Guests aboard Queen Anne watched the Moon cover the sun over north-west Spain on Wednesday, at the end of a seven-night round trip from Southampton.
It was the first total solar eclipse over mainland Europe since 1999. Totality has brushed the continent twice in the years since, over Georgia and Russia in 2006 and the Faroes and Svalbard in 2015, but the mainland waited 27 years for another.
The next one arrives on 2 August 2027, and it is a considerably bigger event.
At its maximum, over the Nile valley near Luxor, totality lasts six minutes and 23 seconds. That is the second longest total solar eclipse of the century and the longest available on easily reached land until 2114.
Cunard has two Queens sailing that fortnight to meet it. They are not the same proposition.
Two ships, the same dates
Queen Victoria sails 14 nights from Southampton, 23 July to 6 August 2027, with calls at Lisbon, Cadiz, Valencia and Barcelona before Tangier on eclipse day, then La Coruña on the way home.
Fresh from her Rotterdam refit, she takes the Atlantic and western Mediterranean route.
Queen Elizabeth sails the identical fortnight in the other basin, one way from Civitavecchia to Trieste. La Spezia, Barcelona, Alghero, Ajaccio, a second call at Civitavecchia, then Valletta on 1 August.
After Valletta come two sea days, then Split and Zadar. The eclipse falls on the first of those sea days.
A second Queen Elizabeth voyage overlaps the same stretch, a 14-night Civitavecchia round trip running 30 July to 13 August, which also has Valletta on 1 August and Split on the 4th. The same sea day is sold inside more than one product.
What happens at Tangier
The 2027 path of totality crosses ten countries: Spain, Gibraltar, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Somalia.
Tangier sits comfortably inside it, and not by a narrow margin. The centreline passes just south of the city.
Totality there runs about four minutes and 51 seconds, with the sun 38 degrees above the horizon and maximum eclipse near 9.45am local time.
The weather odds are good too. Satellite records across more than two decades put the clear sky probability at Tangier around 79%, among the better numbers anywhere along the path.
The one local risk is timing. Maximum falls mid-morning, and the Moroccan coast can hold overnight stratus that needs to burn off first.
At Tangier itself it reliably does. On the exposed Atlantic beaches west of the city it sometimes does not clear until later.
Cunard’s guidance for the day is that guests can watch from the upper decks or go ashore and find their own spot.
What happens on the sea day
Queen Elizabeth’s position on the morning of 2 August is the open question, and Cunard has not published it.
The path crosses the Mediterranean well south of Malta. Malta itself sees roughly 97% of the sun covered, which sounds like a rounding error and is not.
At 97% there is no corona, no true darkness, and barely a shift in temperature. The gap between a deep partial and totality is the entire reason people cross oceans for this.
Anywhere north of Malta sees less again, and Split lies a long way north.
So the eclipse Queen Elizabeth’s guests get depends on how far south the ship steams overnight from Valletta. That is a matter for Cunard’s deployment planners, and nothing on the booking page commits to it.
What the booking page does carry is a caveat Queen Victoria’s does not, warning that itinerary changes including departure times may occur and may affect viewing.
The case for the sea day
The uncertainty cuts both ways, and it is worth being fair about it.
A ship at sea can move. Eclipse chasers have long favoured ships for exactly that reason, because a vessel on the centreline can steam towards a clear patch of sky in the hours before totality while a land-based viewer is stuck with whatever cloud arrives over their field.
A ship alongside in Tangier has no such freedom. It is committed to one harbour and one sky.
So the sailing with the confirmed port has the certainty, and the sailing with the sea day has the flexibility, if Cunard chooses to use it.
For a booking made a year ahead, most readers will take the certainty.
What the two cost
Queen Victoria opens at £1,869 per person for a Britannia inside, two sharing, which works out at £134 a night. An oceanview is £1,899, so £30 buys the window.
Above that the ladder steepens sharply. A balcony is £2,849, a £950 jump from oceanview. Britannia Club balcony is £5,499 and Princess Grill £7,049.
Queens Grill on that sailing has already sold out, a year and eleven months out from departure.
Queen Elizabeth starts higher and finishes lower. Her inside is £1,949, or £139 a night, but her balcony is £2,499 against Queen Victoria’s £2,849.
Her Princess Grill is £5,199, some £1,850 below the equivalent on Queen Victoria, and her Queens Grill suites are still available at £6,249.
Two things to weigh there. The Southampton sailing is cheaper only at the very bottom of the ship, and it is the one where the top grades are going first.
The Civitavecchia fares are cruise fares. Flights out to Rome and home from Trieste sit on top, and it is an open-jaw booking rather than a return.
Both voyages currently carry a 31 August deadline on Cunard’s extra onboard credit offer and its 10% saving for returning World Club guests.
The bottom line
If the eclipse is the reason for the booking, Queen Victoria is the sailing that answers the question. A named port, inside the path, with nearly five minutes of totality and the best weather odds on the European end of the track.
Queen Elizabeth’s fortnight is a genuinely good Mediterranean holiday, better value through the balcony and suite grades, and it may well deliver totality too. But that part is not yet promised in writing, and a booking made now is a booking made on trust.
The difference between the two is not the itinerary or the ship. It is whether you want the eclipse guaranteed or the fare guaranteed.
Anyone after something sooner has a partial lunar eclipse on 28 August, visible from selected Cunard sailings. The no-fly eclipse cruises we tracked through the summer have now sailed.
