Virgin Voyages, the cruise shipping company in Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, has disclosed the hull dimensions of its three new buildings that will be about six metres wider than ships of the same length currently in service.
“Each ship will weigh about 110,000 gross tons, be 278 metres long and 38 (metres) wide. The ships will feature over 1,400 guest cabins that can host more than 2,800 passengers, accompanied by 1,100 crew members on board to deliver the famed Virgin service,” the company said in a statement.
The ships will be significantly wider that existing vessels of comparable length, many of which were restricted by the 32.2 metre maximum beam of the old locks in the Panama Canal. The greater beam of these ships means that the designers have more freedom to lay out public areas.
The additional beam could leave the designers with a problem of lots of internal space on cabin decks, which in the past would have tended to result in large numbers of inside cabins.
However, this is unlikely to be the case with these ships, which are due for delivery from the Sestri Ponente yard of the shipbuilder in 2020, 2021 and 2022, respectively, as the present trend is to eliminate inside cabins as much as possible.
Neither the company nor the shipbuilder have disclosed e.g. a deck plan of the vessels yet, but the greater beam of the vessels may result in new thinking in ways to provide more outside and balcony cabins compared to existing vessels of comparable length.
