A crew member went overboard from the Norwegian Breakaway late Saturday night on April 25, according to local boston news. The incident occurred off the coast of Wellfleet, Massachusetts while the ship was returning to Boston from a 7-day cruise to Bermuda.
The Norwegian Breakaway changed course at 11:55 p.m. local time to begin its search and rescue operation for the missing crew member, based on the ship’s tracking data. The ship’s rescue operation lasted roughly 4 hours before returning en route to Boston.
This is a notably short search and rescue operation by the Norwegian Breakaway. Typically, cruise ships will spend over 10 hours searching for an overboard person. By comparison, the Carnival Splendor spent 16 hours searching for a man who jumped overboard off the coast of Brisbane, Australia on April 19, 2026.
The U.S. Coast Guard also assisted in the search and rescue with a helicopter and crews from the Coast Guard’s Provincetown station, according to local news. The Coast Guard is still searching for the missing crew member as of Sunday morning, April 26.
No information about the crew member or the events leading up to the incident has been released yet.
Security camera footage showed the crew member falling from the ship, according to Boston 25.
No reports indicate the Norwegian Breakaway has a man overboard (MOB) system despite being required to by the Cruise Vessel Security and Safety Act (CVSSA) of 2010. The language in the CVSSA is clear. The law states, “The vessel shall integrate technology that can be used for capturing images of passengers or detecting passengers who have fallen overboard, to the extent that such technology is available.”
The technology for MOB systems is available and has saved already lives. A father and daughter were rescued in just 19 minutes thanks to the MOB system on the Disney Dream. To our knowledge, Disney Cruise Line is the only cruise line to comply with the CVSSA and install life saving MOB systems on its ships.
This is the 436 person to go overboard from from a cruise ship since 2000, according to cruise expert Dr. Ross Klein.
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April 26, 2016 Evening Update:
This is the second NCL crew member to go overboard in the past 2 weeks. We received this message from a former ship employee:
“Please keep my name anonymous. Crew member who went overboard from Norwegian Breakaway was an Indian national working in the galley. That’s two Indians from Galley that have jumped overboard from NCL ships in less than one month. You were surprised that the search operation only lasted 4hrs. That’s because the ship was on tight time schedule to get back to home port for turn around day. If the search for the man overboard had been conducted fully and taken up to 12 hrs it would have cost NCL millions of dollars in compensation and lost revenue. I spent years working for them in a senior position at sea and sadly I am not surprised at what’s happening. Crew treated badly but NCL know that the majority will do or say nothing as they are desperate for the work that they cannot get back home.”