Royal Princess Webcam – First Royal Class Bridge Cam

The Royal Princess Webcam shows the view from the bridge of Royal Princess, the ship that opened the Royal Class for Princess Cruises in 2013. Princess sends a satellite image from the bridge every five minutes, so the page shows a run of still pictures rather than a video stream, and each new frame replaces the last on its own. A caption box in the top left corner gives the ship’s name with the time in UTC and in local time, a weather box on the right shows the outside temperature, and a line along the bottom says whether the ship is in port or which port lies ahead. From that height the picture can hold open ocean under a hard horizon, a headland sliding past, or a whole bay ringed by green hills.

About Royal Princess

Royal Princess is the lead ship of the Royal Class, and when Fincantieri delivered her in 2013 she was the largest ship yet built for Princess Cruises, which made her the line’s flagship. Carnival Corporation signed the final contract for two prototype ships on May 4, 2010. Steel was cut at the Monfalcone yard in Italy on March 15, 2011, the keel was laid on October 20, 2011, and the hull floated out on August 16, 2012. Princess took delivery in Monfalcone on May 30, 2013.

Catherine, then Duchess of Cambridge and now Princess of Wales, named the ship at Southampton on June 13, 2013, in a ceremony that kept British traditions with a blessing, the Royal Marines and the pipers of the Irish Guards. The maiden voyage followed on June 16, a seven-day run from Southampton to Barcelona. Her early years alternated Caribbean winters from Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale with European summers. A move to Los Angeles in 2019 brought the Mexican Riviera, California and Alaska, and later seasons took her to San Francisco, Australia and the South Pacific.

Royal Princess Details

What Can You See on the Royal Princess Webcam?

The camera looks ahead from the bridge, high above the waterline, so the Royal Princess Webcam takes in whatever lies in front of the ship. Out at sea the frame is mostly water and sky, the horizon running straight across it and the weather setting the tone, from flat calm under sun to low cloud and rain on the lens. Closer to land the picture fills with islands, headlands and small boats, and at anchor or alongside a pier it can hold a shoreline, a waterfront and the hills behind it. 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.

Three Ships Named Royal Princess

This is the third Princess ship to carry the name, and the cruise line announced it on the day steel was cut in 2011, in honor of the earlier ships. The first Royal Princess was built by Wartsila in Helsinki and named by Diana, Princess of Wales, at Southampton on November 15, 1984. That puts two Princesses of Wales, almost three decades apart, behind ships of the same name. The 1984 ship later sailed for P&O Cruises as Artemis and has carried German passengers as Phoenix Reisen’s Artania since 2011.

The 2013 ship was also one of the first passenger ships built to comply with the safe return to port requirements. Four Wartsila engines produce a combined 62.4 megawatts for two 18-megawatt propulsion motors, good for 22 knots in service and 22.9 knots at most. A pair of cantilevered walkways called the SeaWalk extends over the port and starboard sides, and a smaller share of deck space given to pools left room for more venues than on any earlier Princess ship.

More Cruise Webcams

• Sky Princess Webcam
• Phoenix Artania Webcam
• Star Princess Webcam

Source: Princess Cruises