MIAMI — Passengers set sail Sunday from Miami on an historic cruise to Cuba, the first in decades to depart from a U.S. seaport for the communist island nation.

Carnival Corp.’s 704-passenger Adonia left port at 4:24 p.m., bound for Havana. Carnival’s Cuba cruises, operating under its Fathom brand, will also visit the ports of Cienfuegos and Santiago de Cuba on the seven-day outing. Several Cuba-born passengers, among hundreds of others, were aboard, it said.

The cruise comes after Cuba loosened its policy banning Cuban-born people from arriving to the country by sea, a rule that threatened to stop the cruises from happening.

Restarting the cruises was an important element of a bid by President Barack Obama’s administration’s to increase tourism to Cuba after the Dec. 17, 2014, decision to restore diplomatic relations and move toward normalization.