The ECCG committee with Minister of State, Mr. David Stanton TD: Kevin Day, Denis Barry, Noelle Lowney, Minister Stanton, Anthony O’Connor and James Brady.
On Saturday 2/7/16, Minister of State at the Dept. of Justice and Equality, Mr. David Stanton TD, performed the official opening of our Cruise Liner / Lusitania Exhibition at the Cobh Maritime Building at Cobh Rail Station.
The exhibition is the culmination of a project to photograph all the cruise liner visits to Cork harbour during the 2015 season which amounted to 33 ships and 57 visits. Added to this was a number of images from the Lusitania Centenary Events that were held in May of the same year.
A gallery of images from each visit was posted to the project webpage which by the end of the project contained over 1,000 images. Ideas for an exhibition soon began to emerge and when the idea was initially suggested, the Port of Cork’s Mr. Michael McCarthy responded positively and made the Cobh Maritime Building available to us for the month of July 2016.
The Exhibition Book on display at the Cobh Maritime Building
Planning soon got under way resulting in 46 frames containing over 100 images which were expertly printed, mounted and framed by Don Magee and his staff at Art and Frame, Model Farm Road, Cork. Added to this was a companion exhibition book available in print and as an e-book along with a free Exhibition App for mobile devices – all available from the club website.
In keeping with the maritime theme of this exhibition, we are delighted to make the Royal National Lifeboat Institution a beneficiary of the event and encourage all people visiting this free exhibition to make a donation in the RNLI collection box provided.
The exhibition exists because of a lot of good will, a lot of hours spent on it and a big commitment from a lot of people. Thanks to the ECCG committee as well as the members who contributed to the projects from the submission of images and dealing with the logistics of actually putting an exhibition like this together. Particular thanks is due to Finbarr O’Shea and Eileen Upton who actually put the exhibition in place.
Thanks to Mr. Michael McCarthy of Port of Cork, Cork County Council’s Cobh and East Cork Municipal Districts, Ben and the staff at the Maritime Building and all our sponsors (see the exhibition webpage for a full list), without whom, the exhibition could not have happened.
Finally, thanks tro our caterers, Days of Whitegate and our pianist, Ursula O’Tuama, who added a real sense of occasion to the opening.
Click here to see a gallery of images from the event. Enjoy!
On board, we were taken for a beautiful meal in the very plush Villa Verde panoramic restaurant on Deck 6, following which we went to the Aft Lounge on Deck 7 for tea and coffee. During this we made a presentation of a framed series of images of the ship, taken in Cork harbour during 2015, to the ship’s events manager, Ms. Anna Vakulenko.
At this stage we did a tour of the ship taking in the wonderful Aqua Park featuring four outdoor pools and one indoor pool with a retractable roof – ideal for cruising in our weather. We also visited the shopping mall and casino as well as the many restaurants and wellness/fitness centres. The Sports bar with its two bowling lanes was an interesting feature while the stylish Reception area with its waterfall and Swarovski crystal stairs was really classy.
As the bells of St. Colman’s Cathedral rang out for 9pm, three long blasts of the ship’s whistle announced her impending departure. With mooring ropes cast off and recovered, she was off the berth and moving downriver past the town, dipping her deck lights a number of times in farewell. A beautiful sight in the blue hour, she slipped almost silently around the Spitbank light and headed for Roches Point and out of the harbour on her way to Southampton.
It all started on 25th April with the arrival of the 
As the clock ticked past 6.30am, Royal Princess, with its 3,600 passengers and 1,300 crew on board, was visible from Cobh at Roches Point. On her tenth and final visit of the season, she was the 46th liner of the year and the first of three to call on this day. As she made her way between Forts Davis and Meagher, the sun began to spread its magic over the harbour and bathed the ship in a golden glow as she did a 180 degree turn and went alongside at Cobh Cruise Terminal.
Thereafter, we toured the ship and took in her splendour. Only two years old, she was named by the Duchess of Cambridge on the 13th June 2013 and like her ‘godmother’, exudes elegance and style at every turn. Among her highlights, the Royal Princess offers a larger and expanded atrium with additional entertainment and casual dining options and it boasts the largest top deck pool ever with Princess Watercolor Fantasy, an enhanced Movies Under the Stars screen, and a SeaWalk with views 128 feet straight down through the glass floor!
Having worked up an appetite, we adjourned to the Horizon Court restaurant on Deck 16, for lunch, for which the choice was seemingly unending. It was really relaxed and enjoyable and afterwards we planned the afternoon’s shoot which took us to the casino (which was closed unfortunately) and the atrium where an All Ireland champion uilleann piper and a local troop of Irish dancers entertained the cruisers to great applause.
Resisting the temptation to somehow stow away and depart Cork with the mighty ship, we made our way to deck four and the exit where cruisers, who had been ashore, were streaming back to the ship for the 5.30pm ‘all aboard’ time. With a glance back we marvelled at the feat of engineering and logistics that is the Royal Princess with a more meaningful understanding of the Princess Cruises slogan, “come back new”. Our brief introduction to the world of cruise liners definitely left us with a taste for more and I even heard a suggestion that next year the club should have a foreign shoot ….. on a cruise!!