Canadian sea cadets mistake UK town names, spark missing persons alert

A simple mistake, the mix-up of a town's name, lead two Canadian sea cadets and their leader about three hours from where they were supposed to be on Monday and launched a national missing persons search in the United Kingdom.

The Daily Telegraph reported Mervyn Morash, a leader in the Royal Canadian Sea Cadets corps from Chester, NS, along with 14-year-old Alexander Rhodenizer and Rachel Nauss, lost the rest of their group during their travels to meet a sister corps in Chester-le-Street, Durham.

Not worrying, they simply boarded a train from London to where they thought everyone was heading, the Telegraph reported. But they made a geographical error that entangled police in the UK and authorities in Canada in a day-long search.

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Morash and the cadets boarded a train to Chester, about 34 km south of Liverpool, but they were supposed to head to Chester-le-Street in Durham, 280 kilometres away.

They didn't have a cell phone, according to the story, and it took police nearly 24-hours to find them, but they arrived safely in Chester-le-Street the next day.

A spokesperson for the Atlantic cadets told the Telegraph the organization had reminded cadets about being careful on their travels.

Perhaps we shouldn't be too hard on the wandering cadets; surely others have confused UK towns with confusingly similar names, for example, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne and Newcastle-Under-Lyme.

And it could have been worse — they could have ended up in Colchester, nearly 450 kilometres away from Chester-le-Street.