Tuesday 27 September 2011

AIDAblu Cruise Ship and Pride of Dover Ferry, Admiralty Pier, Dover Harbour, Kent, UK

MS AIDA Blu owned by AIDA Cruises, MS Pride of Dover owned by P&O Ferries:

AIDA Blu (Call Sign IBWX, IMO 9398888, MMSI 247282500) owned by AIDA Cruises, Pride of Dover (Call Sign GJCR, MMSI 232001670, IMO: 8517736) owned by P and O Ferries (replaced by Spirit of Britain 2011.)
(Click this AIDA Blu and Pride of Dover text link to see the largest size)


The passengers ships are berthed in the Western Docks against the Admiralty Pier on the far side of the Prince of Wales Pier in Dover Harbour.

Photo taken from the jetty at the western end of the Gateway Flats near Henry VIII's Mote's Bulwark coastal artillery fortification on Tuesday, April 27th, 2010.

The ships:

The MS AIDA Blu passenger ship is a Sphinx series cruise ship built by Meyer Werft for the German cruise line AIDA Cruises, a British-American owned German cruise line based in Rostock, Germany.

The parent company is Carnival Corporation & PLC.

The ship is shown part-way through a 7-day German Bight Cruise. Her last port of call was Le Havre (France), the next were Antwerp (Belgium) and Amsterdam (Netherlands, Holland). The cruise then ended in Hamburg (Germany).

Vessel details:

Tonnage: 71,300 gross register tons (GRT)
Length: 827 feet (252.07 m)
Beam: 105.5 feet (32.16 m)
Decks: 15 decks
Installed power: Diesel-electric (about 36,000kW)
Propulsion: 4 Caterpillar MaK engines
Capacity: 2,050 passengers
Crew: 607 crew
Call Sign IBWX
IMO 9398888
MMSI 247282500
Owners website: Aida Cruises

The Pride of Dover primarily operated the Dover–Calais route, but on a number of occasions she made crossings between Dover and Zeebrugge as a result of industrial action in France.

The vessel ended her P&O service on 15 December 2010 with her last crossing leaving Dover at 2345 local time. She has now been replaced by the new super-ferry, MS Spirit of Britain that arrived in the Port of Dover on Sunday, 9th of January, 2011, after a handover ceremony at the STX Europe shipyard in Rauma (Finland) on the 5th of January.

With a bigger capacity and almost double the amount of tonnage, at 49,000 tonnes, the Spirit of Britain (ex-Olympic Spirit) is the largest ferry to ever cross the English Channel. "P&O" is derived from Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Company.

Vessel details:

Tonnage: 26,433 tonnes
Length: 169.6 m (556.4 ft)
Beam: 28.27 m (92.7 ft)
Draft: 6.12 m (20.1 ft)
Installed power: 3 x Sulzer ZA40S Diesels
Propulsion: Triple controllable pitch propellers
Speed: 22 kn (41 km/h)
Capacity: 2,290 passengers, 650 vehicles
Call Sign: GJCR
IMO: 8517736
MMSI: 232001670
Owner's website: P&O Ferries

The main photo (includes sources) was originally uploaded to:

MS AIDAblu Cruise Ship and Pride of Dover Ferry, Admiralty Pier, Dover Harbour

The MS AIDAblu in 2011:


A new vessel from AIDA Cruises for 2011:


A Cross-Channel Ferry and Cruise Ship photo.

Clickable thumbnails of all harbour-related photos on the main Panoramio Images of Dover website are available on this blog on the Port of Dover Page (also linked to below the blog title).

The Panoramio photos are each accompanied by a Google Earth satellite map. However, the images are smaller than those on the Images of Dover Blog and the captions are less well formatted.

John Latter / Jorolat

Dover Blog: The Psychology of a Small Town

No comments:

Post a Comment