in a television interview that Benjamin, a rising tattoo artist, was a dedicated husband of 11 years who had been by her side through her battle with heart trouble.

“He was just there for me nonstop, always. All these years,” she said.

As a thank you gift to Benjamin, Blakes said, she booked a cruise to Jamaica.

“That was my gift to him,” she said. “He was happy.”

The cruise arrived in Ocho Rios on Wednesday morning and, after it docked, the couple visited Blue Hole, a trip Blakes said was not booked through the cruise line.

She said her husband wished for them to both jump in the waterfall, but she was “scared”.

“He wanted me to go with him. And I just couldn’t because my heart. So I just made the decision, ‘OK, if you want to go, go.’”

But then tragedy struck.

A grief-stricken Blakes noted, “…that was the last time I saw him.”

Her husband drowned.

“What happened with Damian, I don’t want ever to happen to anybody else again,” she told WESH 2 News. “I had to see him die.”

Benjamin leaves behind sisters, a mother and a daughter, Blakes said, remembering him as an ‘Angel on Earth’.

In tribute to her late husband, Blakes said the first thing she did when she returned home on Saturday was get a tattoo in his honor.

“It says, ‘Damian. We only part to meet again,’” she told WESH 2 News.

In a statement, Carnival Cruise said: “Carnival’s Care Team is supporting the family of a guest who died ashore while Carnival Sunrise was in Ocho Rios, Jamaica, on Wednesday. Our thoughts are with the guest’s family at this time.”