The cruise ship Norwegian Pearl, Norwegian Cruise Line's newest, apparently was indirectly responsible for a massive power blackout that left millions of people in the dark in a number of Western European countries on the night of November 4th.

The 93,500-ton ship was being brought down the Ems River from the Meyer shipyard in Papenburg, Germany, where it was outfitted, to Eemshaven, Netherlands -- and Germany's biggest electric utility E-ON shut down a high voltage line over the river so the Norwegian Pearl could pass safely.

For reasons that have not been fully explained, the shutdown caused computers running Western Europe's interconnected electricity grid to conclude that it was overloaded, triggering a cascading effect where grids were dumped to avoid a total crash.

The incident, which shut down television stations, trapped people in elevators and plunged millions of homes into darkness, lasted a few minutes in some places but up to 90 minutes in others.

The power outages affected large areas of Germany and France, including parts of Paris where the lights were out for an hour, and extended to Belgium, Italy, Spain, Austria, the Netherlands, and even Morocco.

From Eemshaven, the Norwegian Pearl will next undergo sea trials before sailing from Southampton, England for Miami on Dec. 2nd.

Following her formal two-day inaugural sailing from Miami on Dec.16, 2006, Norwegian Pearl will sail nine-day Southern Caribbean and five-day Western Caribbean itineraries through April 2007.