One of the biggest cruise ships in the P&O Cruises fleet, Iona, paused her regular cruise itinerary this week to help search for survivors following the sinking of a British cargo ship.
Verity, the cargo ship that sunk, was involved in a collision with another cargo ship off the coast of Germany, and succumbed to the waters in the morning of Tuesday 24th October.
Passengers onboard Iona were woken at 6am with the announcement that the ship had joined the search and rescue mission.
22 crew were onboard the Verity when she sank, and at the time of writing there are four crew members still missing, with one confirmed fatality.
Iona had left Hamburg and was en route to Rotterdam. She assisted in the search until the early afternoon, at which point she was told she was no longer needed, and the announcement was made that the ship would carry on to Rotterdam.
According to passenger reports on the ship, parts of the top deck of Iona were closed off to guests due to the rescue mission.
While the mission did cause Iona to pause her planned sailing route, she was due to be on a sea day regardless, and she was able to continue onto Rotterdam without any signficant delay.
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Jenni Fielding is the founder of Cruise Mummy. She has worked in the cruise industry since 2015 and has taken over 30 cruises. Now, she helps over 1 million people per month to plan their perfect cruise holidays.
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Great article, I’m currently onboard iona and it was a shock to hear that rescue boat crews needed to assemble before 6 and they had the search lights out early.
I just wanted to clarify that there were 7 crew members onboard the sunken vessel verity. 2 were rescued, 4 were still missing and unfortunately there was one fatality.
The ship it crashed into had 22 crew and as far as I’m aware, the ship is still afloat