Spelling quite correct Red👍
"Simon Ramsay, 16th Earl of Dalhousie, KT, GCVO, GBE, MC, DL (17 October 1914 – 15 July 1999), styled The Honourable Simon Ramsay between 1928 and 1950, was a British land owner, Scottish Unionist Party politician and colonial governor."
😎
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Ramsay,_16th_Earl_of_Dalhousie

A bright sign from the cruise ship industry recently, when Fincantieri launched the second cruise ship from their Ancona yard since the start of the pandemic.
She is the 40,700 ton Silver Moon, built for Silversea Cruises, a subsidiary of Royal Caribbean. She is the second of three sister ships, the first Silver Muse was launched in 2017 and the third Silver Dawn is scheduled for 2021. They are all 698 ft in length will carry 596 passengers in 296 suites making them amongst the most luxurious cruise ships afloat.


Cheers, Nerys

MSC have just announced that there will be no 2020/21 Cruise season in South Africa due to some countries ports being closed

Certainly was, my father took a job with Eishkom in the early 70's being 19 at the time they paid for my ticket. So I decided to come by boat, No Rush.

I remember Canberra, she was built for UK citizens to emigrate for Australia

Some liners for sale last year, didn't know there were so many spare liners in the world, and this is probably only a small sample!
JB

Found another video on liner scrapping, which mentions the Canberra, quite interesting.
JB

Beautiful ship - you must have enjoyed the trip.

Yes, sure can remember it was the Windsor Castle Mark II

Can you remember which ship Ian ? . Only thing wrong was that they were "class" ships. Had an altercation with one of Lord Dalhousies (sp?) children over bringing one of my friends into 1st class - embarrasing for my parents as he was then Governor General of Rhodesia. But I think the nosebleed might well have taught the kid a lesson.............

I came to South Africa on a Union Castle Ship. Such a pleasure. Good old fashioned service

It isn't all bad news in the cruise ship world.
A few days ago Sea Dream Yacht Club's ship SeaDream1, sailed into Portsmouth to pick up passengers for a 21 day Caribbean Cruise. She had previously called at Oslo and Rotterdam. There are only 30 plus passengers on board, normally there would be 106, with 95 crew. Very stringent covid tests are carried out as part of routine, temperature testing machine for passengers and crew, there is no self service in the restaurants. Social distancing is practised and everything else to minimise any risk.
MSC are running a number of cruises in the Eastern Meditteranean. Holland America are organising a number of cruises, I believe six, sailing from Seattle to Alaskan waters before the end of the year.
Royal Caribbean are running cruises in the Caribbean based on Miami. There are cruises from Singapore and also in Australian/ Tasman waters.
We can only hope that this nucleus keeps the flag flying and when all this Covid nonsense is over cruising will rise to regain it's popularity.

Cheers, Nerys

The Union Castle Line ships were instantly recognisable by their lavender colour hulls, and very nice it looked too. Always beautifully kept.

Cheers, Nerys

Found a recent vid (or 2) on the vacant cruise ships which might be of interest QM 2s looking a bit worse for wear!



JB

Was lucky enough in childhood to sail in three of the Union Castle liners from Mozambique to the Cape - at least 3 days in each port on the way - one memorable trip was from Capetown to Mombasa . Braemar , Kenya , and Windsor Castles (Windsor was definitely the best looking ship but all good looking)

Had dinner aboard the Windsor in Cape Town Docks on her final voyage - with three friends on their way to OZ if I remember correctly - very sad occasion.

These modern rubbish floating hotel things are the pits - no decks to walk around or sit quietly in a deckchair and soak in the ambience. Everything overcrowded and noisy .

Sister and her husband tried to persuade me to join them on a cruise through the Med on one of these monstrous slabs of horror - was the worst trip of their lives - pay for everything - including just going ashore in some ports - food was terrible - totally overcrowded on board - said it was like being in one of those tenement flats - plus you could not leave.
If they could have afforded it would have left the ship and flown back to the UK at their second port of call.........

