History in the Making revised -- Part 1 - Art and Conception II

Early Designs and Concept

While P&O concerned its self with potential shipyards to invite to tender for the ship's construction it also had the task of deciding what was required form the proposed ship both in terms of technical aspects and what the ship could offer its passengers.

Effectivly what was the concept for the new ship?

The ship was foreseen in a role similar to that which CANBERRA occupied currently, UK based cruises which included 1 & 2 week cruises to the Atlantic Islands, Baltic, Norwegian Fjords & Mediterranean with longer cruises visiting the US and the Caribbean and the famed 3 month world cruise.

For this to be achievable it was calculated the new ship would be required to have a service speed of around 24 knots and be able to maintain the speed in all but the most serve weather conditions, making it the fastest passenger ship built since Cunard's QUEEN ELIZABETH 2 and the fastest purpose built cruise ship ever constructed, also to accomodate this the ship would need to have a large fuel and fresh water capacity to allow for longer periods between ports.

Another key feature to the success of the new ship would be hull design, most of cruise ships in development at the time were designed for regional cruising in the caribbean with only occasional ocean crossings, the new ship with its yearly world cruise and being home ported in Southampton would often encounter some of the most severe seas from the North Atlantic on crossings to the North Sea and Bay of Biscay on regular cruises.

Other features of the ship would be, a shallower draught in comparison to CANBERRA to allow access to a larger number of ports, a maximum beam of 32.2 metres.
And of course for passenger comfort minimal engine noise and vibration.
From the passengers point of view the most important decisions were regarding the new ships interiors, although no serious thought would put towards this aspect of design until a much later stage P&O did take the unusual step of defining that the ship should include at least 21 public rooms the same number as on board CANBERRA.
It had been calculated by P&O that when the ship would be operating out Southampton on regular cruises that 98% to 99% of the passengers would be British with the remaining passengers being from Europe and on world cruises 78% British around 10 % European with the remainder being Australian, North American & South African.
In the company’s opinion this justified making the ship as far as possible British in character.

Aside from what the company’s needs the ships design would be governed by its ability to conform to maritime law.
The most important of these being SOLAS but also required if the ship was to enter US ports and for the ship to comply with US coastguard and department of health regulations.
This formed the basic concept of the new ship a large modern high speed luxurious super liner designed to combine the grace of the ocean liners with the requirements of a purpose built modern cruise ship, to quote P&O’s design brief “Interior and external balancing traditional and contemporary images”.
Having sent out the invitations to tender for construction in December 1989 by early 1990 P&O had its replies.
The most promising of these was from the Bremerhaven based yard of Lloyd Werft which P&O entered negotiations with.
The drawings produced by the yard were of roughly the right dimensions and with a rather avant-garde styling it certainly looked modern and perhaps with some more work the designs would be to P&O’s liking.
The deck plans showed a layout not unlike that of CANBERRA with the public rooms sharing names, locations and functions than on board the veteran liner

Lloyd Werft profile drawing for Project Gemini 

After pleasing initial talks things rapidly came to halt when it became clear that the projected price of the proposed design exceeded the budget that P&O had allocated to the development and construction of the new ship.
With this setback P&O looked to the other yards who replied but in turn found each to be in excess of their budget and it was with great reluctance P&O put Project Gemini on hold indefinitely.
The design work that was done by Lloyd Werft later was further developed by their parent company Bremer Vulkan and in 1991 was displayed by them at a Cruise and Ferry convention in London as a cruise ship concept.
Although not exactly as designed this ship would eventually be built as COSTA VICTORIA in 1996. 

  COSTA VICTORIA in Funchal, Madeira 15th April 2011: Copyright João Abreu 

The design would be further developed and refined into NCL's NORWEGIAN SKY originally planned as COSTA OLYMPIA and NORWEGIAN SUN

 It is also interesting to note that the refinements made to the design included a deck structure above the bridge which bears a resemblance to the upper decks of ORIANA. 

  
New concept drawings and contract

Six months later P&O handed the work that been done on Project Gemini to another of its subsidiaries the Monaco based ISTS, which P&O had acquired when it purchased Sitmar Cruises which it promptly mereged to it's Princess Cruises operation, to review.

ISTS’s project director Charles Arkinstall reviewed the concept drawings and the proposals which had been submitted and found the reason for them being over budget was that was the concept was far too large for the proposed amount of passengers which was around 1,800, with this revelation Charles Arkinstall began to redraw the concept drawings in October 1990. By the beginning of summer 1991 all the redrawing had been completed and the new specifications showed a ship of around 67,000 tons still with a maximum passenger capacity of 1900.

Having thoroughly examined the replies they had from the 10 shipyards the year before it was decided to ask two yards to re-quote.

Meyer Werft and the Finnish yard obliged and two months later, both sets of drawings were received and studied in depth , P&O found the Finnish ship too small but the Meyer Werft ship seemed to meet each requirement which they had laid out.

 The drawings showed a ship of around 69,000 tons ,260 metres in length and a width of 32.2 with 14 decks and 26 public rooms.
The drawings also had a element of CANBERRA’s design most notably in the rounded bridge and superstructure front. Although there was still much work to do refining the finer details the ship it was clear that this was exactly what P&O had been looking for.

Meyer Werft concept drawing for Project Gemini Copyright: Meyer Werft

While work continued P&O began to assemble a team of people from across the company who would be involved with the final design and construction stages, some of these will be introduced in a later in our articles.

Before the final design was decided on over 15,000 documents, plans and general arrangements would be produced covering every single aspect of the ship in the smallest detail.

  In October 1991 Swedish marine designer Robert Tillberg was appointed as coordinating architect, most of his work would be on the interiors but he as he explained added some styling “We also had an influence on the outline of the ship. Our task was to create a ship that had a certain affinity with the CANBERRA so that when you look at the new ship you immediately see that she is from the same family.”

“This was done in subtle ways for example in the design of the funnel. With CANBERRA there are twin funnels, but with this ship we designed the one funnel to suggest two.”

Copyright:William H Miller

Another feature Tillberg adapted for inclusion in the design was the spacers between the lifeboats, which were reclined back in a similar way to CANBERRA.

With the design work ongoing there was important matter which had yet to be decided on, the name of the new vessel.

In the earliest stages of Project Gemini the name CANBERRA II had been suggested although this had never been a seriously considered, in fact hundreds of names had been suggested ranging from CHUSAN to VECTIS.

However after much consideration in the end it came down to just two names, P&O Cruises Managing Director Tim Harris unable to decide between the two took the suggestions to the Chairman of The P&O Group Lord Sterling of Plaistow. ARCADIA or ORIANA, both names were famous within P&O and among its passengers, but which would be most popular? It did not take long before Lord Sterling chose ORIANA, the name of the last of the Orient liners and for many years CANBERRA’s running mate until being transferred to P&O’s Australia operations and then retired in 1986.

All agreed that right choice had been made, the decision was also made that the name would not be known by the public until the day of the keel laying when Tim Harris would announce the name.

Two months later in December 1991 with all at P&O and Meyer Werft pleased with conditions laid down, they officially signed a contract for the construction of the ship.

For both this was extremely good news P&O’s new era of cruising was within sight and for Meyer Werft it would give them the honour of building the largest ship built Germany in 8 decades.

Photo Copyrights: João Abreu