Captain Greybeard

Cruise ship Carnival Triumph is adrift in the Gulf of Mexico without propulsion after an engine room fire. It is not expected to be towed into port before Wednesday. The ship is operating with emergency generator power but with its air conditioning knocked out, more than 3,000 passengers on board have been asked to stay in public areas and on open decks "for their comfort." It is not immediately clear whether the ship's vacuum-operated toilets are functioning. The fire broke out while the ship - which left Galveston, Texas on Thursday - was 150 miles off the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico. [...]

Five crew members have been killed and three are in hospital after an accident during a routine lifeboat drill on cruise ship Thomson Majesty. The boat plunged into the water and capsized during a safety exercise while the ship was in harbour at Santa Cruz de la Palma in the Canary Islands. The ship, owned and managed by Louis Cruises, is chartered to Thomson, and is one of five ships in their fleet. Majesty has been sailing seven-night cruises to the Canary Islands, Madeira and Agadir throughout the winter season. None of the 1,500 passengers on the ship was involved [...]

The opportunity for Cruise & Maritime Voyages to launch cruises from Europe to Australia was partly made possible by the demise of Classic International Cruises, which collapsed in September when its ships were arrested over a growing pile of unpaid bills. So it's ironic that within hours of CMV's announcement, news emerged from Portugal that CIC is on the verge of a revival. Luis Miguel Correia reports on his Ships and the Sea blog that four of the line's five vessels have been sold to 44-year-old entrepreneur Rui Alegre who plans to put them back in service. The ships are [...]

Cruise & Maritime Voyages, the UK-based company which operates Marco Polo, and this year takes over the running of mv Discovery, is going Down Under. The cruise line is to charter the 600-passenger Astor to operate twice-yearly voyages ocean voyages between Britain and Australia, and a season of cruises based in Fremantle, Western Australia. Astor, currently catering for the German market and managed by the Munich-based Premicon, will be chartered to join the CMV fleet from November this year. Built in 1987, the ship was originally sold in Britain as a five-star "soft adventure" product. Since then the vessel has [...]

What's happening to Carnival's cruise ships? No fewer than three of them have suffered propulsion problems in the past two weeks, causing delays and disruptions to schedules. Carnival Triumph has been slowed by an unexplained problem which affected the ship during a four-night cruise from Galveston, Texas, to Cozumel, Mexico. Its return to Galveston was delayed, and one of the two stops on its current cruise will be cancelled. The ship was built in 1999 and carries 2,800 passengers Passengers were told: " On her current cruise, the Carnival Triumph experienced a technical problem with the ship's propulsion system that [...]