Where are all the empty cruise ships now?

With the COVID-19 pandemic causing travel disruption around the world, the global fleet of cruise ships has been laid up for several months now. Cruise lines around the world – particularly those that undertake ocean cruising – have further pushed out the resumption of their future voyages. This includes: •Carnival Cruise Lines – with travel now paused until the end of September, •Royal Caribbean, Celebrity, Azamara, Silversea, MSC and P&O Australia– all halting voyages until mid September, •Norwegian Cruise Line – postponing US voyages until mid-September, • P&O UK extending its pause in operations until October 2020, • Cunard, pushing the resumption of cruising out until November 2020, and • Holland America recently cancelling all departures from Vancouver until 2021! Around the world, cruise ships are largely in a state of warm (or hot) layup. If you’re unfamiliar with these terms, you can check out my previous video: By mid-2020, a number of locations around the world are playing host to large clusters of cruise ships in warm layup. In the UK, the ships of P&O and two of the Cunard ships have moved to Weymouth – off the south coast of England. For weeks in 2020 the entire P&O fleet, as well as Queen Mary 2 and Queen Victoria were at anchor within eyeshot of each other. While in recent days several of the P&O ships have made the short journey to Bournemouth. Carnival Breeze berthed near Portland, while Carnival Magic and Carnival Valor are anchored off Torquay. Marella Cruises Fleet has largely been anchored off the Isle of Wight. CMV’s fleet is largely based at Tilbury, near London. The ships of Fred Olsen Cruises are now docked at Rosyth, near Edinburgh. Most of Costa Cruises fleet are based in Italian ports, with clusters of ships at Civitavecchia, Genoa and La Spezia, while the 1996-built Costa Victoria has recently been sold to become an accommodation ship. The MSC fleet's MSC Orchestra is anchored off Durban in South Africa, while European based ships are anchored or docked in ports across both Italy and France. Marseille in France is home to a large cluster of ships, with AIDASol, Silver Shadow, Norwegian Getaway, Norwegian Breakaway and MSC Magnifica all at the port. In the The Bahamas you’ll find a large portion of the Carnival Cruise Lines fleet, as well as numerous vessels from RCI and Celebrity. Notable mentions include Oasis of the Seas – one of the largest passenger ships in the world – as well as Carnival Sunshine which in 1996 started its career as Carnival Destiny and was the first passenger ship to exceed 100,000 gross tons. Virgin Voyages has had a terrible start to their cruising service, with their launch happening at the same time as the pandemic. Their first ship, Scarlet Lady, had been based off the coast of the US, however she has since departed Miami bound for Italy for longer-term storage. Her sister ship – Valiant Lady – was recently floated out at Fincantieri where she is being built. California is also hosting numerous laid up cruise ships with a large cluster off the coast of Long Beach in company with numerous tankers, while Celebrity Eclipse and Celebrity Millennium are at anchor off San Diego. The Philippines is home to one of the largest clusters of cruise ships ever seen, based off the coast of Manila. At the time of recording, there are 28 cruise ships anchored here, including Cunard’s Queen Elizabeth as well as ships from Costa, Princess, Silversea, NCL, Holland America and Carnival. The Philippines is also the temporary home of the entire P&O Australia fleet – which has been based there since the Australian cruise ban was implemented in April. This means, while many ports around the world are hosting laid up cruise ships, the ports of Australia as well as New Zealand are unusually empty of all cruising tonnage with cruise ships not expected to be allowed back into local ports for many months yet. This overview is not an exhaustive list of where all the world’s 300 cruise ships are based, but I hope it gives you some idea as to the scale of the shut down and how the ports across the world are assisting cruise ships during this unprecedented time. If you know of another cluster of cruise ships that you think I should have mentioned, let me know in the comments! References: Images: Many thanks to Emma LeTeace, Andrew Sassoli-Walker, Lynda Bradford, Ian Boyle and Alison Morton for image support. Other reference is: Pjotr Mahhonin - CC 1.0 - https://bit.ly/3fXjGQE #cruisenews #cruiseline #cruiseship