In 1956, P & O ordered a new flagship from the Belfast based yard Harland & Wolff (famous for building the ill-fated liner Titanic among others). The ship was to be of 45.000 gross tons, a length of 814 ft and a beam of 103 ft. Both inside and out, she would be most modern. Her machinery

One of three contemporary well known British cruise ships, Andes, Caronia and Reina del Mar, Andes can be regarded as one of the finest passenger ships of her time. Andes could compete with Cunards famous Caronia of 1949 in terms of luxury and service. Originally, she had been built to the highest standards, as Royal Mail intended her to be

Oriana is the first purpose-built cruise ship commissioned for P&O Cruises and the first cruise ship especially designed for the British cruise market. P&O is the world’s oldest cruise company, starting passenger shipping operations in 1822 on routes connecting England with Spain and Portugal. Their Ceylon which was converted from liner to cruise ship is said to have

Last January (2019) I visited the former Cunard transatlantic liner Queen Elizabeth 2 in Dubai. She is a hotel ship nowadays and is located in Port Rashid directly opposite to the pier where cruise ships dock. Dubai being a popular cruise hub regularly receives 4 or 5 vessels a day and I happened to see Pullmantur’s Horizon calling. She

The Orient Queen is one of the recent casualties in the world of cruising. Not -as usual these days- because of companies disposing of inefficient tonnage because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but because she fell victim to the extremely heavy explosion in the port of Beirut on August 4, 2020. Better known as Vistamar, construction started in 1988

Plans for a new vessel replacing the ageing Saga Sapphire had been in the making for several years, and after lengthy taks with shipyard Meyer Werft, finally a preliminary agreement was signed in December 2015 for a newbuilding with delivery in 2019 with an option included for a sistership following in 2021. More than two years later

In March 1976, I was just 14 years old at the time, I was allowed to visit my first cruise ship, the Black Prince. It literally changed my life, once on board this intimate little ship I was immediately addicted to passenger ships and cruising which today, at the time of writing 44 years later hasn’t

On September 6 2016, Carnival Corporation signed an agreement with Meyer Werft for a new flagship for its subsidiary P&O Cruises. Then, in October that year, the public was asked for suggestions for the new ship’s name. In May 2018 it was announced that the name Iona had been chosen from 30,000 submissions, she would be named

In the mid-thirties, The Netherland Line (Stoomvaart Matschappij Nederland in Dutch) being in need of additional tonnage for their lucrative service to the Dutch West Indies alongside their much loved Johan van Oldebarnevelt (1929), ordered a newbuilding from the Netherlands Shipbuilding Cy. in Amsterdam. Construction started on July 2, 1937 with the keel laying ceremony. She was