As we chug away from the quay in bright sunshine and skipper Paul Derham starts running through the wonders we’re about to witness, everyone aboard the Mudeford Ferry is poised and primed.
Gloria and Andrew Wilkie brandish shiny binoculars. Others boast expensive digital cameras. The Huggett family from Andover clasp mobile phones.
‘Are we all super excited?’ yells Paul, 62. ‘Yes, yes, yes!’ come the replies. Some have driven three hours just to join this excursion.
Not, as it happens, to see seals, dolphins or a pod of killer whales.
Jane cruising past the Aurora.Jane Fryer joins Paul Derham on his new sight seeing tour around the ghost cruise ships anchored in the English Channel during the coronavirus pandemic
Cruise ships all over the world are running with skeleton crews but are otherwise deserted as these pictures of luxury cruise liner Queen Mary 2 while she is docked during the pandemic
No . . . these maritime tourists are on a different kind of safari. They are here to spot ‘ghost ships’ — the nickname for the ever-expanding number of hulking luxury cruise liners that includes the three flagship ‘Queens’ of the Cunard fleet — currently anchored off the South Coast, between Portsmouth and Plymouth.
For months now, instead of moving in stately fashion through the Mediterranean or pootling around the Caribbean, these ocean-going leviathans have been cluttering up the English Channel.
Their massive generators are on — to power onboard systems for the skeleton crews — and their engines idling. But the kitchens are closed, the sommeliers and waiters dispatched, bars and restaurants are empty, the decks and swimming pools largely deserted and the hot tubs dry and dusty.
Captain Marcin Banach should be shepherding 3,000 passengers around the Mediterranean right now, but —along with a few dozen staff on board P&O’s Azura — he will be stuck in Babbacombe Bay, Torquay, until November at the earliest.
His daily Twitter feed — sharing snaps of endless sea views, deserted restaurants, a workout in the ship’s abandoned gym and solitary walk around the deck draped in an old dust sheet — is already rather repetitive.
The Azura and the other vessels have been here so long that they have transformed the view from the coast.
Seen from the shore, the horizon is dotted with what look like giant icebergs in the haze. At night, they are lit up like enormous floating casinos.
Sales of binoculars in local shops are booming and I’m told that the bar at a branch of Harry Ramsden’s is the best place to ship spot.
Others, however, want to get up close and personal, and the fact that they have become a tourist attraction off the Dorset coast is largely thanks to Captain Paul Derham. He owns the Mudeford Ferry and runs the two-hour tour.
By happy chance, he’s also something of an expert, having spent 27 years working on cruise ships, and was once assistant captain on P&O’s 78,000-tonne Aurora.
While the whole travel industry globally has been dealt a terrible blow by coronavirus, perhaps no sector has been hit harder and for longer than cruising.
The announcement this week that the cruise industry will embrace a longer ‘pause’ on operations until at least October, and some firms till January 2021, has come as another bitter blow.
RMS Queen Mary 2 transatlantic ocean liner, flagship of Cunard Line, arrives to join P&O ships Aurora and its sister ship Ventura in the bay off Weymouth and Portland
Not just for individual companies, their furloughed staff and the crews still on board, desperately working to keep the vessels shipshape. But also for millions of disappointed customers — a very enthusiastic selection of whom are on the ferry with me — and our economy in general.
Because cruising — once considered predominantly for folk at a certain stage of life — has become fantastically popular in recent years for all ages and demographics.
In Britain, it generates £10 billion a year and employs more than 88,000 people. We take more than two million cruises a year — a figure that has more than doubled in the past decade and is rising.
Or at least it was.
Cruising was hit early in the pandemic, generating headlines worldwide. First, the virus swept through the British-registered Diamond Princess in Japan and then the Grand Princess, off the coast of California.
Hundreds of passengers contracted the infection, forcing them to be quarantined at sea.
Within weeks, most of the main cruise companies, including P&O and Cunard, had cancelled all sailings, furloughed or let go thousands of staff and put everything on hold.
Last month, the British cruise line Cruise & Maritime Voyages (CMV) was the first to go into administration, leaving a huge gap in the small-ship cruise market.
And then, more recently, three smaller non-British ocean cruise lines that had started sailing again in July were linked to new coronavirus outbreaks.
Of course, once out of action, the ships had to go somewhere — and they are truly massive.
P&O’s Aurora might be ‘just a medium-sized ship’, as Kate Dingley, 64, a veteran cruiser of nearly 40 trips, airily tells me, but it is still 270 metres long, 32.2 metres wide and, according to Paul, can only just squeeze through the Panama Canal, with centimetres to spare on each side.
