It has been a six-month odyssey, much of it marked by the coronavirus pandemic, which has now seen its end. The last cruise ship that still had passengers on board has finally moored in a port to disembark its last eight passengers. It was in the German port of Bremerhaven, last Monday, where the MV Artania set sail and thus closed a trip that had begun in Hamburg to Australia at Christmas, and that has been marked by countless detours to be able to disembark the members of its crew.
The 1,200-passenger ship began its world route in Hamburg on December 21, with an expected duration of 140 days. But in March, during medical tests in Fremantle, Western Australia, 36 people on board tested positive for coronavirus, and were quarantined in a hospital. Of these, three died: two passengers, men aged 69 and 71, and a crew member, aged 42, CNN reports, citing sources from the cruise ship operator, Phoenix Reisen.
The rest of the crew and the passage, the majority German citizens, remained on board the ship until they were able to return to their places of origin, at the end of March. Some crew and hundreds of passengers flew from Australia to Frankfurt, but eight of them decided to return as they had arrived, by boat, thus becoming the last cruise ship in the world sea.
The ship left the Australian port on April 18, but the return to the country of departure has been delayed, because, in addition to Germans, crew from other countries were traveling on board. And even they went to the MV Artania, to disembark on the islands of Bali, in Indonesia, and Luzon, in the Philippines. Finally, the German port of Bremerhaven, 75 crew members have arrived, in addition to the eight passengers.