On 19 April, the Queen Anne officially joined Cunard’s luxury cruise line’s fleet during a handover ceremony at the Fincantieri Marghera shipyard near Venice. She’s the first to join the cruise line in fourteen years.
Queen Anne. Source Cunard
Queen Anne is the 249th ship to sail under the Cunard flag and will grace the seas from Southampton to Lisbon on a seven-day maiden voyage on 3 May.
And she joins three other Queens – Victoria, Elizabeth and Mary 2 – in active service on behalf of Cunard!
As a matter of history, Queen Anne, for whom the ship is named, was the queen of Great Britain and Ireland from 1702 to 1714.
QA can carry 3,000 guests and her design has been founded on heritage, craftsmanship and style.
She has 14 decks and weighs in at 114,000 tons.
Like the other Cunard Queens, she will offer guests several breath-taking experiences and more choices of entertainment, dining, and bars than ever before. She will also boast the widest selection of fitness, beauty, thermal and spa facilities so far seen on a Cunard ship, heralding a new era of wellbeing at sea.
She has been described as ‘modern yet timeless’. Cunard’s signature white-glove afternoon tea service and ballroom dancing will remain. She will have a Pickleball court on the top deck. (For those not in the know, Pickleball is best described as a mixture of tennis, badminton and table tennis).
On the top deck guests can master their archery skills with a real bows and arrows.
In February 2025, she will embark on a 19-night World Voyage and will visit Sydney, but is not visiting Fremantle in 2025.
Queen Elizabeth in Fremantle
Sadly, for the Cunard Queen’s legion of fans, next summer’s cruise season will be the last in Australian waters for Cunard’s Queen Elizabeth. She will be based in the northern Hemisphere from early 2026 onwards and will only visit Australia on world cruise segments.
Queen Mary 2 in Fremantle January 2023. Credit Les Moyle
Although Cunard ships like the Queen Mary 2 and the new Queen Anne will pass through Australia on long voyages in the future, next season will be the last opportunity to sail in a Queen on a local homeport cruise, such as the popular Australian circumnavigation voyage. Unfortunately, all of the packages in 2025 are from Sydney and Freo doesn’t look like being a through port.
STORY by Jean Hudson @jeansodyssey. Jean is our Shipping Correspondent and also a regular feature writer and photographer here on the Shipping News. You may like to follow up her informative Places I Love stories, as well as other feature stories and Freo Today photographs, right here.
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