Author Archives: Elena

At “Marintec China” held in Shanghai in December 2017, the first Chinese smart ship embedded with a domestically developed intelligent navigation system was presented with Lloyds Register (LR) cyber-enabled ship (CES) descriptive notes. The vessel concerned, the appropriately named Great Intelligence, was designed by Shanghai Merchant Ship Design and Research Institute (SDARI).

Ten years after her arrival in Dubai to great fanfare, the former Cunard liner Queen Elizabeth 2 underwent a “soft opening” last week (April 18) as a luxury floating hotel and museum following a stem to stern refurbishment. The vessel was purchased in 2008 for $100 million with the objective of adding her to an already long list of tourist attractions in Dubai but the financial crisis of 2008/09 which hit Dubai particularly hard left the vessel’s fate in limbo.

We normally do not cover ships lying on the seabed, particularly one that has been there for 76 years, but this week we are making an exception for an exceptional vessel. Early last month the wreckage of USS Lexington was discovered by an expedition crew aboard Paul Allen’s RV Petrel. The Lexington was discovered 3,000 meters below the surface approximately 500 miles off the eastern coast of Australia. She was mortally damaged by Japanese torpedo bombers, launched from aircraft carriers, on May 8 1942 during the Battle of the Coral Sea.

Having been ordered in May 2014, the world’s largest cruise ship, Symphony of the Seas was on show last week in the port of Malaga ahead of her maiden voyage taking in Spain, France and Italy. She will spend the summer in the Mediterranean before repositioning in the fall to join her slightly smaller sisters, Oasis, Allure and Harmony in the Caribbean with home-port Miami.