Poor , Poor Black Watch

It hasn’t been a great couple of weeks for Fred Olsens Black Watch.

Black Watch shoot

She recently set of on a 13 night Portuguese Island and cities cruise with around 700 passengers onboard but the liner had difficulty around 260 miles from Madeira when a fire broke out in the engine room , luckily the staff managed to out out the fire but it damaged 3 of the 7 onboard auxiliary engines which affected lighting and onboard communication. Thankfully noone was injured.

But this meant the cruise would need to come to an end, she needed urgent repairs to the engines so the ship sailed into Madeira and Fred Olsen arranged for all passengers to be flown home to various London airports on the 4th July. The repairs would have caused disruption to guests if they were to stay onboard and for guests own safety the decision was made to charter enough flights to get everyone safely back to the UK.

It would have been a huge shame for passengers who were onboard enjoying there holiday but safety comes first and i think most passengers would have understood the action taken to get everyone home safe. Fred Olsen offered all passengers a full refund along with 50% off a future Fred Olsen cruise and they agreed to reimburse passengers any forward travel arrangements that needed to be made to get home.

The Black Watch is an older ship in the cruising world, she was built in Helsinki back in 1970 and joined the Fred Olsen fleet in 1996 and has been a huge hit ever since within repeat customers every year that love the smaller , traditional cruising.

Hopefully she will be back on the open waters very soon ,

Was you onboard the cruise in mention?