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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

With many thanks to Mario Bounas VP marketing of Swan Hellenic for providing photographs of SH Minerva for use in this article! During the 1950s, a British travel agency Swan’s Tours started organising cruise holidays to historical sites in Greece. With archeologist Sir Mortimer Wheeler (a famous British archaeologist noted for his discoveries in Great Britain

Safmarine, a South African shipping line had started operating passenger ships in liner service between the UK and South Africa as early as 1965, operating former Union Castle vessels Transvaal and Pretoria Castle as S.A. Vaal and S.A. Oranje respectively until the mid 1970’s when liner service was discontinued due to the competition of the

Many thanks to Chelsea Stromfeld of Carnival Cruise Line for supplying photographs! More photographs of Mardi Gras call at Rotterdam port here Carnival Cruises has come a long way since their first Mardi Gras, the former Canadian Pacific liner Empress of Canada entered service in 1972.  At the time the company struggled to make ends meet, but today it not only

Costa Victoria interior photographs page http://srv1788086.hstgr.cloud/cruiseships/costa-victoria/ After Costa Classica (1991) and Costa Romantica (1993) had been taken into service, Costa Cruises decided to expand further by ordering a second pair of newbuildings in 1993. September 2 1995, the first of these vessels, Costa Victoria was launched. With these new ships, Costa aimed to increase their capacity in the Mediterranean -their most important