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Barcelona, Spain – The Mediterranean was heaving as the 68-year-old Italian stood in the cruise ship lounge. A moment later a monstrous wave shattered the windows and sent shards into her head, leaving her bleeding on the floor and calling out for her husband.

Torrents of water gushed into the Louis Majesty, pouring through several floors of the ship.

“I thought I would end up in the sea, drowned,” said Anna Lita, who had a black eye and bandages on her head and hand Thursday.

The three waves that struck the Cypriot-owned ship Wednesday claimed two lives off the coast of northeast Spain. The vessel was carrying 1,350 passengers and 580 crew members, from a total of 27 countries.

This accident happened in an area of the Mediterranean called the Gulf of Leon, which is known for big waves when storms hit.

The ship was on a 12-day cruise from the ports of Genoa and Marseilles in the western Mediterranean, calling at Tangiers, Casablanca, Tenerife, Lanzarote, Cadiz, Cartagena, Barcelona and had been due to return to Genoa on Thursday.

Passengers said the weather was terrible as they left Cartagena in eastern Spain Wednesday, and the captain announced he was skipping a planned stop in Barcelona and heading straight for Italy.

Arrangements have been made to fly all passengers home Thursday and the ship will carry on with its normal schedule later this month after repairs are completed, he told the AP from Cyprus. By the end of the day most will have left the ship.

The two dead passengers — a German and an Italian — suffered fatal injuries from the glass shards and ripped-out window frames and furniture.

“It was three waves, one after the other. The damage was done by the second and the third waves. We are talking about waves that exceeded 10 meters in height. This was unforeseen and unpredicted because the weather was not really that bad,”

A Louis Cruise Lines statement said the waves smashed windows in a public area on deck 5 on the forward part of the vessel.

Louis Cruise Lines’ Web site says the ship is 680 feet (207 meters) long, and features 10 passenger decks and 732 staterooms along with various bars, pools, restaurants and shops.

Amateur video taken aboard a cruise ship shows a massive wave smashing windows and flooding parts of the vessel. Two passengers died and 14 were injured when the wave struck the ship which was sailing…

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