ORIANA seen in Funchal, Madeira during her most recent call on 9 April 2016, twenty one years after having departed from Southampton on that same day for her inaugural voyage to the Canary Islands. Funchal was none other than the first port of call of that highly antecipated cruise on P&O's and Britain's newest flagship, having arrived at Madeira's capital on 12 April 1995 and staying in overnight for the following day.
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| ORIANA arrives in Funchal, Madeira for the first time on her maiden cruise. Photo: Luís F. Jardim. |
After Funchal the brand new ORIANA at the time, visited Tenerife followed by Lanzarote, Casablanca in Morocco, Gibraltar, Portimão and Lisbon in Portugal's mainland and finally returning to Southampton on the 23 April.
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| A promotional postcard of Madeira launched at the time depicting her departure on 13 April. |
Nowadays with a 21 year career and being the oldest unit in P&O Cruises' active fleet, ORIANA is still proving successful among the British passengers, and most certainly overlooks beyond the horizon many more years of service, hopefully with the name she has always held with pride!
At the moment ORIANA is back in Western waters on a 35 day cruise from/to Southampton, and in the long eastbound crossing between the UK and the Caribbean Sea, her crew took advantage of the only stopover in the Atlantic to perform tests and exercices, as demanded by law, to the lifeboats and tenders on the starboard side, before the 6 day sea journey bound to Philipsburg, St. Maarten, to which she departed later in the evening.
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