Berthing costs at cruise terminals around the country have ruled out that option for many companies, which is why from the Firth of Forth — where instead of gliding through the waters of the Baltic and Scandinavia the Fred Olsen cruise ships Balmoral, Braemar, Boudicca and Black Watch can be spotted — down to the English Channel, so many ships are anchored out at sea.
Last month, the British cruise line Cruise & Maritime Voyages (CMV) was the first to go into administration, leaving a huge gap in the small-ship cruise market
When Paul heard that his beloved Aurora was one of them, he chugged over to have a look, thought others might like to see it, too, and, as he puts it, ‘whacked it up on Facebook for a laugh’.
Within hours, tickets for his first tour (£20 adults, £10 children) had sold out.
‘We’re here because we love cruising and this is the closest we’re going to get this year,’ Denise Bullen, 79, who has been on 15 cruises, tells me.
The first ship we spy is Royal Caribbean’s Allure of the Seas.
At 362 metres long and 47 metres wide — far too big to fit through the Panama Canal — the Allure makes the Aurora look like something you’d play with in the bath.
Even from two miles away the scale is staggering. Up close — Paul can take us within 50 metres — it’s downright awesome. It may travel at only 35 mph, but with a two-deck dance hall, 1,380-seat theatre, ice rink, 25 restaurants, seven ‘distinct neighbourhoods’, a climbing wall and capacity for 6,000 guests, this is a floating town. Sadly, a town that almost everyone has left.
Apparently, there are about 100 crew (of the usual 2,000) on board: they are manning the bridge and engine rooms, and include kitchen and maintenance staff.
We peer up and make out a teeny, solitary figure on one of the 800-plus balconies on the port side and wave madly. He waves back, not quite as jauntily.
Presumably, he’s still adjusting to the news that he’ll be stuck out here until October, at the earliest.
We also spy a lonely looking Officer of the Watch (so Paul tells us) on the bridge. But no one else. Maybe the others are cooling off in one of the pools — while most ships have a staff pool, many have opened up some of the passenger pools for the staff.
Or they could be preparing for one of the occasional forays back to port to dispose of waste, take on supplies and water, give the engine a much-needed run and, occasionally, change crew.
But mostly, the boats just float — idle and sad.
Happily, as we approach the Aurora, spirits seem perkier.
The Crow’s Nest cocktail bar may be mothballed, along with the theatre, cinema and restaurants, but Captain Simon Love waves and another member of the crew blasts the ship’s horn over and over again.
While most of my fellow passengers on the ferry wave and whoop for joy just at the very sight of them, not everyone is as keen.
‘It’s a bit sad,’ says Dave Huggett, 55. ‘The ships look like old donkeys put out to pasture. No boat should be left just stuck out at sea.’
Cunard’s Ocean liner Queen Mary 2 (left), and the cruise ships Carnival Valor and Marella Explorer 2 (right) in Portland, Dorset, as the cruise industry remains in lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic until at least October with experts estimating a loss of at least £2.4 bn
Locals, meanwhile, worry about pollution from the diesel-powered engines and have written strongly worded letters to their local papers and MPs.
A spokesperson for Cunard and P&O was quick to emphasise their use of Advanced Air Quality Systems, and gas cleaning systems which remove sulphur compounds and particulate matter from the ships’ exhausts.
Right now, though, their main concern is getting the industry moving again.
The Cruise Lines International Association estimates that the economic loss of a 90-day cruising suspension — and it is likely to be far longer — will be £2.37 billion and 13,788 jobs.
No wonder the cruise companies have been working round the clock with Public Health England to put in place protocols for post-Covid cruising.
Measures are likely to mean shorter cruises, fewer ports of call and passengers, and a ban on buffets. Access to gyms, pools and hot tubs will also be regulated.
As a result, the immediate future will look very different. But perhaps it doesn’t matter. Because cruisers are incredibly loyal — to their chosen company and to cruising in general.
Almost everyone on the Mudeford Ferry says they will book a holiday as soon as ships are allowed to set sail again.
‘We’re not worried. We’ll go as soon as they’re running,’ says Denise Bullen. ‘It’s part of our life.’
‘Just seeing the ships out here is a beacon of hope,’ says Kate Dingley. ‘We can see they’re being looked after and cared for. So the minute they’re able, they’ll be ready to sail again.’
In the meantime, the crew, passengers and entire travel industry will be willing the cruise companies to, somehow, keep their heads above water.