Captain Greybeard

Cunard president and managing director Peter Shanks has hijacked the blog written by Queen Mary 2's entertainment director, Alastair Greener, to report from his flagship's birthday cruise around the UK. He has sounded the ship's horn leaving Greenock, sailed up the Clyde towards his home town of Glasgow, and today took the QM2 up the Mersey to within sight of Cunard's former headquarters building, where the company was founded 170 years ago.. Peter writes: "We travelled right around the top of Scotland, through the Pentland Firth, past Scapa Flow, past the Old Man of Hoy - this coastline is rarely [...]

Much-loved cruise ship Black Prince is on her way back to Britain for the very last time. The old girls farewell cruise to the Canaries ends tomorrow when she arrives at Southampton. Within a few hours, the last passengers will be disembarked, amid a flood of tears I've no doubt, and the ship will be prepared to sail to a new life, under a new name, Ola Esmeralda, in Venezuelan waters. The ship, built for Fred Olsen in 1996, started life as a passenger and cargo ship carrying tomatoes from the Canary islands and sailing as a car ferry to [...]

After her bumpy entrance to Pier 88 in Manhattan, the cruise ship Saga Ruby left New York yesterday evening for the short journey to Bayonne in New Jersey for emergency repairs. Watch this video of her stately passage across the Hudson River - it looks spectacular. If you look closely you can see the dent in the bow. Thanks to my friend Scott, who gets some great pictures and videos from the balcony of his apartment in New Jersey, although this one was shot from the river's edge. To see more of his superb videos, take a look at his [...]

An elegant old lady got a punch in the nose at the weekend - cruise ship Saga Ruby hit a concrete bollard while berthing in New York, and had to have emergency repairs to a hole in the bow before setting off back to the UK. The ship, which carries 660 passengers, was returning to Manhattan's Pier 88 after a two-week New World Adventure cruise to the north-eastern states of the US when the incident happened, with a pilot on the bridge. Sailing up the Hudson past the historic aircraft carrier USS Intrepid and the pensioned-off Concorde at Pier 86, [...]