Why not SWITCH OFF all the EMPTY CRUISE SHIPS? Laying up the World's Fleet of Cruise Ships Explored.

In March 2020, as the Coronavirus Pandemic swept the globe, cruise ships and cruise lines found themselves in the unprecedented position of having to plan and undertake a global cruising shut down.

Once the passengers were safely disembarked, cruise lines had the unenviable task of laying up their ships.



Cruise Lines have several options when considering laying up their ships: Warm Layup or Cold Layup.

Warm Layup – otherwise known as Hot Layup – is when an operational ship is withdrawn from service – usually temporarily – yet is maintained in a largely static but operational state.


Ships in warm layup operate utilising their own engines. With the exception of usual shore side services – such as replenishing food and beverage stores, medical supplies, fuel and the like.

Their engines provide power to maintain onboard services, including hotel services, air conditioning, water treatment, desalination and propulsion.


The uncertainty surrounding COVID-19 – and when its devastating effect on global travel might start to dwindle – has led to most ships around the world being maintained in a state of warm layup.


Let’s look at the cluster of ships in Manila Bay, as of early June 2020, include vessels from Cunard, P&O Australia, Princess Cruises, Royal Caribbean, Aida, Holland America and Carnival, all of which remain operational and powered by their own engines.


These ships are fully independent of shore side power, reliant on the Philippines only for food supply as well as good will.


Keen observers will notice these ships weighing anchor and periodically heading out to sea. As these operational ships need to head further offshore to acquire sea water for desalination as well as discharge treated grey water which – although as clean as shore-side treated water – must only be discharged a certain distance from land – depending on the laws governing the region where a ship is based.


Shutting down a ship is what’s known as Cold Layup.

This is when a ship is deactivated and moored or anchored with a minimal crew.

When a ship enters cold layup, its engines are shut down. This has the primary benefit of reducing the ongoing fuel costs, however it comes with a catch. With engines deactivated, all of the onboard services that rely on power have to either be provided with alternative shore side power, or mothballed.

If shore side power is required, the ship will need berthing space – which can often be an expensive proposition.

And with hundreds of ships inactive due to the cruising pause finding berthing space can be quite difficult, which is why we see so many ships currently at anchor.

But what about cold layup with a ship at anchor? Well if shore side power is not going to be used, then many of the services aboard the ship need to be switched off as the ship will be operating on minimal backup power to maintain safety systems such as fire suppression and emergency lighting.


This means that everything else needs to be turned off, emptied and cleaned. This includes all hotel services – which is a bigger job than you might think because water pipes need to be depressurised, water treatment deactivated, sewage tanks emptied; and on the other end of the spectrum food stores need to be removed, anything requiring ongoing maintenance would need to be mothballed and preserved for future use.

Depending on the climate where the ship is being laid up it could get very hot and humid onboard, or cold and damp, both of which might result in artworks, and furnishings needing to be removed.

With the uncertainty around how long the cruise pause will actually last – and the length of time it takes to both deactivate and reactivate a ship from cold layup – as well as the costs involved with this process and potentially berthing a ship – it just doesn’t make financial sense for the ships to be in cold layup at this point.


There is another option where a ship is berthed and receives power from shoreside to allow it to maintain operational status, whilst not using its own engines. This can work well for some smaller cruise ships with a lower energy requirement, with some ships having been built to easily accommodate shoreside power.

HAPAG-Lloyd’s Europa is one example - with the ship currently alongside in Hamburg receiving power from renewable sources.


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Image References:

Andrew Sassoli-Walker (with permission)
Alison Morton (with permission)
Dr. Karl-Heinz Hochhaus – Image of Europa 2 – CC BY SA 3.0 Creative Commons License: https://bit.ly/3dMY8pf


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Further Reading:

There are some interesting extra reading articles about layup if you want to learn more:


What can fail in layup: https://bit.ly/3cH5KZ3
Hot Layup Costs: https://bit.ly/370XYYs
How to Lay Up a Vessel: https://bit.ly/2MuuHMi


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Past Videos about the Cruise Pause: https://bit.ly/2Y1VVPY

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Music: YouTube Audio

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#cruisenews #cruiseline #cruiseship

Видео Why not SWITCH OFF all the EMPTY CRUISE SHIPS? Laying up the World's Fleet of Cruise Ships Explored. канала Chris Frame