Silver Cloud – The Rolls Royce Cruise Ship

We haven’t had a cruise ship in Freo for several months, so it was lovely to watch Silver Cloud glide into a near empty inner harbour this morning at just after 1 am Freo time.

She made quite an entrance, steaming into Port, lights ablaze.

Silver Cloud, Fremantle, 25 August 2024. Credit Fremantle Shipping News

Silver Cloud is a small ultra-luxury cruise ship operated by Silversea. She’s part of the Caribbean Cruises fleet and sails under the flag of Bahamas. One suspects ‘cost of living crisis’ is an expression unknown or poorly known to guests lucky enough to be sailing on her!

Silver Cloud was named after the famous Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud luxury automobile that was produced between 1955-1966. Plainly a signal to guests that they should expect top-class service aboard Silver Cloud.

Her christening took place in Monte Carlo in 1994 with Prince Albert of Monaco in attendance, but underwent a refit in 2017 and now has an ice-strengthened hull for Polar expeditions.

Silver Cloud really is a compact vessel. Her overall length is 155m and she has 126 cabins of which 80% have verandas. She can cater for 296 guests. Being a luxury ship the crew/guest ratio is high. Not far off 1:1. There are 222 crew.

During the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio, Brazil, she was home to both the United States men’s and women’s national basketball teams! One assumes, therefore, the cabins are all a good size!

She has just completed a 17-day one-way cruise from Darwin to Fremantle exploring the vast and wildly beautiful Kimberley coast and islands along the way to Fremantle.

She departed Darwin on 8 August and visited Wyndham and made several stops along the Kimberley Coast, visiting Ashmore Islands, the fabulous Yawajaba-Montgomery Reef,
Buccaneer Archipelago annd the Adele, Lacepede, Montebello, Murion and Houtman Abrolhos islands. With her 20 zodiacs, 10 kayaks, limitless exploration opportunities were no doubt taken up by the guests.

Silver Cloud will depart Fremantle later today, 25 August at 6 pm on a return cruise to Darwin.

This 17-day cruise costs – hold on to your hats! – between US$27,400-118,700, that’s AUD $40,740 – $179,500.

For this amount of spondulicks, guests have 24-hour gourmet dining, butler service, superb entertainment and premium beverages, as you’d hope they would.

Rolls Royce, indeed!

So, put on your Ugg boots, Freo scarves and beanies and head on down to Victoria Quay this Sunday evening to wish the Rolls good luck on her return journey to the Top End.

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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