NCL tries to assess damage to the Pride of America

[Jason]

(PacificBusinessNews) (http://www.bizjournals.com/pacific/stories/2004/01/12/daily51.html)

Howard Dicus

Ship crews routinely batten down the hatches in stormy weather, but crews worked Thursday to secure everything that moves on the Pride of America, which sank at the dock the previous morning in Bremerhaven, Germany.

"Pride of America took on water up to deck three and experienced a list of approximately 15 degrees. The ship, which is under construction and docked at the shipyard, is resting on the bottom and is now secure," Norwegian Cruise Line said after getting a report from the Lloyd Werft shipyard.

While it was not immediately clear if the ship, listing at 15 degrees with three decks submerged, had been secured enough to make the adjacent waters safe for divers, NCL did specify that it did not expect to learn before the end of the week how badly damaged the ship is.

"The ship should be refloated in the next few days. Until this refloating has taken place, Lloyd Werft will not be able to assess the extent of the damage or any potential delay in the delivery schedule," NCL said from its operations center in Miami.

Norwegian Cruise Line said last year that it intended to begin Hawaiian interisland cruises on July 4, but then scheduled a series of cruises ahead of that time as the ship sails from Europe to the U.S. Atlantic Coast, then through the Panama Canal to the U.S. West Coast and thence to Hawaii. It was to have taken delivery on the Pride in April.

Nearly 1,000 people, mostly here in the islands, have already been hired by NCL and many have already undergone paid training at sea. These new NCL employees could be affected by a prolonged delay in the delivery of the ship, but NCL says it simply doesn't know yet whether there will be such a delay.

NCL is a subsidiary of Star Cruises, the number three cruise company after Carnival-Princess and Royal Caribbean. The company no longer has a Norwegian connection. It is run from Miami and owned by interests in Singapore and Malaysia. NCL moved into the Hawaii cruise market at the end of 2001 when American Classic Voyages suspended operations in the travel crash following 9/11.

The Pride of America is a new cruise liner, originally commissioned by American Classic from a shipyard in Pascagoula, Miss., that is owned by the defense contractor Northrup Grumman. It was not finished when American Classic collapsed into bankruptcy. NCL agreed to acquire the vessel and commission its completion, though not in the same shipyard, as part of its deal to become an American-flagged cruise line for the purposes of its Hawaiian cruises. Hiring local crew was another condition.

U.S. law forbids foreign-flagged cruise lines from running any all-American cruises: they must make at least one non-U.S. port call. Up to now, NCL manages this by adding to its Hawaiian cruises a lengthy side trip to Fanning Island in Kiribati.