The ‘Queen Anne’, Cunard’s latest ship, debuted this morning in Madeira.
With around 2,600 passengers and 1,000 crew on board, it entered the Port of Funchal at 6:45 am, coming from Southampton. Upon disembarking, passengers were welcomed by a regional folklore group and a team of car drivers from Monte, with traditional basket cars.
The ship will spend the night in Madeira, departing for Lanzarote scheduled for 5 pm tomorrow.
To mark the inaugural call, the Ship Enthusiasts Club (CEN) organized an exhibition with photographs and miniatures of ships, which recalls previous visits to Funchal by Cunard cruises.
The captain of the ‘Queen Anne’, Inger Klein Thorhauge, and the member of the board of directors of the Ports of Madeira (APRAM), Isabel Figueiroa, will be present at the opening of the exhibition, which takes place at Gare Marítima da Madeira.
On Wednesday, at 10 am, the traditional plaque exchange ceremony will take place on board the ship, with the presence of the president of the APRAM board of directors.
Paula Cabaço, and Inger Klein Thorhauge, who is the first woman to command a Cunard ship. The tug ‘Ponta do Pargo’, from APRAM, will accompany the departure of the ‘Queen Anne’, marking the moment with a water salute.
“Madeira and Cunard have a special bond. The Queen Marry 2 made its inaugural call here, and now, 20 years later, the Queen Anne gives us the same honor, which reveals the importance and notoriety of our port for the cruise industry”, highlights Paula Cabaço, adding that in the last two decades Cunard ships have made 112 calls, transporting close to 205 thousand passengers. “The Queen Elizabeth and the Queen Victoria are regular presences on New Year’s Eve in Madeira, and the arrival of the Queen Anne has already been confirmed for this year’s event”, added the person responsible for the regional port authority.
The debut of the ‘Queen Anne’ in Funchal takes place 20 years after the first visit to Madeira of the ‘Queen Mary 2’, at the time the largest cruise ship in the world. Built in Fincantieri’s Italian shipyards, and launched on April 24, the ‘Queen Anne’ has the capacity to carry 2,996 passengers and 1,225 crew. She is Cunard’s 249th ship, and the fourth in the current fleet. She was named in honor of Queen Anne, who ruled the United Kingdom between 8 March 1702 and 1 May 1714). She is the company’s second largest ship at 323 meters in length, only surpassed by the ‘Queen Marry 2’ (345 meters), which continues to be the oldest in the Cunard fleet. But ‘Anne’ is the one with the greatest transport capacity, compared to the 2,691 passengers on ‘Marry 2’. The company also has the ‘Queen Elizabeth’ and the ‘Queen Victoria’, being the first time since 1999 that Cunard has four ships sailing, thus paying homage to all the British queens regent
The ‘Anne’ is managed by Blatas, Lda (Blandy Shipping), Cunard’s shipping agent since 1905. The first record of a Cunard cruise ship calling in Madeira dates back to that year, with the call of the ship Caronia, anchored in the bay of Funchal, at the time already managed by Blandy Brothers & CA.