Viking Ocean Cruises’ 47,861gt Viking Jupiter, delivered on 7 February 2019 from Fincantieri in Ancona, made her maiden call at Greenwich on the River Thames on 28 June.

The ship stayed at anchor until the night of 1 July as scheduled, before departing for Rosyth. While she was heading out in to the Thames Estuary in the early morning, a technical fault developed with the ship’s propulsion system and, as a precaution, it was decided to drop anchor in the estuary to allow the fault to be assessed.

Investigations revealed a component failure within one of the converters that transform AC electricity to a DC current to power the two propulsion motors.

Viking Jupiter was later moved under tug escort to the London International Cruise Terminal at Tilbury, where she arrived at around 1430 on 2 July.

Technicians from Siemens were hastily flown to London to deal with the issue. The Shore Excursions team arranged complimentary tours for the passengers to London, Leeds Castle & Canterbury as the ship remained alongside until 2330 on 3 July.

The onward itinerary (eventual destination being Bergen) was modified slightly with a call at Newhaven (Edinburgh) on 5 July but the Kirkwall and Lerwick stopovers had to be dropped.

The 930-passenger capacity Viking Jupiter is the sixth of a fleet of six sisterships, the others being Viking Star/Sea/Sky/Sun & Orion. The next ship to join the fleet will be the Viking Venus is 2021.

Report by Andrew Cooke

Photos by Fraser Gray