Cruise News

The company which owns Voyages of Discovery and Swan Hellenic has bought out Hebridean Cruise Lines, which went bust earlier this month. The All Leisure Group, headed by former P&O chairman Lord Sterling, has paid £1.4m to take over the tiny 49-passenger cruise ship Hebridean Princess and will continue to operate it from Hebridean's head office in Skipton, North Yorkshire, where the 12 remaining staff will now keep their jobs. Hebridean's other ship, the Hebridean Sprit, was sold last month to a private buyer in the Middle East. The Princess, a converted car ferry, is the vessel which the Queen [...]

Work on building the world's biggest cruise ship is racing ahead. Back in December the Finnish shipyard's 2,300 workers pulled a week ahead of the schedule, despite having to work in temperatures as low as 20 below. On a visit to Turku this week, Royal Caribbean's chairman Richard Fain agreed with Martin Landtman, boss of the STX Europe yard, to gain another week on the timetable for Oasis of the Seas. "Martin and I didn't think twice about it - no paperwork. We shook hands on it and no legal document is as ironclad," Richard wrote in his blog. But [...]

A cruise passenger who has been waiting two years for a transplant was winched off Cunard's Queen Victoria this morning when a kidney became available. A helicopter from RNAS Culdrose in Cornwall picked her up from the ship 50 miles off The Lizard shortly before 6.00 am. She and her husband were flown to Luton Airport, from where an ambulance rushed her to Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge. Mrs Judy Stockwell had been alerted at four o'clock this morning that a donor kidney had been found, and she had to be at the hospital by 9.00 am. She told the BBC [...]

It's pretty near impossible to fall accidentally from a cruise ship into the sea. When there's a report of a "man overboard," which happens occasionally, the chances are it will have been a deliberate act or the result of stupidity, like the couple last year who were using the rail of their balcony as a sex aid. A 39-year-old man disappeared off the Norwegian Sky this weekend as the ship sailed from Miami towards the Bahamas, and his fall was witnessed by people in his own cabin. A statement from Norwegian Cruise Lines says the 39-year-old man was seen to [...]

I was delighted to read in my local paper of Bill and Elly Clough, who have returned home after their world cruise on board P&O's ill-fated Aurora. For I met them 11 years ago on a world cruise on board Fred Olsen's Black Watch. I joined the ship for a short segment from Hong Kong to Singapore; they were in the cabin next door, and hosting bridge classes for passengers. Their latest voyage was interrupted when the Aurora developed propulsion problems and spent six days in Auckland, New Zealand, awaiting repairs. Mrs Clough, 70, told the Basingstoke Gazette, they were [...]

Forbes Traveler magazine is not the place to look for bargain breaks, so it's no surprise that when they ask a panel of "experts" to nominate the World's Best Cruises, the results lean heavily towards ultra-luxury lines like Crystal and Regent. Not entirely, though, because two cruise lines that you might take your family on for a summer holiday also feature in the list. For best dining then, it's Crystal Cruises, who were also picked for best crew and service, and best excursions, although the consensus of opinion was that no cruise line provided shore trips as good as those [...]