"You get what you pay for, don't you?"

My parents never flew in a commercial aircraft on a scheduled flight. Their sole experience of taking to the skies was a twenty- minute spin around Worthing Pier (in a biplane) sometime after World War 2. I myself have never witnessed a premier division football match, and only within the last year or two have I dipped my toe into cruising. Leaving things late seems to be a family trait. First for me in 2008 was the Queen Mary 2, transatlantic and with all the frills. Magic. Enter at a sedate pace from harbour left MS Marco Polo, late of the Soviet Navy. Now some cruise companies own their own vessels, train their own crews and are only beholden, when publicly owned at least, to their shareholders. Others such as Cruise and Maritime claim very few assets and simply lease a ship, lock stock and smoking funnel- captain, crew, the whole shebang.

As with many other shipping operators, responsibility for vessels such as the Marco Polo involves complex and sometimes rapidly-changing ownership, and when Transoceanic went "belly up" late last year, Cruise and Maritime stepped into the breach and guaranteed a certain number of sailings to provide a continuity for Tilbury-based voyages. Read more