If you use this website you can find neariy any boat/ship
www.myshiptracking.com😀

I believe there are 4 anchored off Mudeford

We often used to see Russian and Polish cruise ships at Tilbury Landing Stage. They were always quite acceptable to the eye if a bit old fashioned. Not that I'm knocking that,

Nerys

Food at the main restaurants on MSC have shift sittings for Dinner.

Unfortunately money and the making of money are the reasons these boats were built.Build one to take 3000 passengers not big enough to compete build one for 5000 passengers.Stand in line to eat.Try and find a good seat.It is sad to hear so many are sitting and unable to go any where in this season of pandemic.
Rick

I see the Marco Polo has been laid up Bristol as the company running her was put into administration this year, (update - further to that, have just seen she's been auctioned on 22 Oct this year and a bid's been accepted. She's a lovely looking ship and was totally re furbished (engines reco'd - the lot,) in 93, German built for the Russians I think in 65.

Speaking of Russian cruise ships,-we sunk one of their best (Mikael Lermentov) at the top of South Island (pilot though a shortcut over a rock was in order!😐😮☹️ (think he'd been on the turps as well) Don't think the Russians were amused😭 That was a nice looking ship as well (most of the Russian cruise ships were. - almost yacht like,- bit like their navy ships)

JB

Hi Nerys
Agreed they are built for a still sea and pack as many people as possible, why we don't have the big cruise liners coming to SA I have been twice on MSC cruises. Wait till they hit a mild storm the ship is all over the place!

Yes Pete, I agree with you about Oriana, she was a lovely looking ship, as were a lot of P & Os, they tried to make ships look nice in those days. In my barging days there'd often be one or two to see on a trip up the Thames. It wasn't until later when greed took over and cruise ships had to be built to carry more and more passengers, thus becoming evermore slab sided cliffs.

Cheers Nerys

Totally agree with you Nerys, the new style liner (Brick) is only made to carry more and make more money, nothing to do with style I remember the last ship I went on for a cruise was the Oriana, she was beautiful.

Cheers, Pete

Thanks JB for a very interesting post about some of your experiences with cruise liners. We certainly agree when considering what some of the modern slab sided monstrosities look like. I've been watching a TV programme about the Billion Pound cruise ship Ugh!. The old tramp steamers that my father served in when I was a kid before the war had more grace. The only thing to compare with modern cruise liners are the abortions called car transporters. The only cruise ships I like the look of are the Fred Olsen ships, at least they still look like ships. Hurtigruten still have some reasonable looking ships, but they cannot really be called cruise ships, as they are carrying out a commercial function as well as a few passengers.
I must say though, whatever they look like I am sad when any ship has to go to the breakers.

All the best, Nerys

Here's an interesting page of a few more laid up (including your lot I think from a different view?)

https://www.insider.com/cruise-ships-empty-moored-off-coasts-coronavirus-crisis-photos-2020-5

JB

It is sad to say, JB, that all three of the Cunard flag ships are now just sitting waiting near us. The closest is QM2 which is just off of our coast. I pictured her last week which is below. Sad.🤕🤕

I believe that six cruise liners are on their way to the scrapyards now, due to Covid.
I don't think any one of them will be operating till middle 2021. We have no sailings from SA at present as MSC have cancelled all cruise schedules

Hi Nerys, sad to see so many of the old ships disappearing over the years as well. Saw the Oriana off on its' last voyage before the scrapyard, and had walked the length of her (inside) when seeing some people off on a cruise a number of years previously. When she left at night, the harbour was filled with hundreds of boats seeing her off, and thousands of people on the shores around Auckland harbour, - almost impossible to find a spot to view from, (we ended up with hundreds of others watching from a small church graveyard which faced the harbour). As the Oriana left, they sounded her horn for about 1 minute continuously, and it almost sounded as if she was sad to leave (sort of mournful sound - think the compressor was struggling to keep up) 😀

Many Kiwis had seen (or cruised on) her as she was a regular visitor for many years and we sort of grew up with her. Canberra was another NZ favourite which you could spot miles away with her twin rear funnels. We also had a few visits from the QE2 (which we thought was big) and later in Feb 07 we had the QM2 on her inaugural world trip. She got a similar send off to Oriana with a big fireworks display as she was backed out into the stream (also hundreds of boats to see her off at night - pics (and we thought she was big!)

