Cruise News

A brand new cruise ship has cancelled the first leg of its inaugural celebrations in order to rescue British holidaymakers stranded in Spain by the volcano ash cloud. Celebrity Eclipse arrives in Southampton on Tuesday morning, and was expected to begin a week of celebrations, taking travel agents, loyal Celebrity passengers and media on overnight party trips in the English Channel. Instead, the 122,000-ton ship, capable of carrying more than 2,800 passengers in normal operation, will set off in the evening to sail to Bilbao, in northern Spain. Arriving in the early hours of Thursday morning, the vessel will embark [...]

As the flight chaos caused by the volcanic eruption in Iceland reaches its fifth day, cruise lines are joining Royal Navy ships to bring holidaymakers home to the UK. Thomson Cruises announced this morning that Island Escape, currently in Funchal, will sail to Falmouth so that passengers can get home without flying. The ship will also carry 300 Thomson holidaymakers who had been staying in Madeira and whose flights have been cancelled. The ship, which can normally carry up to 1,710 passengers, is due in Falmouth on Friday. Passengers who had been due to fly to Tenerife, Gran Canaria or [...]

Iceland's volcanic eruption might be a potential attraction for visitors to the island, as I reported yesterday, but right now it's still causing chaos for cruise passengers hoping to fly to their ships. Flight restrictions on Scottish airports are expected to be lifted this evening and passengers who were scheduled to fly from Manchester to join Fred Olsen's Braemar in Barbados are travelling by bus to Glasgow. A Fred Olsen spokesperson said: "Braemar has stayed in Barbados to wait for them, with the result that the first scheduled port - Castries - has been cancelled and instead the first port [...]

Carnival Corporation, the biggest cruise company in the world, already owns two quintessentially British brands in Cunard and P&O. Now the company has appointed an admiral of the Queen's navy to its board of directors. Sir Jonathan Band was First Sea Lord until his retirement last year. Now he is a non-executive director of Carnival - whose headquarters are in Miami, Florida - and will sit on the company's health, environmental, safety and security committees. Knighted in 2002, Sir Jonathan, 60, lives in Southsea, Hampshire. He joined the Royal Navy as a cadet in 1957, and was Flag Lieutenant to [...]

When Azura made her debut in the UK last week, some observers were surprised to see that the ship was registered in Southampton. All the other ships in P&O's fleet have the name Hamilton painted on their sterns, showing that they are registered in Bermuda. P&O's brochure, and even the Press pack handed to journalists boarding Azura on Saturday, indicate that the ship would be registered in London. Carnival UK chief executive David Dingle explained that the decision to have the ship registered in the UK was made for "quite complicated regulatory reasons" and that Southampton was chosen because it [...]