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Displaying items by tag: Irish cruise calls 2012

#CRUISE LINERS- Galway Harbour can look forward to welcoming nine cruise calls to the mid-west port this year, with the first visitor being Arion which is scheduled to arrive in Galway Bay during late May, writes Jehan Ashmore.

Arion harks back to an era of the more classically designed ships with graceful sweeping lines. The 5,888 tonnes veteran vessel was launched in 1965 at Pula, in Croatia, as Istra and later in her career she underwent a major reconstruction in a Lisbon shipyard during 2000.

Cruise & Maritime Voyages (CMV) will be sending their Marco Polo, another classic veteran, in July as part of a 12 night 'Emerald Isle' discovery cruise departing Tilbury, with en-route calls to Cobh and Glengariff the previous day.

For a full listing of the cruise-calls schedule click HERE.

Published in Cruise Liners

About Commander Bill King, Solo Circumnavigator

William Donald Aelian King was the last surviving submarine commander in the Second World War - in charge of the British Navy's T-class Telemachus that sank a Japanese sub in the Strait of Malacca, between Malaysia and Sumatra, in 1944.

Decorated many times for his service by the end of the war, King became a trailblazing solo sailor.

At the age of 58, he was the oldest participant in The Sunday Times Golden Globe Race sailing Galway Blazer II, a junk-rigged schooner he designed himself.

After a number of abortive attempts, including an incident with "a large sea creature", he finally completed his solo circumnavigation of the globe in 1973.

Beyond his aquatic escapades, King settled with his wife Anita (who died in 1984, aged 70) at Oranmore Castle outside Galway after the war, where he later developed a pioneering organic farm and garden to help tackle his wife's asthma.

The round-the-world sailor and Galway native Bill King died on Friday, 21 September, 2012, aged 102.