Rotterdam World Port Days 2025

Another trip with Onno and Vadym from Onnozone!

We are all interested in ships and maritime industry, however ... the World Port Days are pretty crowded, so this year we decided to look at it from a different perspective, from onboard a ship!

Every year during the World Port Days, P&O Ferries send their ships into the city up to the Erasmus bridge during the day as these ships sail towards England at night and are usually docked at the Europoort terminal during the day. These trips can be booked as guests onboard one of the P&O ferries Pride of Rotterdam or Pride of Hull. We decided to book on Sunday 7 September on the Pride of Hull.

On Sunday 7 September I drove to Eindhoven to pick up Onno and Vadym, and we arrived well on time at the P&O terminal of Europoort. Parking the car was easy with good signage and help from stewards. We could park right opposite the ship that was already docked at her berth. It gave us some time to photograph her before we went inside to the ticket office.

Once inside we had to wait a while so we all ate some of the food we took along for this trip. But of course inside the terminal there are still some interesting photos to make. First of all the outside of the terminal is pretty nice too if the weather is good, it serves as a place to walk around and sit down for a while, maybe even have a picknick while you wait for the boarding. There is a large parking, bus stops and taxi stops. The area is pretty open and gives you a good view on the ships. Inside there is some space to sit and relax for a while and of course some models of ships like most shipping terminals. In the Europoort Terminal at this moment there is this very large model of the Norbank in North Sea Ferries colors, the second model is smaller but just as nice, the Pride of Rotterdam of course.

When we could finally board the ship, the photographic adventure began! We started with coffee onboard in the upper bar so we could come up with a strategy to document most of the interesting things to see on this trip, first of all the leaving of the berth and sailing into the Calandkanaal before turning around the seawall separating the Calandkanaal and the Nieuwe Waterweg into this Nieuwe Waterweg in the direction of the city. We had a good view on some of the other industries in the area, both of the lighthouses marking the entrance of the Port of Rotterdam and the "RPA 14" that gave us a show with her watercanons.

Next in line was the Stena Line terminal of Hoek van Holland where the Stena ... was docked and of course especially for me the old Hoek van Holland hoge licht lighthouse. The views from the highest deck of the Pride of Hull gave us a unique perspective on all these areas.

Not long after, we sailed past one of the larger and more impressive engineering projects in the Netherlands designed to protect the lands behind it from flooding, the Maeslantkering, built between 1991 and 1997.

The historic tugboat "Holland" passed us in the opposite direction and our ship sailed on slowly but surely towards the city. At this moment we had some time to explore the ship completely!

About the ship: Pride of Hull

P&O ferries (and preceding companies) had operated the route from Rotterdam to Hull for a long time alongside the route from Zeebrugge (Belgium) to Hull and by the late 1990's the Norsea and Norsun were serving the Rotterdam-Hull route and the aging Norstar and Norland were serving the Zeebrugge-Hull route, P&O ferries decided it was time for modernisation and ordered 2 new ships for the Rotterdam (Europoort) to Hull route, the ships would be the Pride of Rotterdam and the Pride of Hull. The ships were ordered at the Fincantieri shipyard in Italy and laid down in 1999, both ships entered service on the route in 2001. The Pride of Rotterdam entered service first, followed later in the year by her sister the Pride of Hull. This ship is impressive to say the least, a unique design with visual elements well designed and operations made easy by the stern loading door and a side loading door as well, interestingly there is no bow door and she loads lorries through the stern door while cars are loaded throught the side door, separating both deck loading operations as the lorries load on the 3 lower decks and cars on deck 7. Once these new ships entered service, the Norsea and Norsun were renamed Pride of York and Pride of Bruges respectively and transferred to the Zeebrugge-Hull route where I have sailed both of them a number of times. Sadly this route closed as a result of the Covid-crisis of 2020 and both ships were sold off, by now one has already been scrapped and the other will follow soon.

The Pride of Hull in detail:

Launched: 11 April 2001

In service: 2 December 2001

Tonnage: 59.925 GT

Length: 215.44 m

Beam: 31.85 m

Power: 4 engines providing 50.700 hp

Speed: 22 knots

Capacity: 1360 passengers in 530 cabins and 250 vehicles

The ship continued past some more interesting views like the Rijkswaterstaat yard where the Kustwacht ship "Rotterdam" was moored, the small ferry from Maassluis to Rozenburg, the SS "Rotterdam", the refugee vessel "Silja Europa",all the big and small ships gathering for the World Port Days near the Erasmus bridge and the other historic tugboat "Elbe".

Once near the Erasmus bridge ourselves a tugboat helped us to take a fixed position and then the smoke canon were set off to celebrate the event.

Once this was over we sailed all the way back to the terminal and we took the time to relax the rest of the way.

THE END!