P&O's ARTEMIS sailed from Southampton over the weekend in her new colours, I believe she is well suited to them - the buff funnel being a marked improvement on her previous appearance as the Royal Princess. I enclose a couple of photos of her passing Cowes.
She is the prototype modern cruise ship. It is difficult to believe that she is now 21 years old and easy to forget that she was so revolutionery when she was built.
The Royal Princess introduced a radically new solution to the age old problem of providing as many passenger cabins as possible with an external view. The first generation of new-built cruise ships were based on the designs for large car ferries, with cabins in place of car decks. Wärtsilä’s designers reversed the layout, placing all of the high volume public rooms within the main hull and locating all of the cabins in a reduced width, tower block superstructure, topped with a cantilevered sun deck. The lifeboats could be placed at main deck height without incurring the high construction costs of a Canberra style layout. This arrangement also increased the design’s stability and sea-keeping characteristics.
The remarkable thing about the Royal Princess is that all of the passenger accommodation is in outside cabins. This had never previously been achieved in a large passenger ship and although almost all subsequent cruise ship designs follow the new concept of placing the public rooms in the main hull, very few have all outside cabins.
The revolutionary layout of the ship was kept secret until construction had reached an advanced stage, to preserve P & O’s competitive advantage for as long as possible. As a result, when the Royal Princess entered service the fares charged were 25% higher than those for other Princess ships and 30% above the American cruise fleet average at the time.
P & O ordered the ship at the time of the Falklands. They also took an option for a sister ship that was not exercised. General opinion was that the option was in case Canberra did not return to the fleet.
Thank you for that Fred, that was very interesting. She does look nice with her new buff funnel, but her inside layout still looks rather old fashioned.
Certainly does look good.Don/t know about the name though.She was always a regular on the Clyde and her place has now been taken by GOLDEN PRINCESS a somewhat different proposition altogether!
Daughter of Zeus and Leto and sister of Apollo. A virgin huntress and patroness of chastity. Perhaps you are right Paul, it may not be appropriate for a cruise ship!
Apparently she is not going to be stopping at the Azores (Again?? Is this a new P&O Tradition?) There was a medical emergency aboard and a crew member was taken off near Martinique (a diversion from her original course) Because of the time lost she will not be able to stop at the Azores.
Yes I know Paul, was looking at wrong Sunday on my calendar. She is back next Sunday. My son has friends on board for the entire world cruise. Lucky sods?!. David
Daughter of Zeus and Leto and sister of Apollo. A virgin huntress and patroness of chastity. Perhaps you are right Paul, it may not be appropriate for a cruise ship!
We did a recent Canaries cruise on her, she has a classic cruise set up and a very friendly atmosphere probably because she is a little smaller than the monsters we all know, P&O have got the balance right here but for how long ?She has a similar feel to the old Victoria. She does tend to shake a little in the Bay of Biscay swell but that adds to the atmosphere. The average age of the "customers" is way above the average be warned ...Does anyone have any information on her engines I know they are Pielsticks but what type ?( ex Brocks engineer and Pielsticks not a good memory) Overall a very comfortable ship without the enormatey they now sell us.
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