My sister worked for Chandris lines in the 70s, and we got on board the Fairstar, again to see someone off. You could see she was old by all the exposed services everywhere, - felt like being on a troop ship but she was popular with young people who liked to party. Walked the length of her as well. Fairstar, Fairsky and Australis which used to be regulars, have all gone long ago (the Australis ending up aground, sunk and totally destroyed on Feurteventura in the Canary islands (as MS American Star).

Recently we were 'graced' by the huge set of floating chicken boxes named Ovation Of The Seas (now that IS big!) and it was so big it could not dock in Auckland, so sat in the stream on GPS station holding (not an anchor in sight) for a day, not moving an inch,- quite impressive!. All the passengers were ferried on and off by a constant stream of the ships 30 odd ft 'Liberty boats' (for want of a better name). The ship is as ugly as a pig with 2 heads, but that's what we have these days, no more sleek 'real liner' looking ships like QE2 etc, just big ugly boxes, (bit like all the impersonal chicken box apartments they're building these days)

On the sailing side, the wreck of the Barque Rewa is only about 11 km away from me, and was used as a breakwater on a private island, still quite visible. The junk, Golden Lotus, was built in Hong Kong for a Kiwi farmer in the early 60s, and he and 2 mates sailed it down to NZ, which took about 3 months, using only a few charts a second hand sextant and a wrist watch (one of the guys was an ex deck officer, the oldest was 25)- might have mentioned this one before? I thought it was a pretty amazing effort for those days.

JB

Looking at this from a more general point of view, I wonder how many of these ships will actually go back into service. Ships laid up are costing their owners money even if the lay up is in the simplest of forms. The insurance money alone is huge. I suppose it will depend on when they are allowed to operate again, but even then, will the usual demand be there after the number of outbreaks that occurred on cruise ships. With all the economic downturn and covid related job losses, will there be enough potential customers? I wish I knew the answers, but I have very pessimistic feelings about it all.

Cheers, Nerys

This sort of thing happens whenever there's a crisis of some sort. I remember Barry Docks being overloaded with 'British' tankers during an oil crisis years ago. Then the river Blackwater was a favourite dumping off ground for laid up ships.

Nerys

Just noticed that Queen Elizabeth and Queen Victoria along with the Queen Mary 2 are not far away. Perhaps we will have all of Cunards ships here soon.
Peter.

If you download the ship app it tells you what they are.

As a matter of interest Mark, any idea who the other two are. Difficult I know, Olsen's are unmistakeable but most of the others look like what they are, slab sided floating hotels.

Cheers, Nerys

Hi Nerys , there's the 3 Fred Olsen and a couple of others as well ,there not out in the forth but in the dockyard ,couple of big tankers bobbing about the mouth of the forth .
Cheers Marky👍

Hi Mark, That's the three Fred Olsen ships isn't it. Perhaps they have moved to make room for more!

Cheers, Nerys

All the ones that were at the mouth of the Forth are now anchored up at Rosyth at the naval dockyard.
Cheers Marky👍

Hi Peter.
I know what your saying.We are only around the corner.
We have been keeping an eye on them each week as we take in the view of the various liners.
We take the Grandson to have a look most weeks.
He just loves to see the big ships in the bay.
So sad to see the QM2 lying idle.
We have done the Atlantic on her a couple of times.
She is not built to sit in the bay.
Take care all.
Regards Bill.

I have tried to assess how many cruise ships are laid up worldwide and as far as I can find out, it's somewhere around 273. There is talk of Cruise Lines selling off 22 ships and no doubt there will more sales from other owners.

Cheers, Nerys

Maybe there out running the dust off hoping for a new season of travel.
Rick

Let us hope not Martin but as some are from the States, it does seem possible.☹️
Peter.

Hi Peter,
Perhaps they are all going to sail over to the scrapyard together.
Thank's to Covid.

Martin555.