Woman misses boarding call, cruise ship sails away with her children

A woman looked on with horror as the cruise ship on which she was vacationing left a port in Bahamas, leaving her on the island while her children were on the ship.

"You see that right there? That is someone that has missed the boat," said Scott Thomas, a man who caught the incident on video. "And, apparently, she has her kids on the boat, and she’s not on there."

The woman can be seen dropping to her knees and throwing her hands in the air.

"My kids are on there," the video's narrator says she screams.

“How come her kids are on and not her?” one passenger can be heard saying in the video. “Wow! I didn’t think they’d do that,” another person says.

The Norwegian Breakaway cruise ship was sailing a seven-night cruise from New York when it docked in Nassau. On the fifth day, the woman did not return to the ship by the "widely communicated scheduled all aboard time of 5:30 p.m.," Norwegian Cruise Line said in a statement.

Cruise staff found the woman's husband and children on the ship before it was time to leave the port but could not to get in touch with her and did not know when she would be returning, the company said.

After the ship waited an extra 30 minutes for her, the woman's husband agreed to disembark with their travel documents to wait for his wife while the children stayed on board with their uncle and other family members.

“The ship went beyond normal protocol and waited alongside an additional half an hour for the guest,” Norweigen said in its statement.

“You are told again and again what time to be back on the boat, generally an hour before the ship leaves port," one woman commented on YouTube. "You can’t blame the ship's Captain for keeping to a schedule.

Cox Media Group