Cruise News

This is a fuller version of the Cruise News column which appeared in the Daily Mirror published Saturday May 28 It was a pleasure to renew acquaintance with an old friend this weekend, albeit very briefly, as I sailed on Cunard's Queen Mary 2 to Hamburg. The latest volcanic ash cloud was threatening briefly to throw airports into chaos but I was able to sail through check-in and security at Southampton's Ocean Terminal - it can't have taken more than 10 minutes from kerb to cabin. I was half expecting to find parts of the ship looking tired and shabby [...]

Cruise ship MSC Opera, which suffered an electrical failure and blackout in the Baltic two weeks ago, has been detained in Southampton after a safety inspection by surveyors from the Maritime and Coastguard Agency. The 1,800-passenger ship, built in 2004, underwent repairs in the Polish port of Gdynia after the breakdown on May 14 off the coast of Gotland. It arrived in Southampton on Wednesday and is due to resume service today, taking passengers on an eight-night cruise to the Norwegian fjords. A statement from the MCA said " Various defects were found which meant that the ship was not [...]

Rescue workers have called off the search for a crew member from the cruise ship Celebrity Eclipse who jumped overboard in the English Channel. The ship was about eight miles north of the French port of Cherbourg and heading for Southampton when the incident happened on Friday night. A 31-year-old Filipino man was seen on the ship's CCTV to have climbed over a railing on Deck 3. The ship, carrying about 3,000 passengers, turned around to search for him, and the French coastguard was alerted. No trace of the man was found after an overnight search. The cruise line said [...]

A fault in an electrical panel has been identified as the cause of the power failure which crippled cruise ship MSC Opera and left the vessel, with almost 1,800 passengers on board, adrift in the Baltic Sea. The 60,000-ton ship, on its first cruise of the season from Southampton, was towed into the Swedish port of Nynamshamn today. A team of engineers in from the STX shipyard in St Nazaire, France, was airlifted to the ship on Sunday and worked throughout the night to restore partial power. By yesterday evening most toilets on board - which rely on vacuum power [...]

A cruise ship with 1,800 passengers on board is being towed to safety after spending much of Sunday adrift without power in the Baltic Sea. MSC Opera suffered a major electrical failure un the early hours of Sunday morning. Rescue tug Svitzer Trym is now towing the 60,000-ton ship to the Swedish port of Nynashamn, near Stockholm. The ship should have spent the day in port at Copenhagen, Denmark, but instead was adrift off the coast of the island of Gotland. It is now expected to reach the Swedish mainland by about 11.00 am on Monday instead of sailing for [...]