Watch: Meyer Werft Floats Giant Megablock for New Breakaway PLUS Cruise Ship

The first megablock section in the construction of Norwegian Cruise Lines’ 163,000 ton Norwegian Escape has been floated out of the building dock at the Meyer Werft shipyard in Papenburg Germany.

The Norwegian Escape is the lead ship in NCL’s new Breakaway PLUS class and the company’s largest ship to date. The vessel will have accommodations for 4,200 passengers in 2,100 cabins, and will also be equipped with five exhaust emission treatment units, aka scrubbers, meaning that the new luxury liner will exceed the requirements of current and upcoming environmental standards, including the Emission Control Area fuel oil sulphur limits coming into force on January 1, 2015.

The Breakaway PLUS class is a successor to NCL’s Breakaway class, which includes the 146,600 ton Norwegian Breakaway and Norwegian Getaway delivered in May 2013 and February 2014, respectively. NCL has ordered a total of four Breakaway PLUS class ships from Meyer Werft, with delivery expected in fall 2015, spring 2017, spring 2018 and fall 2019. The first two Breakaway-Plus ships were ordered with a combined contract price of approximately euro 1.4 billion, NCL said previously.

For Meyer Werft, the float out of the megablock follows the recent delivery of Royal Caribbean’s Quantum of the Seas, the largest ship ever built in Germany.