Aurora

Aurora was built at Jos L. Meyer's wharf at Papenburg, northern Germany under yardnumber S604. With a tonnage measurement of 76.152 she became the largest P&O Cruises ship introduced untill then. Her lenght is 270 meters, she is 32,20 meters wide and she has a 7,90 meter draft. The ship can accomodate 1850 passengers on ten decks and those are served by 815 crewmembers.

Below, Aurora can be seen sailing the Northsea Canal from Amsterdam in the summer of 2005.

The name Aurora for the new British superliner meant a new start for the old P&O Line when the ship floated out of her building dock in the beginning of january of the year 2000. Just eight days into the new millennium, she was built to strenghten the steadily expanding fleet of one of the oldest passenger lines in the world. The ship looks like a bigger and more streamlined, modern version of the very popular Oriana that was introduced six years before. But a true P&O liner she is, ans she was to be the popular running mate for her older sister. Aurora was named by Princess Anne in Southampton at the 26th of april 2000, but the bottle of fine champagne she released failed to break at the bow of the ship and instead took a nosedive into the Solent. Maybe a fish had a great birthday somewhere, but this of course for a ship is a bad omen... A few days later, at the 1st of may, Aurora took off for her first cruise to the Mediterranean. But it was just one day later that she already had to turn the rudder and go back to where she came from. During the first day her propeller had been overheating and this caused her first cruise to be cancelled. After a quick but embarassing repair, she again started her second first sailing at the 15th of may and this time all went well.

In the few years that followed, the ship settled in especially for her intended British clientele and her faulty first cruise was largely forgotten. For P&O, she was a true flagship and attracted many passengers searching for a classic but modern, relaxed cruise-product in true British style. Also because of this new ship, P&O itself strenghtened their position as one of Britains main cruisecompanies again. But some of the ships bad luck returned in march of 2001, when one person that she had rescued from a sunken freighter close to Taiwan had died aboard after the rescue operation. Two others survived.

Two years later, she became a real headline when she was struck by an outbreak of a Noro-virus when cruising the Mediterranean. A number of ports refused to dock the stricken ship and she almost became a nomadship because of this. Luckily, the British port of Gibraltar took her in, but because the ship had 450 ill persons aboard, the Spanish prime minister Aznar decided to close the border between Gibraltar and Spain. This is a large exception to normal business since 1982, it was only in 1988 when the border had also been close because of a bombthreat. Next to Aznars over-reaction, the Spanish minister of health was sent down to the border to 'calm the local population' as if the virus was a national threat to Spain. In reaction, the British minister of Foreign Affairs Jack Straw reacted furious about the Spanish actions and this almost escalated into a conflict between the two countries. Of course, the basis of these problems lie in the historic dispute over the rock of Gibraltar.

Just two months after the Spanish-English cold war, a suspicious diver was seen close to the ship when she was at Southampton preparing for her next cruise. As a pre-caution, the ship was moved out of the shipping lanes and luckily, close inspection indicated no problems. For a ship with just a few years of service, you can see Aurora hit the news more then once. In january of 2005, the list even became longer when her whole worldcruise had te be cancelled because of big propulsionproblems. The flagship was out of service for a few monthsand this cancellation became the most costly cancellation ever in cruising history and had immidiate effect on P&O's earnings over the year 2005. P&O estimated that it had cost the company around 22 million English pounds. In spite of all these problems, Aurora is still a much loved and very important member of the cruisefleet of Great Britain. Because all of these problems had been handled well by P&O staff and the company itself, mostly the problems just caused people to admire the company more over.