Diamond Princess Webcam – Gem Class Ship Built in Nagasaki

The Diamond Princess Webcam is the bridge camera of Diamond Princess, the Gem Class ship that Mitsubishi Heavy Industries built for Princess Cruises at Nagasaki and that entered service in 2004. Princess sends a new satellite image from the bridge every five minutes, so the page shows a still picture that refreshes on its own rather than live video. A box in the top left corner gives the ship’s name and the time in UTC and in local time, the temperature sits in the top right corner, and a caption along the bottom names the port she is in or the one she is bound for. In port the camera looks out over the bow to quays, warehouses and a city reaching back toward the hills.

About Diamond Princess

Diamond Princess was the first Princess ship built in a Japanese shipyard. She was launched on April 12, 2003, completed and christened on February 26, 2004, and began operating in March 2004. She and her only sister, Sapphire Princess, were the largest cruise ships Mitsubishi had built since Crystal Harmony in 1991. She is registered in the United Kingdom.

The ship has spent most of her career in Asia and the Pacific. Before 2014 she alternated between Alaska glacier cruises in the northern summer and Australia and New Zealand in the southern summer. From 2014 she sailed from Yokohama in the northern summer, in the 2016 and 2017 northern winter she ran round trips from Singapore, she returned to Sydney for the 2017 and 2018 season, and in 2018 she moved between Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Vietnam, Taiwan and Malaysia. She is best known for the February 2020 quarantine at Yokohama, early in the COVID-19 pandemic, when at least 712 of the 3,711 passengers and crew tested positive.

Diamond Princess Details

What Can You See on the Diamond Princess Webcam?

The Diamond Princess Webcam faces forward from the bridge, with the foremast standing at the bottom center of the frame. At sea the picture is mostly water and sky, the horizon level across the frame and the clouds and light changing hour by hour. Near land, islands, headlands and small boats come into view, and alongside a pier the camera can take in a working port, from cranes and warehouses to the low roofs of the city behind. After dark the image turns almost black. Princess notes that image availability depends on visibility, weather and the satellite connection, so a frame can lag or the camera can go quiet for a while.

A Name Swap at the Shipyard

Diamond Princess was meant to be called Sapphire Princess. While the two sisters were under construction at Nagasaki, fire swept through the decks of the hull intended to become Diamond Princess, delaying her completion. To keep the first delivery on time, Princess swapped the names, so the undamaged ship became Diamond Princess and the repaired one entered service as Sapphire Princess. The two Gem Class ships are the widest of the Grand Class family, with a beam of 37.5 meters (123 feet) against 36 meters (118 feet) on the others, and Diamond Princess was the first Princess ship to drop the nightclub wing over the stern.

Her diesel-electric plant pairs four Wartsila 46 series diesel generators with a General Electric LM2500 gas turbine generator of 25,000 kilowatts, which is used mainly where emissions rules are strict, such as Alaska, or when extra speed is needed. Two 20-megawatt Alstom propulsion motors drive fixed-pitch propellers, and six thrusters, three at the bow and three at the stern, help her maneuver. In June 2017 she was retrofitted with a hull air lubrication system to cut fuel use and carbon dioxide emissions.

Explore More Cruise Ship Webcams

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Source: Princess Cruises