Pride of America Webcam – Hawaii’s U.S.-Flagged Cruise Ship

The Pride of America Webcam is a forward ship camera on Pride of America, the U.S.-flagged cruise ship that Norwegian Cruise Line runs around the Hawaiian Islands under its NCL America brand. The camera looks out through a window high on the ship, so the frame takes in a rounded glass pane and its frame, part of the ship’s own deck and bow, and the view beyond. NCL publishes it as a still image, with the ship’s name, the date and the time in a black box at the top left, and the clock runs on Hawaii time. The scene is often a harbor rather than open sea: fuel tanks, piers, warehouses and town lights in port, and water and horizon between the islands.

About Pride of America

Pride of America began as Project America, a plan for the first large U.S.-built cruise ships in decades. Her keel was laid at Litton-Ingalls in Pascagoula, Mississippi, in October 2000. When the parent company American Classic Voyages went bankrupt in October 2001, work stopped with the hull about 40 percent complete. NCL bought the unfinished hull and materials in August 2002 and towed them to Lloyd Werft at Bremerhaven, Germany, for completion.

She measures 80,439 GT and 280.6 meters (921 feet), with 15 decks, 2,186 passengers and a crew of 927. She is registered at Honolulu and flies the flag of the United States. She sails weekly round trips from Honolulu, with calls at Kahului, Hilo, Kailua Kona and Nawiliwili.

Pride of America Details

What Can You See on the Pride of America Webcam?

The Pride of America Webcam sits behind glass, which sets it apart from the others in the NCL fleet. A curved pane and its heavy frame take up the left side of the picture, and rain drops or reflections can show on the window. At night the lights inside the ship come through as well, so desks, shelves and a lamp can appear along the bottom of the frame beneath the harbor. In port the view carries a lot of detail: storage tanks, a working wharf, warehouses and hills behind the town, and archived frames also show city towers along a waterfront. Between ports, the same frame is water and sky with the bow in the lower left.

Sunk at Her Berth Before Her First Cruise

The move to Germany nearly ended the ship. In the process she was lengthened from 850 feet to 920 feet (259 meters to 280 meters), raising her gross tonnage from 72,000 to over 80,000. Then, in January 2004, a major storm hit the Lloyd Werft yard, and she sank at her berth. Her hull escaped damage, but equipment and interiors spent over a month under water, and her debut slipped from 2004 to 2005. To fill the gap, NCL renamed Norwegian Sky as Pride of Aloha and pulled SuperStar Leo out of Asia to become Norwegian Spirit.

She was finally christened at the Manhattan Cruise Terminal on June 17, 2005, by Elaine Chao, then United States Secretary of Labor. It was the first new U.S.-flagged deep-water passenger ship in nearly 50 years, since the SS Argentina of 1958. After a publicity cruise down the East Coast, she sailed through the Panama Canal to San Francisco and on to Honolulu. A 30 million US dollar dry dock in Honolulu in 2013 added 24 suites and a steakhouse.

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Source: Norwegian Cruise Line