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A seven-story rogue wave hit the cruise ship Norwegian Dawn on its way from the Bahamas to New York Saturday, April 16th, smashing windows, flooding more than 60 cabins and injuring four passengers.

The Norwegian Dawn, with 2,500 passengers on board, was diverted to Charleston, SC, for repairs, and departed for New York early Sunday after a Coast Guard inspection. Officials said the ship was expected back in New York by noon Monday.

"The ship was hit by a freak wave that caused two windows to break in two different cabins," Norwegian Cruise Line said in a statement. It said the wave reached as high as deck 10, and 62 cabins were flooded and four passengers had cuts and bruises.

Susan Robison, a spokeswoman for Norwegian Cruise Lines, told the New York Daily News the Norwegian Dawn had survived a bad storm and the ocean had calmed when the wave hit the ship.

"Our captain, who has 20 years on the job, said he never saw anything like it," Robison said.

The ship's hull was damaged but the vessel was not taking on water, according to Keith Moore of the Coast Guard Group Charleston.

"All the passengers had donned personal flotation devices as a precaution," Moore told The (Charleston) Post and Courier.

The cruise line said passengers about 100 persons whose cabins were flooded were flown home from Charleston and the safety of the ship "was in no way compromised by this incident." Another 200 opted to leave the ship in Charleston and make their own further travel arrangements.

Each passenger on the ship got a refund of half the trip's cost and a voucher for half the price of a future cruise, a spokesperson said.

Rogue waves have hit two other cruise ships this year. Iberojet's Voyager (formerly Royal Olympic's Olympia Voyager) was hit by a rogue wave in the western Mediterranean off the coast of Spain in February, and the University of Pittsburgh's Semester at Sea, which has chartered the M/V Explorer (formerly Royal Olympic's Olympia Explorer), was hit by a rogue wave in the Pacific in January.