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The Sunward at sea. |
The maiden voyage of the modern cruise ship took place
on December 19, 1966 when the Sunward
set sail from Miami, Florida. Miniscule by today's standards, the Sunward
was about 457 feet long, and could hold up to 634 passengers. Built in
Norway in early 1966, shipowner Knud Kloster originally used the Sunward
to ferry British vacationers from Southampton to Lisbon and Gibraltar.
But business was sparse for Kloster. |
| News of the Norwegian captain and his cruise ship reached Miami entrepreneur, Ted Arison, who would later found Carnival Cruise Lines. Arison had been having some success taking tourists on short trips from Miami to Jamaica but was in need of a bigger boat. As Arison's son Mickey tells the story, "Ted heard the Sunward was laid up in Gibraltar, so he called...Kloster and said, 'You've got a ship, I've got passengers, we could put them together, and we'd have a cruise line.'" Kloster agreed and the two formed the Norwegian Caribbean Line in the fall of 1966. The NCL was so popular that its owners ordered the construction of two new ships, the Starward in 1968 and the Skyward in 1969. Back
Sources: Ritzer, George. "Enchanting a Disenchanted World: Revolutionizing the Means of Consumption." |
