Last The cruise ship, still carrying passengers, finally made it to port, arriving in Bremerhaven, Germany on Monday after a 6-month odyssey during the coronavirus pandemic.
All remaining 8 passengers aboard the MV Artania were able to disembark shore from the ship, which set off on a 140-day cruise from Hamburg on December 21.
In March, 36 passengers tested positive for coronavirus after the passengers were checked by doctors when the ship arrived in Fremantle, Western Australia. The infected were quarantined in local hospitals, cruise operator Phoenix Reisen told the media.
Not sure about physical distancing, but hundreds of people lined up to see the cruise ship MV Artania leave Fremantle port this afternoon #perthnews pic.twitter.com/bCZQiAC0b9
— Ben Gubana (@bengubana) April 18, 2020
Three people on board died: 2 male passengers aged 69 and 71 and a 42-year-old crew member.
Healthy ship passengers remained in quarantine on board until their flight back home at the end of March.
Hundreds of passengers flew back to Frankfurt, although some remained in hospital in Australia until they recovered. The last eight passengers chose to go home by ship rather than by air, becoming the last cruise ship passengers to remain at sea as the coronavirus pandemic spread across the world.
The Artania sailed from an Australian port on April 18 and sailed back to Europe, which was supposed to take several weeks, but the ship made stops in Southeast Asia to disembark many of the remaining crew members.
Approximately 75 crew members remained on board until Bremerhaven to help with the work ship, whose captain Morten Hansen, star of the German reality show Crazy for the Sea, kept passengers and relatives updated on what was happening on his Facebook page.
Hansen even celebrated Mother's Day by deviating slightly from the planned route to “draw” the contours of the heart.
And just before leaving the port in Perth, 2 crew members decided to tie the knot, and got married during a ceremony at which Gabrielle Maluga, the German consul, sent the service, CNN Travel reports .
