Several people were injured after the Norwegian Escape cruise ship was blasted by what the cruise line called a “sudden, extreme gust of wind, estimated at 100 knots.”
The powerful wind caused the ship to tilt on its left side, or, in nautical terms, its port side, when the wind struck just before midnight on Sunday, the Miami-based Norwegian Cruise Line confirmed.
Some passengers described the incident in social media posts, with one writing that “chairs, tables glass, people went flying to one side of the ship” while another passenger posted pictures of some of the damage in a room.
The same passenger also posted a video of what appeared to be a bar on the ship in disarray, with some of its chairs and tables toppled and the floor littered with debris.
The ship was at the beginning of a seven-night cruise out of New York City and was en route to its first stop, Port Canaveral on Central Florida’s Atlantic Coast, according to reports from cruise industry bloggers.
The ship was to continue onto the Bahamas before heading back to New York, according to cruisehive.com.
In January 2018 the Norwegian Breakaway cruise ship made headlines after it sailed through a so-called bomb cyclone winter storm.
Hair-raising video footage captured by passengers aboard the Breakaway showed the ship getting hammered by the huge waves as well as the damage to the inside and outside of the ship.