THE LAUNCH of Airtours’ new four-star ship, Sunbird, in Palma, didn’t quite go according to plan.
After a splendid lunch, during which an interpreter was meant to translate the words of cruise division chairman Hugh Collinson into Spanish but got so nervous she merely repeated the speech in English, the hundreds of guests traipsed out into the sunshine for the ceremony.
As is the case at these events, several dignatories, including the Airtours royal family of chairman David Crossland and chief executive Harry Coe, were seated on a raised platform for the ceremony.
Guests had to listen to some rather, er, unexciting speeches from Spanish officials before it was time for the ship to be named. In a nice gesture, Crossland had chosen his sister, Pat Trickett, as the godmother of the ship to do the honours. Everything was going swimmingly until it was time to release the bottle of champagne onto the side of Sunbird.
A dull thud, but no breakage. Gasps from the crowd and mutterings that champagne bottles had smashed perfectly during two rehearsals.
To save the day, one of the crew leant over the side of the ship, picked up the bottle by the neck and swung it as hard as he could against the ship. Still it didn’t break.
He tried again, hitting it even harder, but to no avail. Had some joker made the bottle of reinforced steel?Another member of the crew sniffed at his colleague and grabbed the bottle, but he too could not smash it.
He had a second go and eventually the bottle smashed into a thousand pieces, prompting rapturous applause.
Group finance director Tim Byrne, chain smoking and looking a little haggard after weeks of working on the First Choice deal, joked:”A deliberate ploy. We wanted one of the crew to be able to name the ship.”