Aurora
Aurora was built at Jos L. Meyers' wharf in Papenburg, Germany as yardnumber S604. With 76.152 gross tonnage she became the biggest P&O Cruises ship untill then. Her lenght is 270 meters, she is 32,20 meters wide and she has a 7,9 meter draft. The ship can accomodate 1850 passengers on 10 decks served by 815 crew. She has a five star rating.
The name Aurora for this British superliner meant a new start for the old P&O Cruises when the ship floated out in the beginning of january 2000. Just eight days into the new millennium, she was built to strenghten the steadily expanding fleet of one of the oldest passengershipping lines in the world. The ship looks like a bigger and more streamlined and modern version of the very popular Oriana launched six years earlier. But a true P&O liner she is, and she was to be popular runningmate for her older sister.
Aurora was named by Princess Anne in Southampton at the 26th of april 2000, but the bottle of champagne she released failed to break at the bow of the ship and instead the bottle disappeared into the Solent. This, of course, is a bad omen... A few days later, on the 1st of may Aurora sailed proudly on her maiden voyage to the Mediterranean. Just one day later she had to turn the rudder back towards her homeport because one of the propellers was overheated and the cruise had to be postponed. After a quick but embarassing reparair she again commenced her first sailing on the 15th of may and this time all went well. In the few years that followed the ship attracted British passengers in particular and her name was cleared. The ship helped to strenghten the renewed enthousiasm of Europeans for a classic but modern cruisingexperience and with her, P&O became a bigger player in mostly the European but also the worlds cruise market.
But the bad luck returned again towards her when in march of 2001 she saved three people from a sunker freighter nearby Taiwan and one of them tragically died on board after he was rescued. And two years later she became a real headline when she was struck by an outbreak of Norwalk-virus when cruising the Mediterranean. Several ports refused to dock the stricken ship and for several days she almost became a nomadship untill finally she was able to dock at the British port of Gibraltar. Because of her visit with 450 ill people on board, the Spanish prime minister Aznar decided to close the border between Spain and Gibraltar, something that has not happened since 1982 with just a bombalarm in 1988 as exception. Also, the Spanish minister of health went to the border to calm the local population. The British minister of Foreign Affairs Straw reacted furious because of the Spanish actions and so this almost lead to a diplomatic problem between the two countries.
Just two months later, a suspicious diver was reported to be seen in the water near the ship when she prepared for a cruise from out of Southampton and as a precaution the ship was moved outside of the shipping lanes but luckily nothing was found. For a ship just a few years in service she reached the news more than often, as you can see. In january of 2005 this list became longer when her whole worldcruise had to be cancelled because of big propulsionproblems. The flagship was out of service for a few months and this cancellation became the most costly cancellation ever in the cruising world and affected P&O's profit over the year 2005 considerably. P&O estimated it had cost the company around 22 million English Pounds.
In spite of all these problems, Aurora is still a very popular ship with her passengers and her name is now well-known all around the world. In the ever growing fleet of P&O Cruises, in 2005 strenghtened by the 83.000 ton Arcadia and in a from 2008 onwards by the 112.000 ton Ventura she is still one of a kind...
