What Happened to MS Seaward's Tenders

I hope someone can help me with this issue that came up as a result of another posting that dealt with SS Norway's tenders. I sailed on the Seaward and know that she was built to carry her own tenders and did since I rode on them. Seaward's tenders were nothing like her lifeboats and were carried on special davits in the last sections of the ship aft on port and starboard sides. As time went on and the Seaward became the Sea, her tenders disappeared. My question for you NCL experts is what happened to the Seaward tenders and why were they removed...I enjoyed riding them to NCL's private island.

Please help if you have info....:cool:

Now this is an interesting question! Alas, I have no idea what the answer is :( ... I never even noticed that those huge tenders were removed! I remember them vividly - at the time I'd never seen anything like them before.

As I recall, in the fashion of NORWAY's tenders, they were called LITTLE SEAWARD I and II.

Having them would have helped a great deal when it became the Sea. My first cruise as an adult was on the Sea to New England and they had to hire tenders at most ports, which caused a lot of problems. it was such a nice cozy ship and the crew was beyond compare. Sold me on cruising, that's for sure.

Doug,

As a CC Host, maybe you have connections at NCL that you could contact and ask them for the history of the Seaward's tenders?

Mark:cool:

Here is the lowdown on the tenders as provided to me by NCL

The tenders were a prototype with water jet drive. Both tenders and davits were unreliable and gave us operational problems from day one, they were also very light and had to be taken out of service regularly due to the sea state alongside.

A decision was made to take them off the Seaward and use them to support the operation at Great Stirrup Cay. Due to continuous technical problems and issues with getting spare parts for the water jets, a decision was later made to sell them to a Mexican operator who intended to use them at Isla Muheres (by Cancun).